Question

Corrupted Maildir. How can I push Thunderbird emails back to the server?

Posted February 9, 2015 3.6k views

I’m transitioning from a VPS to DigitalOcean after my machine suffered a catastrophic failure due to a loss of power, resulting in a completely corrupted Maildir folder. Now, I’ve got two accounts in Thunderbird:

  • Account 1, with everything still stored on my local machine.
  • Account 2, with new email coming in.

Now, when I connect back to the corrupted host, because it’s running on IMAP, it dumps all of the local data in Thunderbird (good thing for local backups.)

When I move to DigitalOcean this week (I’m installing software to the droplet now!) I’d like to setup a new mailserver and a smooth transition, and as I’m doing it, it would be really nice if I could combine these accounts and retain the folders, and consistent email history that I’ve lost.

I’ll be using this guide:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-setup-exim-spamassassin-clamd-and-dovecot-on-an-arch-linux-vps

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you.

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MooK
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MooK

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1 answer
vps February 9, 2015

Seems used a round about way of getting mail from my gmail account into my droplet.

Since your Account 1 is already local I would try to find a way to back it up locally.

Once your droplet is created create a NEW account in thunderbird (account 3). Then if I remember correctly I just drag and dropped folders from my Google account folders (Your account 1) to my droplets account folders. (your account 3).

Follow a similar pattern to get your account 2 moved over.

You might be able to find a more automated way of doing this but I only had 4 physical email boxes to deal with so it didn’t take long.

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  • MooK February 9, 2015

    vps,

    Would this automatically push the email back to the server? I’d like to be able to access it on my phone, or from webmail as well.

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  • vps February 9, 2015

    Yes, once complete I had access to all my old and new email via imap on the droplet. Thunderbird works plus I have Roundcube and Horde webmail running. Copies did remain on Google also.

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