POP configuration - file corruption (the huge one with no extension and texts of e-mails)
I suspect there is no fix and I (possibly) can restore from backups, but I would sure like to know what the issue is.
I tried retrieving an e-mail from the "folder" where I kept e-mails from 2023. The "index" one sees displayed for the folder had e-mails from Jan-Mar of 2023, but Thunderbird froze when I tried to open any of them. I tried the repair function (which I imagine is meant to rebuild the .msf file), but after than the index contained nothing from Jan-Mar. I opened both the .msf file and the no-extension file in Notepad, but I see nothing from those months.
Any clues/help would be appreciated.
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One common problem is Thunderbird mail file corruption caused by anti-virus software.
I was able to recover the missing e-mails from a backup file, but I feel obliged to comment on the "it's the anti-virus software" as I have heard this before, and I think it is patently nonsensical. Here are my observations:
1) the only anti-virus software is the Microsoft Defender and - from what research I have done - upon pattern detection it removes (or quarantines) files - it does not update them. 2) the corrupted "main e-mail file" (that is the one without a filename extension) seemingly got truncated (my backup file was 50% larger than the corrupted one) and I could find no appearance of the missing e-mails in the corrupted file. 3) looking at the corrupted main e-mail file, the data seems to be in reverse chronological order (older elements appearing subsequent to new ones) - I have no idea if (a) they are added in this order (seems unusual/difficult to implement) or (b) file compaction rewrites the main file in reverse chronological order. 4) I am not seeing any other indicia of file truncation on the system.
Jonathan
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