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EVERY email in my entire folder structure has just had their timestamps set to 11:00 PM PDT (12:00 AM on my ISP's server time).  Just before this happened, I had trouble connecting via IMAP using Outlook Express.  When connection restored, Inbox emptied and redownloaded the headers all showing 11:00 PM.

The date is correct, but I've now lost all reference to the time so they don't sort in order and I have no way to fix this. 

This happened before months ago but only to the emails that had come in after some system change took place.

Another case of data loss with SmarterMail.

David

This is a screenshot taken from David's inbox. Definately it's a bug with IMAP protocol. I checked randomly other domains and email accounts and they are fine. 

This is characteristic of the mailbox.cfg file getting deleted.  SM will automatically regenerate this file, but all email will be set to 12:00 AM on the day it was deleted.  Can you go to that user's folder and then to the inbox and view the properties of the mailbox.cfg file and post the date in which it was created?

Yes, I see it was created today at the time user reported the issue. Why and How can it be deleted if all other emails are fine?

Sometimes admins have to manually move emails from one account to another and when they do, the affected accounts need to have the mailbox.cfg file deleted.  Has anyone manually deleted this file?

No, I can see that noone even logged in to the server for a few weeks.

I don't know then.  I use IMAP and so do a couple of my users, and none of us have had this problem that I know of.  Have you checked your IMAP logs?

I haven't yet. What would I look there for? So it's not a bug with SM4 for sure?

Look for anything out of the ordinary.  Make sure to check the logs specifically around the time the problem began.  I'm not saying it isn't a bug with SM4....just that I haven't had this problem.  Hopefully if someone else has, they will post and let us know.

Thanks a lot for the help!

I also see that some of my old test Inbox folders showed up again on the webmail side that have been gone from the server for months.  They don't show on Outlook Express as I have not reset my folders on the IMAP client.   How did these magically reappear on the server?

 David

I also had this problem when mailbox.cfg got corrupted and was rebuilt. Back then I also wondered why it could not be rebuilt by using the real dates from the mail headers, and the short reply from ST was that this was by design because it would cost too much performance. IMO it should use real dates, or at least provide an option to fully rebuild. Additionally, the format of the CFG is unknown, so there is not even a way to create a script to do that. I really feel this behavior should be changed.

There is a similar issue with SM using "received" date rather then sent date (I, like many others, prefer to see when the message was sent).

 

I totally agree with you. I'd think they could use the attribute of the file. When the email came it becomes a .grp file. Why not get the time from the file system when the file is actually created. It would be permanent like that.

Polk:

Why not get the time from the file system when the file is actually created.

Because all messages in one day go into one .grp file (there's one .grp per day). It would have to go through the .grp file and get dates from message headers. I understand that it can be time and resource consuming, but I too would welcome if there was an option to (let SM to) rebuild dates manually. The same is when restoring messages from the backup. And I agree with the "received" date thing, at least there could be an option in webmail to choose from showing "received" or "sent" date.

dsfielding:

I also see that some of my old test Inbox folders showed up again on the webmail side that have been gone from the server for months.  They don't show on Outlook Express as I have not reset my folders on the IMAP client.   How did these magically reappear on the server?

 David

Even if you delete a folder in webmail, the folder will actually remain physically on the server.  Apparently, this prevents problems with IMAP syncing if that folder is ever re-created.  Maybe when the mailbox.cfg file got deleted and re-created, it brought the folder out of hiding.