On 16 8 2003 at 5:58 pm -0400, PowerMail info wrote: >Please try reconstruction with the option mentioned in the release notes >of the recently-posted b3, although from the tone of the error message I >would surmise that you are indeed facing irreversible trouble. Perhaps at >least the new version will give you an error code that we can work from ?
I neglected to post the error codes last time, but with the new b3 (now using), they are the same: after receiving "A database error occurred: DB file is corrupted" and I click on "More Info...", it gives: "Class=DB ; what=2; when=3; err=14". >Also, try this: when PowerMail compacts a database, it leaves a copy of >the former files in the PowerMail files folder with the suffix .old. >After having made a backup of your entire data folder, try deleting the >files which result from the compact operation (the ones which do not have >.old at the end) then rename the .old files by deleting the suffix, and >relaunch. From there, do a reconstruction with the option and command >keys ON FIRST LAUNCH with all the options turned on. I have to admit, when I made the stuffit/backup of the corrupt profile, I deleted the *.old files to save time and space. :/ However, I did so because the last-modified times on those files was the same as my previous backup from a couple of weeks ago. I believe that PM never got to the point of creating new .old files and beginning to compact the DB, since in its view the DB was corrupt to begin with. I've examined the corrupt Message Database with a hex editor, skimming through it quickly, and have discovered some obvious garbage in it -- for example, what appears to be a history plist from Safari, containing URLs I was visiting last night. This coincides with my Finder exploding earlier today. Viewing the console log, it was reporting a mal-formatted com.apple.finder.plist. When I viewed same in a text editor, I discovered it contained a block of random garbage in the middle of the plist. In essence, I think I have suffered some major filesystem damage, probably in part due to losing power to my system a couple of times over the past few days (during the massive power failure and subsequent rolling blackouts that have affected a bunch of the eastern States and Canada). What I am doing now in an emergency effort is I have run the Message Database through the command-line 'strings' utility, producing a 55 MB text file, which I am now combing through by hand for remnants of recent messages which I can perhaps re-build manually into an mbox file or something. Is there any technical documentation available on the database format? At this point I would be inclined to write a utility if there was some way to methodologically salvage records from the database (which would like be more efficient and have better effect than my manual sifting). >Let us know how you fare, thanks ! Thanks for the prompt reply. Hopefully we can figure out how to salvage something... -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca
