Recovery after power-loss

#1

I just had a powerloss due to the adapter not being connected and me overlooking it. There are some files (Mailpile messages) recovered to the well known ‘lost+found’ directory.

Can I throw those messages to a certain directory and cross my fingers that Mailpile picks it up? If so, which folder? This doesn’t make much sense to me:

ls jeroen/.mailpile/mail/066c6/new                 
4dc19ad6b5!2,s  71bc4cf822!2,s  a1c5b61725!2,s  f8cdeba34a!2,s

Can I just generate 10 random characters, rename it to that and throw it in $MAILPILE_HOME/mail/new?

#2

It’s likely that Mailpile will just re-download them from the server, there’s a delay between download and deletion from the server. These are almost certainly recent messages.

Dropping them in the folder as you suggest might work, and certainly won’t cause any harm. The name doesn’t matter much.

However, depending on your settings those files may be encrypted - if they are, then they have a readable plain-text header that will tell you exactly where they belong. Update: Sorry, this was incorrect, I misremembered. The header is often unhelpful.

If they’re clear-text, then you can just look at the mail and decide if it’s important and/or verify by hand whether Mailpile has rediscovered them through other channels.

#3

Thank you!

The recovered messages are all encrypted. However, like you mentioned, they have some plain-text headers - which are a pretty good indication to whether they belong to the search index, a mailbox, etc.

I will throw them to the previously suggested directory and wait for Mailpile do pick 'em up.

This does make it pretty clear to me that my weekly backup isn’t sufficient. I don’t even want to start thinking about the headache that comes from losing a week worth of e-mail. Lesson learned I guess :slight_smile: