A (long) story about almost losing my PowerMail database and how I got it
back.
Two nights ago, when getting my mail, PowerMail (5.1.1a1) was unusually
sluggish. Then I just started to get a spinning pizza icon whenever I
opened PowerMail. No response to anything.
I suspect that this is related to a problem that I have reported earlier.
I keep my PowerMail database on one computer and often access it from a
different computer under Apple File Sharing. If you delete an attachment
under this arrangement, PowerMail seems to get confused about where the
attachment is and can hang. Perhaps I finally did something that caused
PowerMail to hang on opening the database, trying to resolve an alias?
I killed and relaunched PowerMail a number of times, and I noticed that
sometimes I could get 1 or 2 events into the app before it hung. I could
pull down a menu, or have it respond to one command-key operation, but
the response was very sluggish and then it would hang completely. One of
the events I got it to respond to was a command-W, so now my Mail Browser
window was closed.
What was interesting was that trying to kill PowerMail using the "Force
Quit Applications" window (cmd-opt-Esc) was very difficult. I had to kill
PowerMail 2 times in order to have the menus and windows disappear, but
then I would have to "kill" it many more times for the application to
really go away.
I started up PowerMail with command and option keys down, and rebuilt my
database a number of times, including a low-level rebuild. This took a
few hours for all the different permutations. The problem remained.
I keep my PowerMail database on my laptop, so the next thing I did was to
mount my Powerbook on my desktop (using FireWire target mode). I copied
the database onto my desktop and tried from there, and it still hung, so
the problem wasn't a file error. I rebuilt the database on my desktop and
it still wouldn't open.
I then sampled PowerMail when it was hung (from Activity Monitor) and it
looked like it was trying to do something over the network. So I went to
the Network panel in System Preferences and turned off all networking.
To my surprise, this solved the problem. Now I could open my PowerMail
database! But of course I can't send or receive mail with the network
turned off. Testing revealed that the database wouldn't open whenever a
network was active. (I did not try turning on the network after launching
Powermail.)
So now I figured that maybe if I exported and imported my database the
problem might go away. Which it did, but only after about 10 hours of work.
The first time I tried to export my database, Powermail went through all
the steps (choose how to export, where to export, etc) and then just sat
there quietly. After a few minutes I figured out it wasn't doing anything.
Rule 1: If the browser window is closed, PowerMail goes through the
motions of exporting but doesn't actually do anything.
The second time I exported my database, I got everything exported
including attachments (about 60 minutes on a dual-G5!) and then imported
(about 90 minutes), but looking through my browser window it appeared
that not everything got transferred. It appears that if you don't have
"View All" set for every mailbox, mail from those mailboxes is silently
discarded on export.
Rule 2: You have to go through every mailbox and turn on "View All"
before exporting "everything" or else PowerMail doesn't export everything.
So I reexported and reimported (another 2.5 hours of work). Now I
compared the mailboxes and the attachments folder. Somehow my attachments
have multiplied. Before I had 2,241 attachments, and now I have 4,794
attachments. I don't know where these attachments came from!
Rule 3: Some of your attachments will be duplicated when you export and
import your database. It is hard to tell how or why.
After all this I tried to just copy over the "Setup Database" file but
when I looked at them, I saw that my filter rules were all strange,
referring to the wrong mailbox as part of the filter. I suspect that the
filter rules refer to mailboxes by some internal identifier which doesn't
copy over when you export and import a PowerMail database.
Rule 4: After exporting and importing, you need to re-set up all your
filters and accounts. Allow a couple of hours for this.
There is no easy way to look at your filters and accounts in both the old
and new databases at the same time. What I did was to go through every
filter (3 panels each) and every account (3 panels + 1 pop-up window
each) and take a snapshop of the window (cmd-shift 4 followed by space)
and then opened all the snapshots in Preview to see them in order to re-
enter them. Of course, you had better have written down your passwords in
another place since you can't view them from PowerMail.
Rule 5: If you ever need to recover your PowerMail database expect to
spend about 8 or more hours doing this (estimated from a fast computer +
a 700MB database). You have to be very careful in order to not lose email
in the process. You will duplicate some of your attachments, and it is
impossible to figure out which ones or why.
Rule 6: (of course). None of this is mentioned in the PowerMail manual or
any of the FAQs that I could find on the web.
Jerôme: If you want to know the call graph where PowerMail seemed to
hang, it is copied below.
