[Dovecot] Mail disappearing

[Paul Tansom]

bclements at io-networks.com wrote:
>>Chris Green wrote:
> Quoting Gregory Bond <gnb at itga.com.au>:
>>>Thus a folder called 'holidays' is actually a directory called
>>>'INBOX.holidays' and a folder called 'holidays/france' is a directory
>>>called 'INBOX.holidays.france'.  Why any sort of mail server would
>>>want to construct a folder hierarchy like this I can never understand.
>>
>>IMAP pretty much requires that you can find all the folder names pretty
>>quickly.  Having folders stored like this means you can find all folders
>>with a single directory scan, without having to walk a whole filesystem
>>tree.
> 
> Can we get back on topic guys?
> 
> Ok, maybe someone can enlighten me.
> 
> Can IMAP servers, any IMAP server just delete mail without a client requesting
> that it doe so?

Well being software and computer based I wouldn't categorically rule out
anything in terms of possible bugs. I would, however, suggest that the
likelihood is there is another cause somewhere - i.e. something that is
requesting the deletion of the mail.

As such, are all the clients using the same mail client? Are they all in
the same office? Perhaps someone has, as has been suggested, found a new
feature that they've all tried. Is this still happening, or has it
happened on a couple of occasions and not since?

You mentioned in a previous post that you are running on version 99.11.
Is there a more recent package available for your distribution? I'm
running Debian and on 0.99.14. Although I've not read about any issues
of this sort, I can't see that it would necessarily hurt to upgrade to a
 the latest (stable) version. Although in the true debug process it
would be preferable to identify exactly what is happening, sometimes
this isn't practical - namely when somebody is breathing down your neck
to get something fixed. In these cases the 'have you rebooted it?'
Windows style fix might give you breathing space!

As a fallback measure, and not knowing your exact setup, is it worth
setting up something like Procmail to deliver all mail into another
location *as well as* the users mail folder. This way you have access to
restoring any mail that comes in, not just that available from the last
backup (I run a nightly backup of critical folders and weekly of the
rest - keeping week end and month end backups for longer periods on a
rotating basis).

OK, the usual disclaimers apply here - backup, backup, backup; and not
having been using Dovecot for long (weeks in fact) and not having delved
into the code I'm by no means an expert. It has, however, been
frequently recommended to me - and I finally gave in and tried it :)

-- 
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/