Topic: Impa email not found after Tape restore

[brianr]

I just did a tape restore from a 6.0.01 system onto a 6.0.01+smeplus system, and found that the Imap mail data is not being recognised by dovecot(?).

The Maildir directory has been restored with all the data in it, but IMP and Outlook Express both show "empty" data from the "Mail" directory, which i presume has been populated whereas the "backed" up system had an empty "Mail" directory.

The strange thing is that I did this a couple of weeks ago to another system (6.0.01 -> 6.0.01+), but backed and restored to desktop , rather than using tape, and the mail data in Maildir was (and is) being recognised.  The only other difference is that the mail client is Outlook not express, which I think is irrelevant.

I have searched the Dovecot site, and others, and have not found any help.  Clearly dovecot is not recognising the Maildir directory, and deciding to create a new set of files in Mail.  I'd like to know why and also how I can force it to recognise the email in the Maildir.

I'd be most grateful for some early help on this.

[raem]

I think /Mail was the old location on sme 5.6, was your backup really from a v6.x system ?
/home/e-smith/files/users/username/Maildir is current location on 6.x as far as I know.
Have you checked permissions on the user's /Maildir folders & files ? eg username:username

[brianr]

hi Ray, thanks for the response.

Actually I can't remember if the system started as 5.6 or 6.

I have now managed to get the email recognised by re-building the system again, and then restoring from a desktop backup.  

However I also suspect that on the previous build I created a user and tested the email using IMP before restoring the backup.  Perhaps that confused Dovecot?

Over the next 2 days I'll try another re-build and restore the tape archive without touching the system after build and before restore.  I'll post the results here.

[brianr]

Ok, have now got round to testing this again.

I re-built the server software - 6.0.1-01, and then updated it with smeplus.

I then restored from the tape backup.

Once again the email has been restored to Maildir, but dovecot is accessing "Mail" and therefore showing the email as empty using Imp.

This time I looked at the permissions, and could see that Maildir had been restored with "root:admin" I changed this (and all below) to "user:user" and it then worked fine.  Clearly there is some sort of problem with the tape restore, as it works fine from a desktop restore.

[CharlieBrady]

Once again the email has been restored to Maildir, but dovecot is accessing "Mail" and therefore showing the email as empty using Imp.

dovecot is misconfigured, or you don't have the correct version of dovecot. Does "smeplus" do anything with dovecot versions or configuration? The SME version of dovecot is significantly customised.

[brianr]

nope, smeplus does not change dovecot at all.  just to be sure I'll rebuild without doing the smeplus step, and then do a tape restore.

I'll let you know...

[brianr]

Finally got round to retoring from the tape onto a stock 6.0.1-01 system (no smeplus).

Still got the same problem.

I have go through and change the ownership of the Maildir on each user before it is usable.

Any ideas of where to look?

[raem]

brianr

> Finally got round to restoring from the tape onto > a stock 6.0.1-01 system (no smeplus).

Try doing it on a stock sme v6.0 (Mitel)