[Dovecot] Problems restoring from dump

[Mark Adams]

On Mon, Sep 18, 2006 at 01:12:50PM -0700, Paul Lathrop wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> First, the vital stats: FreeBSD 6.1-STABLE, dovecot 1.0.rc7 from ports.
> 
> I have run into a vexing little problem that has brought my deployment
> of a shiny new dovecot server to a screeching halt. Using 'periodic'
> I've configured regular backups to occur using 'dump'. I have a monthly
> level 0, a weekly level 4, and a daily level 8. These dumps take
> advantage of snapshots to ensure they are taking a backup of a
> consistent filesystem. As part of the beta testing, I decided to delete
> my maildir and attempt to recover from the dumps.
> 
> Recovery went well, as dump/restore is a wonderful piece of software. I
> did a quick check at the file level to be sure my mailbox looked like it
> had when I took the last level 8 dump, and everything looked good. The
> problem came when I started up Thunderbird to take a look at my mail.
> When I selected a message, say one that said "knockout daily run
> output", I'd be reading a different message entirely, like a recent
> email from my boss! Most of the messages were like this - hopelessly
> scrambled! I tried just deleting the account in Thunderbird and
> connecting again, but that didn't change a thing.

Are the subject lines/body scrambled in any other clients? try mutt for
instance.

Are the headers mixed up aswell?

> 
> What happened!? Dump has faithfully restored the files, including the
> dovecot indexes... so why are my messages scrambled?
> 
> Thanks for your help,
> Paul

Mark