Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Cap Schwartz]

Michael, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:

>DiskWarrior and Apple Disk First Aid (or Disk Utility in OS X) will get
>you out of a good 90% of jams, I'd wager. For the rest, one of the other
>tools you mentioned would be on my list.

Does anyone on this list use Disk Guardian?
I'd be interested in any reports.

/Cap

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Ben Kennedy]

On 18 9 2003 at 9:15 am -0400, Michael Lewis wrote:

>Disk Utility and fsck run the same checks as far as I know, which is why
>apple says  the former "eliminates the need" for the latter. Plus it
>keeps a person from having to hit that command line which many Mac users
>are not familiar with; most are familiar with booting from a CD, though. :)

Yeah, Disk Utility just runs fsck_hfs.  I've found it to be pretty
useless though.

The diagnostic output it gives is terse at best, there is no interactive
mode (like e2fsck on linux for example), etc.

Furthermore, I still apparently have disk damage (I forget the message,
but it is dumped about 30 times for different inodes) on both my ibook
and G4 disk that fsck says it has fixed, but which simply reappears
verbatim the next time I run fsck (even immediately following the first
attempt).

-ben

-- 
Ben Kennedy, chief magician
zygoat creative technical services
613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628
http://www.zygoat.ca

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Michael Lewis]

Mikael Byström sez:

>Michael, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
>
>>DiskWarrior and Apple Disk First Aid (or Disk Utility in OS X) will get
>>you out of a good 90% of jams, I'd wager. For the rest, one of the other
>>tools you mentioned would be on my list.
>
>Let's not forget the built in OS X tools "fsck" (file system check) and
>"repairPermissions".
>

That's definitely an option. I just didn't want to get into the whys and
wherefores of command line troubleshooting at the moment. :) Also, Apple
itself recommends Disk Utility while started up from the system CD.
According to the Support database article "About Using Disk Utility and
fsck for File System Maintenance" :

  "I. First try a Safe Boot [snip instructions for how]

  "II. Next, Try Disk Utility [snip instructions for how]

  "III. When to use fsck instead

  "Using Disk Utility while started up from CD or DVD eliminates the
   need to use fsck, but there are situations in which fsck may be necessary.
   For example:
  - Your Mac OS X CD or DVD is not immediately available.
  - Your CD-ROM drive is not immediately available."

Disk Utility and fsck run the same checks as far as I know, which is why
apple says  the former "eliminates the need" for the latter. Plus it
keeps a person from having to hit that command line which many Mac users
are not familiar with; most are familiar with booting from a CD, though. :)

--
Michael Lewis
Off Balance Productions
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.offbalance.com

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Mikael Bystr]

Michael, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:

>DiskWarrior and Apple Disk First Aid (or Disk Utility in OS X) will get
>you out of a good 90% of jams, I'd wager. For the rest, one of the other
>tools you mentioned would be on my list.

Let's not forget the built in OS X tools "fsck" (file system check) and
"repairPermissions".

To use fsck, boot in single mode by holding Cms-S at boot time. Wait for
the text interface to finish booting, then write "fsck-y" (naturally sans
the "") and press return, run twice if it says the file system have been
changed (to make sure the repair took) and when finished write "reboot" +
return.

"sudo diskutil repairPermissions /" have been discused in the past on the
list and can be use both in single mode (I think you can drop "sudo"
there) and also in the terminal, even while continuing to work. While
Disk Utility may be just a GUI for the "diskutil" commands, I prefer the
terminal myself as it works fast and reliable.

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Mikael Bystr]

A-NO-NE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:

>Norton can be troublesome because its strength is in _guessing_ the
>problem.  
What do you mean "guessing"? Where did you get that item from? AFAIK
Norton doesn't guess, it analyzes. I'd guess that Dream Warrior also
makes some qualified estimations when restructuring the file database. Is
it such functionality you hint at?

>However, sometime you need such a guess when other tools fail.
> You just need to use tools carefully.

Careful doesn't stop Norton X from destroying data when it acts up.
Something it does too often, especially in the .0 incarnations. The
latest OS X version seem to not to be trustworthy. I regret that as
>
>TechToolPro is strong on hardware testing.  It also can rebuild desktop
>and reset PRAM/NVRAM.
I think TTP also does a good job on repairing hard discs, often better
than Norton. Sometimes Norton is the only app to fix the problem, but
because I feel I can't trust the X version, I prefer to run Disk Warrior
first and TTP. Only if problem remains do I run Norton, always with my
data backed up if possible.

Also, Norton is the only repair app I know that can hang when confronted
with certain problems. Not impressive.

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Midi]

eMA is an archiving utility from various mail apps to FileMaker Pro.

It is from John Carlsen.



Midi

John caused electrons to hula in cyberspace with:

>On Thu, Aug 21, 2003,  it is attributed to Midi to have said:
>
>>using eMA to archive messages
>
>What is eMA?
>
>--
>later,
>  JS
>
>circumspect ¥SUR-kuhm-spekt¥, adjective:
>Marked by attention to all circumstances and probable consequences;
>cautious; prudent.
>
>When the evidence is plentiful and the theories well confirmed, we can be
>more confident of the historical scenarios we propose; when theories are
>weak or evidence scarce, we ought to be more circumspect.
>--Robert J. Richards
>
>
>

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Scott at HobbyLink Japan]

>On Thu, Aug 21, 2003,  it is attributed to Midi to have said:
>
>>using eMA to archive messages
>
>What is eMA?
>



---

Scott T. Hards
President
HobbyLink Japan (www.hlj.com)

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Midi]

I would be interested in purchasing such as a shareware. An ounce of
protection is worth a pound of cure. As much as I have escaped so far
with using eMA to archive messages and shifting my corrupted database to
another computer and somehow managing to open it, I would like this extra
protection. 

Congratulations!

Midi

Ben caused electrons to hula in cyberspace with:

>Thus, I will be contacting CTM privately to share my results and get
>their feedback before making this application publically available, and
>will hopefully have more to offer everyone next week.  In the mean time,
>if anyone else should happen to suffer major database damage due to
>filesystem corruption or the like, you can now relax with some confidence
>that all is not lost.

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[John Snippe]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2003,  it is attributed to Midi to have said:

>using eMA to archive messages

What is eMA?

--
later,
  JS

circumspect ¥SUR-kuhm-spekt¥, adjective:
Marked by attention to all circumstances and probable consequences;
cautious; prudent.

When the evidence is plentiful and the theories well confirmed, we can be
more confident of the historical scenarios we propose; when theories are
weak or evidence scarce, we ought to be more circumspect.
--Robert J. Richards

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Scott at HobbyLink Japan]

>I am pleased to announce that after about 5 days of work, I have a
>working GUI-based application that will take a PowerMail database
>(optionally with severe damage), scan it, produce a navigable summary of
>all messages that it has found (and their condition), and then allow you
>to extract the ones of your choosing into a PowerMail Exchange file which
>can then be re-imported into a good database.

Wow. 

That's worth a $15 shareware fee for sure.  It should either be bundled
with PM itself, or made available widely by them (I'm sure Jerome & Co.
will see the benefits in that!), or provided as a shareware item
somewhere by Ben for those people who suffer catastrophes.

Superb, Ben. 

---

Scott T. Hards
President
HobbyLink Japan (www.hlj.com)

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[John Snippe]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2003,  it is attributed to Ben Kennedy to have said:

>All,
>
>Losing my mail database has turned around from being a major disaster to
>a rewarding exercise in forensics and programming. :-D

I am totally WOWED by your post, Ben! Congratulations!

Also, I am thrilled by your discovery process and it's resultant upcoming
utility app.  I am a recent convert to PM from Eudora... but the
proprietary database format has been a source of extreme squeamishness on
my part throughout the half-year I have been on-board, and remains a
show-stopper counter-argument offered by a number of my Eudoroid friends.

-- 
later, 
  JS

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he
will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties."
   Sir Francis Bacon

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Marlyse Comte]

great adventure - very well done!

