[Dovecot] restoring mails and directories

[Timo Sirainen]

On Mon, 2012-04-30 at 10:59 +0200, oni-neko at gmx.net wrote:
> Good day!
> 
> is there an easy way to restore e.g. deleted mails and/or mail directories?
> let me specify: I'm running dovecot 1.2.9 on a current ubuntu lts. It is set to Maildir and I backup the folder with the users maildata nightly via rsync. 
> 
> now, when someone deletes a mail that they still need, and I copy it back from the backup, it will not be visible to mail clients. When I change the mailfile by a letter or so, it shows. that's easy enough, if not exactly awesome ;-)

Sounds like the message gets its old IMAP UID back, but since IMAP isn't
designed for that, the clients don't realize it. By changing the
filename the message gets a new UID.

Although typically Dovecot should notice that and log an error and fix
the situation, except if you've disabled index files.

So..: Don't put the messages back to where you got them with the same
names.