=======
Analysis of sampling pid 434 every 10.000000 milliseconds
Call graph:
283 Thread_110b
283 start
283 _start
283 main
283 LApplication::Run()
283 CPMApp::ProcessNextEvent()
283 LTSMDocApp::ProcessNextEvent()
283 LEventDispatcher::UseIdleTime(EventRecord const&)
283 LPeriodical::DevoteTimeToIdlers(EventRecord const&)
283 CPMApp::SpendTime(EventRecord const&)
283 CMAS::Idle()
283 CIndexingEngine::Idle()
283 CIndexingEngine::AddMessage(CMsg*)
283 CIndexingEngine:
:GetBodyAsPlainText(CMsg*, std::basic_string<unsigned short, std:
:char_traits<unsigned short>, std::allocator<unsigned short> >&)
283 CMsgPartContainer:
:GetAllSubParts(std::vector<CMsgPart*, std::allocator<CMsgPart*> >&, __bool8)
283 CMsg::LoadPartList()
283 CMsg::DBReadMsgParts()
283 CMsgPartContainer:
:ReadFromStream(basic_binstream&, long)
283 CMsgPartContainer:
:ReadPartsFromStream(basic_binstream&, long)
283 CPartFactory:
:MakePart(basic_binstream&, long)
283 CEnclosurePart:
:ReadFromStream(basic_binstream&, long)
283 CFileSpecImp:
:ReadFromStream(basic_binstream&, CFileSpec const&)
283 FSResolveAlias
283
FSResolveAliasWithMountFlags
283
FSResolveAliasWithMountFlagsInternal
283 FSMatchAliasInternal
283 AL_findVolume
283 AL_mountVolume
283
AL_mountForeign
283
AL_aliasVolumeMount
283
PBVolumeMount
283
RemountServerURLAsync
283
AFP_RemountServerURL
283
afp_Remount
283 SharedVolumeEnumerator::Init(sockaddr*, unsigned char*, unsigned
char*, unsigned char*, void (*)(EventRecord*, void*), void*, unsigned
char (*)(unsigned char*, void*), void*, void (*)(void*, unsigned long,
long, void*), void*, unsigned long)
283 TServerProxy::Connect(unsigned long)
283 TServerProxy::GetSrvrInfo(sockaddr*, unsigned char*)
283 GetStatus
283 afp_connect
283 connect
283 connect
283 Thread_1203
283 _pthread_body
283 CooperativeThread
283 InvokeThreadEntryUPP
283 LThread::DoEntry(void*)
283 LThread::Cleanup::Run()
283 LSemaphore::Wait(long)
283 LSemaphore::BlockThread(long)
283 LThread::SemWait(LSemaphore*, long, QHdr&,
unsigned char&)
283 SetThreadStateEndCritical
283 SetThreadState
283 YieldToThread
283 SwitchContexts
283 mach_msg
283 mach_msg_trap
283 mach_msg_trap
283 Thread_1303
283 _pthread_body
283 CarbonSelectThreadFunc
283 BSD_waitevent
283 syscall
283 syscall
283 Thread_1403
283 _pthread_body
283 CarbonOperationThreadFunc
283 _pthread_cond_wait
283 semaphore_wait_signal_trap
283 semaphore_wait_signal_trap
283 Thread_1503
283 _pthread_body
283 CarbonATOperThreadFunc
283 _pthread_cond_wait
283 semaphore_wait_signal_trap
283 semaphore_wait_signal_trap
283 Thread_1603
283 _pthread_body
283 CooperativeThread
283 InvokeThreadEntryUPP
283 LThread::DoEntry(void*)
283 CPPThread::Run()
283 CBasicThreadImp::Run()
283 CAddrBookSyncThread::Run()
283 0x3de808
283 CSemaphore::Wait(CMutex&)
283 CCondition::Wait(CMutex&)
283 CConditionImp::Wait(CMutex&)
283 CConditionImp::Wait(CMutex*)
283 CThreadImp::SuspendPPThread(CPPThread*)
283 LThread::Suspend()
283 SetThreadStateEndCritical
283 SetThreadState
283 YieldToThread
283 SwitchContexts
283 mach_msg
283 mach_msg_trap
283 mach_msg_trap
Total number in stack (recursive counted multiple, when >=5):
5 _pthread_body
Sort by top of stack, same collapsed (when >= 5):
mach_msg_trap 566
semaphore_wait_signal_trap 566
connect 283
syscall 283
Sample analysis of process 434 written to file /dev/stdout
Sampling process 434 each 10 msecs 300 times