---marlyse

original message(s) follows

>On 17 8 2003 at 2:51 pm -0400, Ben Kennedy wrote:
>
>>In any case, after several more hours of work, I am beginning to have
>>some luck deriving the database format!  Or at least, so far, enough it
>>seems to be able to correlate headers and bodies.
>>
>>I will keep the list updated on my progress.
>
>All,
>
>Losing my mail database has turned around from being a major disaster to
>a rewarding exercise in forensics and programming. :-D
>
>I am pleased to announce that after about 5 days of work, I have a
>working GUI-based application that will take a PowerMail database
>(optionally with severe damage), scan it, produce a navigable summary of
>all messages that it has found (and their condition), and then allow you
>to extract the ones of your choosing into a PowerMail Exchange file which
>can then be re-imported into a good database.
>
>Using this on my damaged database that PowerMail was unable to fix
>(simply reporting "DB is corrupt" and stopping cold), I have been able to
>recover 14566 of about 15200 messages.  I also know with ease that there
>were 8 damaged areas in the file totalling about 186 KB of garbage.  Even
>more fortunately, I was able to recover ALL (I believe) of the new
>messages since my most recent backup!
>
>Producing this application has been a result of several phases:
>
>1. Examining a known-good Message Database file in a hex editor and
>making pages and pages of notes and hypotheses, repeating this for quite
>awhile with different messages until I was able to make conclusions about
>the various record formats.  In essence, I have clean-room derived a good
>portion of the PM database structure.
>2. Examining a PowerMail Exchange export of the same known-good database,
>and comparing with notes and results derived above, to essentially derive
>the PM Exchange file format.
>4. Writing code to automate the parsing job at each stage of analysis, to
>validate the structure of the PM Database file based on acquired
>knowledge, then using the resultant output to further refine the analysis.
>5. Bundling all of the above into a Cocoa-based GUI application to allow
>easy loading, viewing and exporting of an arbitrarily damaged PM database
>file.
>
>To make the application truly usable to the masses will require some
>further refinement of the user interface and so on.  Furthermore, with
>additional technical information from CTM, I will be able to solidify and
>correct my assumptions/conclusions about the data and attributes and how
>they are stored, so that the app's proper and accurate functioning will
>be theoretically sound in addition to merely being empirically sound.
>
>Thus, I will be contacting CTM privately to share my results and get
>their feedback before making this application publically available, and
>will hopefully have more to offer everyone next week.  In the mean time,
>if anyone else should happen to suffer major database damage due to
>filesystem corruption or the like, you can now relax with some confidence
>that all is not lost.
>
>On a personal note, I should mention that this has been hugely rewarding
>just from a research/analysis/development point of view.  Furthermore, it
>gives me even greater confidence in using PowerMail as my mail client of
>choice, since I am now more familiar with its inner workings. (e.g. if PM
>mysteriously stops working on December 31st and CTM vanishes off the
>earth without a trace, I'll still be okay!)
>
>-ben
>
>-- 
>Ben Kennedy, chief magician
>zygoat creative technical services
>613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628
>http://www.zygoat.ca
>
>
>
>

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Ben Kennedy]

On 17 8 2003 at 2:51 pm -0400, Ben Kennedy wrote:

>In any case, after several more hours of work, I am beginning to have
>some luck deriving the database format!  Or at least, so far, enough it
>seems to be able to correlate headers and bodies.
>
>I will keep the list updated on my progress.

All,

Losing my mail database has turned around from being a major disaster to
a rewarding exercise in forensics and programming. :-D

I am pleased to announce that after about 5 days of work, I have a
working GUI-based application that will take a PowerMail database
(optionally with severe damage), scan it, produce a navigable summary of
all messages that it has found (and their condition), and then allow you
to extract the ones of your choosing into a PowerMail Exchange file which
can then be re-imported into a good database.

Using this on my damaged database that PowerMail was unable to fix
(simply reporting "DB is corrupt" and stopping cold), I have been able to
recover 14566 of about 15200 messages.  I also know with ease that there
were 8 damaged areas in the file totalling about 186 KB of garbage.  Even
more fortunately, I was able to recover ALL (I believe) of the new
messages since my most recent backup!

