Inbox and messages disappear, downloading via pop fails

[over 5000]

Binary package hint: evolution

Evolution 2.22.3.1, current ubuntu hardy (Ubuntu 8.04.1, linux 2.6.24-21-generic)

I am rarely using evolution, and merely to backup my gmail emails to the hard drive, in case something happens at google.

When I started gmail today, the Inbox was gone. (see first screen shot)
There were no other mails (Sent, etc.) either, but I doubt there were any, ever, since I only download mails from there, not send any.

My mail folder:

~/Mail/evolution$ du -h mail/local/*
0 mail/local/Drafts
4,0K mail/local/Drafts.cmeta
4,0K mail/local/Drafts.ibex.index
0 mail/local/Drafts.ibex.index.data
2,1G mail/local/Inbox
4,0K mail/local/Inbox.cmeta
2,3M mail/local/Inbox.ev-summary
400K mail/local/Inbox.ev-summary-meta
3,7M mail/local/Inbox.ibex.index
9,5M mail/local/Inbox.ibex.index.data
0 mail/local/Outbox
4,0K mail/local/Outbox.cmeta
4,0K mail/local/Outbox.ibex.index
0 mail/local/Outbox.ibex.index.data
0 mail/local/Sent
4,0K mail/local/Sent.cmeta
4,0K mail/local/Sent.ibex.index
0 mail/local/Sent.ibex.index.data

2,1 Gigabytes Inbox. So the data is there. I have no idea where those ibex folders come from. Is 2.22.3.1 a backport from intrepid?

Hitting the "send/receive" button results in the send/receive-window flashing up shortly and disappearing again, right away. The status bar gets divided into several "tabs" all telling me, downloading emails failed.

The account is visible in the evolution account settings. (see screen shot 2)

renaming the ~/.evolution/mail folder and creating a new one, then starting up evolution again results in a visible Inbox, and evolution starts downloading emails via pop from the account as it should. (see screen shot 3)
Switching mail/-folders again brings me back to the first state (no inbox, no messages, downloading fails).

I hope you can help me find those mails again or repair the mail folders.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

that's pretty weird, since no updates went to hardy the previous days, did you tried removing the .index files (be careful to not delete the Inbox file) ? that should fix the issue. And no 2.22.3.1 is not a backport from Intrepid and moreover that was introduced into hardy the 2008-07-16 more than a month ago,so might be something else, thanks you.

[over 5000 (over5000-deactivatedaccount)]

I thought I was clever and "mv"ed all ".index" files, appending a ".disabled" to them.

Unfortunately, though, those "disabled" file names showed up as new folders when I started up evolution.
The Inbox did *not* come back, though.
Neither, did it come back when I deleted the ".disabled" files. So this was no solution.

Now on startup the status bar says something roughly translated to English as "Error in »Opening folder mbox:/home/klaus/.evolution/mail/local#Inbox.ibex.index.disabled«."

I could not find a file where this "disabled" thing was still mentioned (e.g. some kind of folder listing/index file), after I deleted the .disabled files.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

you might want to fil the bug upstream then at bugzilla.gnome.org since you're facing the issue.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

don't worry it's a duplicate