[Users] Corrupted subjects and dates in email list <SOLVED by workaround>

[slitt at troubleshooters.com]

9 years after this 5/22/2012 email (which follows the text of my
2/15/2021 post), I finally formulated a damage repair procedure for
rare corrupted subjects and dates in the email list, a situation in
which the author, subject and date in the message body is correct, but
the subject and date in the message list is the subject and date of a
different email you've received...

Step 1: Write down all corrupt messages you find. Info written down
   includes author, subject, date, and folder from the message list, and
   the same information from the message body.

Step 2: Rebuild folder tree. My findings are that the rebuild alone
        doesn't solve the problem, although it probably removes the
        problem's root cause.

Step 3: Make a new folder and move the corrupted messages to it. My
        observation is that after the move, those messages now have the
        correct author, subject and date in the message list.

Step 4: Move the repaired messages back to their original folder.

This is a rare situation, but if you ever find yourself in it, this
workaround can cleanse your corruption.

SteveT


>Hi all,
>
>Very rarely, and very intermittently, I have situations where the email
>information for an email in the mail list doesn't match the info in the
>email itself. Specifically, the subject and date are wrong in the list
>and right in the email itself (I can tell this by context).
>
>It's intermittent, so of necessity my symptom description must be
>vague. It seems that rebuilding the folder tree for the account appears
>to somewhat fix the problem, although it also tends to delete the
>mismatched emails.
>
>I have Claws 3.7.9 running on Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit with a dual core and
>4GB of RAM. Claws gets its email via IMAP from a Dovecot server on the
>same Ubuntu 11.10 box, with the Dovecot server receiving its email into
>a folder tree from procmail, which is fed by Fetchmail, which pulls
>from my ISP.
>
>I'm not yet sure whether it's a Claws problem or a Dovecot problem.
>Today when it occurred for the second time in as many months, I fired
>up Thunderbird to explore Dovecot without Claws, but during that time
>the mismatched emails either got deleted or got cured. Next time it
>happens I'll try very hard to capture the bad emails (maybe print them
>to paper) before looking at Dovecot through Thunderbird.
>
>Does this sound like anything other people have experienced?
>
>Thanks
>
>SteveT