Producing this application has been a result of several phases:

1. Examining a known-good Message Database file in a hex editor and
making pages and pages of notes and hypotheses, repeating this for quite
awhile with different messages until I was able to make conclusions about
the various record formats.  In essence, I have clean-room derived a good
portion of the PM database structure.
2. Examining a PowerMail Exchange export of the same known-good database,
and comparing with notes and results derived above, to essentially derive
the PM Exchange file format.
4. Writing code to automate the parsing job at each stage of analysis, to
validate the structure of the PM Database file based on acquired
knowledge, then using the resultant output to further refine the analysis.
5. Bundling all of the above into a Cocoa-based GUI application to allow
easy loading, viewing and exporting of an arbitrarily damaged PM database
file.

To make the application truly usable to the masses will require some
further refinement of the user interface and so on.  Furthermore, with
additional technical information from CTM, I will be able to solidify and
correct my assumptions/conclusions about the data and attributes and how
they are stored, so that the app's proper and accurate functioning will
be theoretically sound in addition to merely being empirically sound.

Thus, I will be contacting CTM privately to share my results and get
their feedback before making this application publically available, and
will hopefully have more to offer everyone next week.  In the mean time,
if anyone else should happen to suffer major database damage due to
filesystem corruption or the like, you can now relax with some confidence
that all is not lost.

On a personal note, I should mention that this has been hugely rewarding
just from a research/analysis/development point of view.  Furthermore, it
gives me even greater confidence in using PowerMail as my mail client of
choice, since I am now more familiar with its inner workings. (e.g. if PM
mysteriously stops working on December 31st and CTM vanishes off the
earth without a trace, I'll still be okay!)

-ben

-- 
Ben Kennedy, chief magician
zygoat creative technical services
613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628
http://www.zygoat.ca

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Michael Lewis]

A-NO-NE Music sez:

>However, it won't replace other utilities.  Norton, TechToolPro,
>DataRescue, Apple FirstAde, each one of them has its strength and weakness.
>
>Norton can be troublesome because its strength is in _guessing_ the
>problem.  However, sometime you need such a guess when other tools fail.
> You just need to use tools carefully.

Oh, yes, I know this, but the people who have called me after trashing
their systems using Norton Utilities don't. And it isn't just careful use
of Norton -- Norton has often put out shoddy versions and quickly
followed them with updates, requiring replacement CDs (sometimes for a
fee) if you wanted an original bootable CD. Most clients don't realize
what using an old version of Norton Utilities can do to a Mac version
which arrived after it can do, either. Also, 9 times out of 10, when I
went to a client and disabled extensions Norton had installed to "help"
(ranging from DiskLight to FileSaver), problems magically disappeared.
So, I now counsel my clients to stay away from Symantec products. (Norton
Disk Editor is probably still useful, but much more advanced for use by
any client of mine.)

DiskWarrior and Apple Disk First Aid (or Disk Utility in OS X) will get
you out of a good 90% of jams, I'd wager. For the rest, one of the other
tools you mentioned would be on my list.

I'm not sure any of them would help Ben's problem. If done preventively,
like Lane suggests, perhaps, but once the data is written over, recovery
would mean resorting to backups, I'd think.

Whatever the case, good luck to everyone with their systems, whatever
utilities they choose!

-- 
Michael Lewis
Off Balance Productions
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.offbalance.com

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[A-NO-NE Music]

Michael Lewis / 8/17/03 / 3:03 PM wrote:

>I rely on it immensely and wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone. The
>Classic version replaced Symantec utilities for me years ago.

DiskWarrior does one thing, and it does very well.  That is rebuilding
the catalog directory.  It's a file pointer, not the files itself.  I run
it every Sundays while I teach.  It works very well.

However, it won't replace other utilities.  Norton, TechToolPro,
DataRescue, Apple FirstAde, each one of them has its strength and weakness.

Norton can be troublesome because its strength is in _guessing_ the
problem.  However, sometime you need such a guess when other tools fail.
 You just need to use tools carefully.

TechToolPro is strong on hardware testing.  It also can rebuild desktop
and reset PRAM/NVRAM.

-- 

- Hiro

[PROTECTED] <[PROTECTED]>

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Michael Lewis]

Ben Kennedy sez:

>Is DiskWarrior pretty good?

I rely on it immensely and wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone. The
Classic version replaced Symantec utilities for me years ago. I refuse to
use Symantec products now due to problems their buggy programs caused, as
well as their draconian virus "subscription" policy. (As a tech service
person, their subscription update keeps me from having virus updaters on
hand for clients when I visit, something that is imperative for several
of my clients without internet access.)

The classic version even worked on Mac OS X hard drives just fine, but
DiskWarrior v3.0 has been released now and is Mac OS X native. Alsoft
also makes PlusOptimizer for defragging the drive. a copy of it came with
DiskWarrior but I don't think it does now because there is no OS X native
version of it. But the classic PlusOptimizer also works fine on OS X disks.

I don't use DiskWarrior nearly as much as Lane does, and I haven't seen
any of these over-write issues myself, but I regularly use DiskWarrior on
client machines. DiskWarrior has also been able to recover for me drives
Symantec's utilities trashed or would not even mount. It is definitely
well worth having in your troubleshooting arsenal.

-- 
Michael Lewis
Off Balance Productions
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.offbalance.com

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Ben Kennedy]

On 17 8 2003 at 2:39 pm -0400, Lane Roathe wrote:

>Due to the regularity of which I see cross-linked files in 10.2 I have
>developed the habit of using DiskWarrior on my HD's at least once a
>month, more often if I get a bad crash or suffer a power failure. (apc
>backups are not what they used to be...two brand new ones have failed on
>the first outage!)
>
>Hope you recover most of your data, and that this information helps.

Is DiskWarrior pretty good?  I may well go invest in a copy before the
weekend is out...

In any case, after several more hours of work, I am beginning to have
some luck deriving the database format!  Or at least, so far, enough it
seems to be able to correlate headers and bodies.

I will keep the list updated on my progress.

Perhaps by the end of this, I will be able to offer a PM salvage/recovery
tool to anyone else who suffers such bad luck (ah the silver lining)
 (but I don't want to get too excited yet)

-ben

-- 
Ben Kennedy, chief magician
zygoat creative technical services
613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628
http://www.zygoat.ca

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Lane Roathe]

>Subject: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1
>From: "Ben Kennedy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 17:17:39 -0400

>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).

Ben,

It sounds to me like you had "cross-linked" files; why this happens under
Mac OS X I do not know, but I do know that both Safari and Camino (the
only two web browsers I use regularly) have either caused or been
effected by cross-linked files in the past on my machines.

If your get files cross-linking you end up with one program overwriting
the data file of another program unintentionally, and there is nothing
the 2nd program can do to prevent it.

Due to the regularity of which I see cross-linked files in 10.2 I have
developed the habit of using DiskWarrior on my HD's at least once a
month, more often if I get a bad crash or suffer a power failure. (apc
backups are not what they used to be...two brand new ones have failed on
the first outage!)

Hope you recover most of your data, and that this information helps.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Lane Roathe, President  Ideas From the Deep
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  <http://www.ifd.com>
___
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary  
and those who can't.

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Ben Kennedy]

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

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Ben Kennedy]

On 16 8 2003 at 5:53 pm -0400, Michael Lewis wrote:

>>I thought we used to be
>>able to hold down Command when launching, in order to get such a choice?
>> It does not appear to work anymore.
>
>No. It's when you hold down the Command AND Option keys.

That gives the first aid dialog.  I was talking about an option to switch
user profiles.

As it stands, the only way I can tell to switch from a corrupt user
profile to a functional one is to physically delete the corrupt one, such
that PM can't find it and thus prompts for a different one.

-ben

-- 
Ben Kennedy, chief magician
zygoat creative technical services
613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628
http://www.zygoat.ca

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[PowerMail info]

Ben,

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 ?

