[SOLVED] Zimbra Desktop Ate My Mail

[sklimback]

Hello All,

I just had Zimbra Desktop eat 200MB of my mail from my account. Here is the history:

1. mydomain.com had existing pop service.
2. Download Zimbra, setup account, there's my mail.
3. I used this with IMAP for several months.
4. Then, I setup a Zimbra server. Used a different domain there and generally had an acceptable experience for 5 months about.
5. Decided to migrate mydomain.com to Zimbra.
6. Performed migration successfully.
7. ZDesktop seems perfectly happy as I continue to send/receive mail via IMAP.
8. Go to setup my account in ZDesktop as a Zimbra server connection, but got an error the email address was already setup (with the imap connection).
9. So, I exited setup and went over to the account in question.
10. I had several local folders where I have been dutifully collectin mail so I set them to synchronize. Right click, turn on sync.
11. Click send/receive.
12. Folders disappear. Eats about 200MB of mail very quickly.
13. Log into Zimbra server through browser and the mail isn't there.
14. Navigate to /zimbra/zdesktop/store and the mail is missing from there as well. It's just gone.

Why did this happen? Can I get my mail back?

Thanks,
SK

[jjzhuang]

So are you using IMAP to access mail in ZCS server, but want to transition to use Zimbra sync with ZCS? Did you mean that the IMAP side "ate" the data since your ZCS access using Zimbra sync hasn't yet been setup?

[sklimback]

Hi JJZhuang,

Thanks for the reply. I really appreciate you taking the time to look into the issue. It is a bit confusing in relaying, but yes the problem seems to be related to IMAP. Specifically, I had an IMAP account setup at someserver.com for 6 months using ZDesktop no problem. During that time, I setup a ZCS server and use it with another domain for probably 4 or 5 months with no difficulty. Since that second domain is meeting with success, and because I didn't like the mail services offered by my first I decide to migrate the first domain from someserver.com to my ZCS server.

The migration goes off pretty smoothly and my mail is being handled by ZCS. At this point, possibly through sheer laziness, fanciful thinking, powerful hallucinigens, or some weird combination I check the IMAP connection (which as far as ZDesktop was concerned "didn't change") and it works just fine. I send and receive mail with that same account setup so I don't change anything.

Several months later, I decide I would really like to get a ZCS connection to that mail instead of just IMAP. So, I try to add the account, but I get an error that address is already setup as IMAP. So, I get the brilliant idea that I will simply synchronize everything from the mailbox to the server, delete the account, and then reconnect with ZCS and everything would be there.

This is where it all went horribly wrong (well, it probably went wrong earlier when I didn't backup, delete, and redo my account to ZCS originally). I right clicked several different folders containing all the mail I had saved for about a year at this point and I selected Turn Sync On. I did this for about 4 and on the 5th one I noticed my first folder disappeared. It managed to eat them all very quickly.

I hope that makes more sense.

Thanks,
SK

[jjzhuang]

OK, I think I start to understand the situation. You created a few folders in the IMAP account in ZD but turned sync off for those "local" folders. Then you over time moved many emails into those folders. Then you tried to push those local-only mail back to server in preparation of transitioning to using Zimbra sync with ZCS.

So everything you did seems reasonable and logical. The only part I'm not sure about is how you managed to continue using the ZD IMAP account after moving from the old ISP to ZCS. In general if the server mailbox changed so significantly (from non-zimbra to zimbra), I can't imagine you would be able to continue using ZD without recreating a ZD account. How you managed to continue using the old ZD account puzzles me. It may be due to some kind of mere coincidence that this happened, or it was hitting some errors but you didn't notice.

In any case, I think the loss of mail is due to the server side switch a while back. Do you have any backup at all? It's very important to have backups, since otherwise you'd still lose all "local" data if your laptop hard drive dies. Unfortunately I don't think we can recover anything at this point without backups. Please let me know if I misunderstood the sequence of events, but if my understanding is correct then there's not much we can recover.

[sklimback]

Thanks again for the reply. You correctly understand the situation. I can explain why my IMAP account "magic" worked. As you said, I was stuffing mail in local folders, which were originally created on the first service. I created them, selected turn sync off, and put mail in there. The first host had a small limit so I had to pull down my mail.

When I migrated to my ZCS server I had already created an account with the same credentials, and I just updated my MX record to reflect the new server so nothing had to change in my account. And, since I wasn't porting in any mail, I just simply started sending and receiving with the new account. It wasn't until I attempted to push mail up that I encountered, what I'm sure you will describe as, the vast differences in mailbox architecture. That's where it all fell down and went boom. In retrospect, it's stunningly clear, but at the time I hadn't yet traced through the steps of how I arrived at the graveyard of my mail; and certainly I had little clue I was the architect.

Thanks for the explanation. May my mail's battered carcass on the side of the digital highway being a warning to others.

Thanks,
SK

P.S. Yes, I have a backup.

[jjzhuang]

You are welcome. Hope this doesn't cause too much inconvenience.