Topic: email not shown in webmail and imap

[anto_next]

Hello
I have this problem since this morning.
In some folders some email aren't shown.
Entering via webmail, I see there are 21 messages, but the page remains blank.
Limiting the messages number shown for page to 1 I could move the visible email, but some are invisible.
This didn't happen in all the folders.
Is there a way to rebuild the email index or something else?
entering in the backup I can see all the messages with varius extension: 2,Sa 2,RSa 2,RS etc..

Thanks
Anto

[janet]

anto_next

Did you copy or move messages or copy them from another system ?
It sounds to me like you may have incorrect ownership permissions on those invisible messages.

Try this
cd /home/e-smith/files/users/username/Maildir/cur/
(where username is a user who has some invisible messages)

show output of
ls -al

You may need to go deeper into the folder structure depending how you have your email folders arranged etc.
See the structure with
ls -al /home/e-smith/files/users/username/Maildir/
& so on ...

ONLY do the following if your ownership is incorrect
To correct ownership do
cd /home/e-smith/files/users/username/
chown -R username:username Maildir
(where username is a user who you want to correct ownership for)

[anto_next]

Hello Janet
thanks for help, unfortunately I had to delete folders with problems, because all new email that I put on those folders become invisible.
I didn't check for permissions or owner of the single files and folders ( were only 3 folders )
I could move most of the important ones, and now it seems it works well again.

ciao
Anto

[Stefano]

Anto, if you prefer, you can write in italian language forum

ciao
Stefano

[anto_next]

Hello
probably I've solved it.
This morning this happened again, the reason was:
I get an email, I read it on thunderbird and moved in a different folder.
Than I saw advise on smartphone, opened again the email and deleted it.
This caused the problem.
I logged into server and saw the email were still present, I created a new folder, moved there but they were still invisible.
I moved again the email in the original folder, but one by one, so I could get all emails visible.
Thanks for your help.
Anto
PS Grazie Stefano, me ne ero scordato del forum italiano.
ciao
Antonio

[janet]

anto_next

Messages are usually not removed immediately when deleting them using IMAP.
Deleted messages are marked as deleted but can still be seen when using a Linux command line to view all messages in
/home/e-smith/files/users/username/Maildir/....

Email clients can be set to show or not show deleted messages, & to also remove deleted messages immediately, or remove them after so many days or remove them upon exit etc.
Most email clients will allow you to undelete a message that has been previously deleted, as long as that message has not been removed by any email client accessing the same mail folder.

Typically mobile devices may leave the messages deleted but not removed, & you can set how long the message will be retained before being removed eg a day, a week, a month etc.

So what you are seeing may be "normal" behaviour, it's just you are not aware of how IMAP mail really works when messages are deleted.
It sounds like you may have different settings for deletion/removal/purging in the different email clients you use, so you are seeing different behaviour between email clients when they access the same users message folders.

Take a look at some email messages on sme server using webmail, it will show you both undeleted & deleted messages, the deleted will have a line through them. There is an option to purge (totally remove) deleted messages.

This type of behaviour is normal in most database systems, where deleted means hidden (but still accessible if you undelete the record), & a further step of purging means the record "is really deleted".

[anto_next]

Hello Janet
all clear about IMAP, but probably I wasn't ( sorry English isn't my mother tongue )
What I did is:
I get an email, read it on PC with Thunderbird and dropped from INBOX folder to a subfolder.
On the smartphone, I saw the email, it was still present in INBOX folder because I didn't wait the time needed to synchronize, than I deleted it.
This, I think, caused the problem.

Ciao
Antonio