[sf-lug] evolution problem on ubuntu 12.04.2

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ken Shaffer (kenshaffer80 at gmail.com):

> Jim, my 12.04.2 evolution 3.2.3 has a slightly different structure.  The
> path to my mail files is not ...local, but ...local_mbox,
> and no further subdirectories are present, just the files.  Of course,
> maybe something I did in the past to change things, but
> looks like you bumped into some old documentation.  (...local is present,
> but contains other stuff, mail files eventually, but not in
> folders like "Sent" , but "cur", "new", and "tmp").
> 
> .local/share/evolution/mail/local_mbox
> Sent
> Sent.cmeta
> Sent.ibex.index
> Sent.ibex.index.data

In any event, the fact that Evolution relies on mbox files for mail
storage is good news:  That means that, even if Evolution loses track of
where they are or are named, or if the indexes get corrupted, you can
always recover.  (That's why I stressed that, when in doubt, go find the
mbox files, make sure they're still intact, and make a backup copy for
safekeeping.)

I've used a number of MUAs (mail user agents) over the years that
back-end into mbox files, and they share a family likeness in their
behaviour and problems.  Eudora and Mozilla Thunderbird are examples: 
MUAs relying on mbox files build and use hashed indexes for them for speed
purposes, and sometimes those indexes go bad for a variety of reasons
including the filesystem being full.  In every case, there's a mechanism
to rebuild the indexes and some way to find/point to mbox files.