Hello,

We are running Dovecot 2.3.18 (together with Postfix) on CentOS 7. It uses a Maildir structure.

We have a user who has organized his mailbox as shows up at the end of this mail. The user had forgotten that he had renamed his "Grants Active \ European" (.Grants Active.European) folder to "Grants Active \ International" (.Grants Active.International), he thought that it was lost and requested a restore of "Grants Active \ European" (with all of its subfolders) from backup.

Since we did that (using a simple "cp -rp" from a backup, observing timestamps, ownership and permissions), mail client software won't see "European" mail folder in "Grants Active" mail folder; "International" mail folder shows up but only with two folders, those which do not exist in "European" branch (obviously, these were created later).

I have tried to run the command "doveadm index -u userx Grants\ Active" and likewise for each and every mail subfolder under "Grants\ Active"; I have also tried deleting the dovecot.index.cache and dovecot.index.log from the latter ("Grants\ Active") and then run:

doveadm -vD force-resync -u userx Grants\ Active

but it didn't do the trick: Mail clients are still stuck as I explained.

In the end, I thought that the snag might be that mail folders that are not appearing have identical (duplicate) UIDs; As an example:

[root@mailx .Grants Active.European]# cat dovecot-uidlist
3 V1548680759 N1 G64e70a1130343f61003c0000715faa8d
[root@mailx .Grants Active.European]# cd ..
[root@mailx Maildir]# cd .Grants\ Active.International
[root@mailx .Grants Active.International]# cat dovecot-uidlist
3 V1548680759 N1 G64e70a1130343f61003c0000715faa8d

If so, how should we overcome this issue?

I guess I could simply delete the restored folders to return to an acceptable state? If nevertheless we need to restore the ".European" mail folder from a backup (as it was before getting renamed), what would be the right way to do so?

Is there another way to resolve the issue without deleting the restored mail folders?

Here is the list of mail folders in this mailbox (I have intentionally removed lots of them, to reduce irrelevant content; this mailbox includes a large number of mail folders):

# doveadm mailbox list -u userx
IGARSS 2024
IAC2022
Junk
...
Junk E-mail
INBOX.EMISSION
...
Trash
Trash.Equality
Trash.sadf
...
Grants Active
Grants Active.European
Grants Active.European.URBAN RELEAF
Grants Active.European.SMURBS
Grants Active.European.SMURBS.In Kind
Grants Active.European.SMURBS.Final Reports
Grants Active.European.RI-URBANS
Grants Active.European.QA4EO
Grants Active.European.ATMO-ACCESS
Grants Active.European.IGOSP
Grants Active.European.GAUSS
Grants Active.European.E-SHAPE
Grants Active.European.CIROCCO
Grants Active.European.InCASE
Grants Active.European.EIFFEL
Grants Active.European.ARSINOE
Grants Active.International
Grants Active.International.2324
Grants Active.International.GAUSS
Grants Active.International.CIROCCO
Grants Active.International.IGOSP
Grants Active.International.ATMO-ACCESS
Grants Active.International.URBAN RELEAF
Grants Active.International.InCASE
Grants Active.International.ARSINOE
Grants Active.International.RI-URBANS
Grants Active.International.E-SHAPE
Grants Active.International.EIFFEL
Grants Active.International.QA4EO
Grants Active.International.SMURBS
Grants Active.International.SMURBS.Final Reports
Grants Active.International.SMURBS.In Kind
Grants Active.International.India
Grants Active.Urban ReLeaf
Grants Active.National
Grants Active.National.ΑΓ ΠΑΡΑΣΚΕΥΗ
Grants Active.National.ΠΕΤΡΟΥΠΟΛΗ
Grants Active.National.CLIMATTICA
Grants Active.National.ΝΑΥΠΛΙΟ
Grants Active.National.ΕΔΒΜ
Grants Active.National.PANGEA
Grants Active.National.ΕΛΙΔΕΚ
Grants Active.National.ΕΛΙΔΕΚ.OXONIAN - Δέσποινα
Grants Active.National.ΕΛΙΔΕΚ.Νασια PhD
Grants Active.National.CLIMPACT
Sent
...
INBOX

Please, provide some guidance on what we should do to make these mail folders work correctly again.

Sorry, I am not very knowledgeable on mail inner architecture and operations; please let me know if you need additional info.

Thanks in advance,
Nick