Hi,

Yesterday I had to reboot my server machine and I think there was an email client connected from the LAN during the reboot which I did not notice then. Now that mailbox is no longer accessible: as soon as I try to connect, it lets me wait forever while openin the folder, and cycles endlessly this message in the logs:

Jul 2 19:40:37 myhostname dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<username>, method=PLAIN, rip=#.#.#.#, lip=#.#.#.#, TLS Jul 2 19:40:37 myhostname dovecot: IMAP(username): unlink(/var/mail/username.lock) failed: Permission denied Jul 2 19:40:48 myhostname dovecot: IMAP(username): file mbox-sync.c: line 1372 (mbox_sync_handle_eof_updates): assertion failed: (trailer_size <= 2) Jul 2 19:40:48 myhostname dovecot: IMAP(username): Raw backtrace: imap [0x80b2081] -> imap [0x80b1f99] -> imap [0x807a536] -> imap [0x807ae71] -> imap(mbox_sync+0x422) [0x807d3c2] -> imap(mbox_storage_sync_init+0x3e) [0x807d8de] -> imap(imap_sync_nonselected+0x1c) [0x806446c] -> imap(_cmd_select_full+0xc3) [0x805be83] -> imap(cmd_select+0x19) [0x805c059] -> imap [0x805d5ef] -> imap [0x805d690] -> imap(_client_input +0x74) [0x805dd64] -> imap(io_loop_handler_run+0xf0) [0x80b7e20] -> imap(io_loop_run+0x18) [0x80b7338] -> imap(main+0x478) [0x8066388] -> /lib/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe5) [0xb7e36455] -> imap [0x8058561] Jul 2 19:40:48 myhostname dovecot: child 2459 (imap) killed with signal 6

(I have Debian Lenny with dovecot 1.0.15.)

I tried to add the user dovecot to the group mail and give the group mail write permission to the mailbox. The permission errors stopped appearing but everything else is still there, including .lock file and 3 imap-login processes that resume as soon as I try to kill them.

There are also 2 unimportant mailboxes that still work. I can view the beginning of the "username" mailbox with mc inner viewer, but it hangs as I go to the end of file. Tried to copy the file so I could freely experiment with it but the copying hung up when it reached 87 % (the file is 1.1 GB). The copied part was unreadable.

Tried to

formail -ds < /var/mail/username >> /backup/usernameJul3

but with the same result.

Is there a way to repair the synchronization of the mbox? Or at least a way to recover its content?