Manish Kathuria wrote: > In order to make the same set of emails accessible on both Windows XP > Home and Fedora Core on my dual boot laptop, I have created a separate > FAT32 partition which I use just for storing the Thunderbird mail > files and directories. While working on Linux I mount this partition > through an appropriate entry in /etc/fstab and have configured the > Thunderbird profile in Linux in such a manner that it points to the > files and directories on this mounted FAT32 filesystem for accessing > mails for different accounts. I also make sure that I am using the > same version of Thunderbird on Windows and Linux. > > Things had been working perfectly fine except for some small hitches > but recently after I compacted the mail folders and deleted trash > while working on Linux, the whole partition got corrupted and a number > of mails were lost. Though I was able to repair the FAT32 mail > partition and recover most of the files, its created some doubts in my > mind regarding this whole arrangement and robustness of FAT32 > filesystem under Linux. Ouch. This is one of the big problems with a traditional Unix mailbox: when the mailbox gets large, programs have to do large amounts of re-ordering and rewriting to delete e-mails, and there's a lot of scope for things to go wrong. But I'm still surprised that the FAT32 filesystem was the problem. I can't recall an occasion when that gave any problems. Have you checked smartctl -l error /dev/hda (assuming that it's an IDE disk)? Have you checked memtest86? I *have* experienced problems with disk and memory... One other thing -- the mailbox was well under 2GB large, wasn't it? Have you considered a rsync arrangement to keep known-good copies of your mailboxes? This would involve more diskspace, but would give you a certain amount of backup. (And please tell me you've re-examined your backup routines!) James (using maildir). -- E-mail address: james | Let He who Taketh the Plunge @westexe.demon.co.uk | Remember to Return it by Tuesday.