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.

Let us know how you fare, thanks !

On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 17:17:39 -0400, Ben Kennedy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Greetings all,
>
>Well, I have experienced what appears to be my first catastrophic DB
>failure in my several years of using PowerMail.
>
>At first, I noticed that PM was raising "database errors" when attempting
>to view some older messages.  Thinking nothing of this, I decided to do a
>low-level rebuild, which has been successful for me in the past.  First,
>I decided to empty my trash and compact the database for good measure.
>
>That was probably a mistake, because after doing so, PM balked with a
>dialog: "A database error occurred: DB file is corrupted."  It would not
>load up as usual; it gives the same error message when attempting to do a
>low-level rebuild.  I have tried all manner of combination of the first-
>aid checkboxes, and continue to receive same.
>
>At this point, in order to compose this message, I've created a new user
>environment to start from scratch, at least in the interim.  (In order to
>do this, I was forced to DELETE all of my previous PowerMail environment,
>since PM kept choking with the DB error and never giving me a chance to
>select or create a different user environment.  I thought we used to be
>able to hold down Command when launching, in order to get such a choice?
> It does not appear to work anymore.  Before deleting my old environment,
>I stuffed into a .sit archive, and copied to another machine for good
>measure.)
>
>This is a SEVERE bummer for me, if I am unable to recover.  Fortunately
>my last backup is only about a week and a half old, but at the pace of
>business, that's still way too long.  (I now realise I ought to back up
>more frequently than that)
>
>So... what's the deal here?  How can I recover from this; does anyone
>have any ideas?  Even if I am able to extract messages from the database
>in raw format, that is better than nothing.  I am slightly agape at the
>total inutility of the low-level rebuild to do ANYTHING with my database.
> What do the "class/what/when/err" values in the error dialog mean; are
>they helpful at all to CTM?
>
>-ben
>
>-- 
>Ben Kennedy, chief magician
>zygoat creative technical services
>613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628
>http://www.zygoat.ca

Re: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Michael Lewis]

Ben Kennedy sez:

>
>I thought we used to be
>able to hold down Command when launching, in order to get such a choice?
> It does not appear to work anymore.

No. It's when you hold down the Command AND Option keys.

-- 
Michael Lewis
Off Balance Productions
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.offbalance.com

Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1

[Ben Kennedy]

Greetings all,

Well, I have experienced what appears to be my first catastrophic DB
failure in my several years of using PowerMail.

At first, I noticed that PM was raising "database errors" when attempting
to view some older messages.  Thinking nothing of this, I decided to do a
low-level rebuild, which has been successful for me in the past.  First,
I decided to empty my trash and compact the database for good measure.

That was probably a mistake, because after doing so, PM balked with a
dialog: "A database error occurred: DB file is corrupted."  It would not
load up as usual; it gives the same error message when attempting to do a
low-level rebuild.  I have tried all manner of combination of the first-
aid checkboxes, and continue to receive same.

At this point, in order to compose this message, I've created a new user
environment to start from scratch, at least in the interim.  (In order to
do this, I was forced to DELETE all of my previous PowerMail environment,
since PM kept choking with the DB error and never giving me a chance to
select or create a different user environment.  I thought we used to be
able to hold down Command when launching, in order to get such a choice?
 It does not appear to work anymore.  Before deleting my old environment,
I stuffed into a .sit archive, and copied to another machine for good
measure.)

This is a SEVERE bummer for me, if I am unable to recover.  Fortunately
my last backup is only about a week and a half old, but at the pace of
business, that's still way too long.  (I now realise I ought to back up
more frequently than that)

So... what's the deal here?  How can I recover from this; does anyone
have any ideas?  Even if I am able to extract messages from the database
in raw format, that is better than nothing.  I am slightly agape at the
total inutility of the low-level rebuild to do ANYTHING with my database.
 What do the "class/what/when/err" values in the error dialog mean; are
they helpful at all to CTM?

-ben

-- 
Ben Kennedy, chief magician
zygoat creative technical services
613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628
http://www.zygoat.ca