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Robbert Newbie
Joined: 18 April 2011 Location: Netherlands
Online Status: Offline Posts: 6
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Posted: 14 November 2011 at 5:07am | IP Logged
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Dear sir, madam,
One of our customers is using AfterLogic WebMail Pro to receive and send email. They use the software via the Integrator.
Unfortunately they're experiencing a problem where the entire content of their inbox is moved to the trash.
The problem isn't reproducible in the sense that we can reproduce it consistently, but there is a method that will ensure that it will happen at some point. If it doesn't happen, the mailbox loads properly with all mail, including any new mails, intact.
With new mail, I mean any email that is present on the remote POP server, but which has not been downloaded by WebMail Pro yet.
Here's what our users do when it goes wrong:
- User logs in to our Web application
- User clicks the 'Email' Link
- If applicable, the user selects the mailbox he wants to access
- The Integrator uses the selection and the appropriate password to load WebMail Pro
- Upon load completion, the entire contents of the inbox (regardless of whether the mail has been read or not) at the time of loading the inbox will have been moved to the trash. All new email will be in the inbox, however.
In the database, the mail's folder id will be set to that of the trash folder. Restoring the mail is done by going to the trash in WebMail Pro, selecting the mail to restore and moving them back to the inbox via the move feature.
After that, the id of the folder of the mail will be updated to the id of the inbox and the inbox will contain all the mail again.
There's no need to log out to reproduce the issue, repeatedly clicking on the inbox button is enough to make it happen, but it's most likely that it requires for new mail to be present on the remote POP server, or else it won't occur at all. We've not tested this conclusively.
Technical information:
AfterLogic WebMail Pro (ASP.NET) version: 5.0.2
MailBee.NET DLL version: 5.8.2.190
MailApi DLL version: 6.0.2.220
.NET version: 4.0
Thanks in advance for any solutions or advice you can give. Feel free to ask for any additional details you may require.
Yours sincerely,
Robbert
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Igor AfterLogic Support
Joined: 24 June 2008 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 6104
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Posted: 14 November 2011 at 11:03am | IP Logged
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Version 5 of WebMail Pro is an outdated one, so I'm not sure if we can help here; switching to version 6 is strongly advised. If you can install the latest version along with your current one and check if the issue persists there, that could really help.
Please note that v6 differs a lot from v5, so it's not recommended to perform an upgrade, a blank install should be used.
If neither upgrade nor blank install is an option, there's still a chance for getting help, but we need to know whether this is about POP3 or IMAP accounts, and what sync.mode is used there.
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Regards,
Igor, AfterLogic Support
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Robbert Newbie
Joined: 18 April 2011 Location: Netherlands
Online Status: Offline Posts: 6
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Posted: 17 November 2011 at 3:26am | IP Logged
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Hi Igor,
Thank you for your prompt reply.
We've installed v6 on a test server and trash can issue has not occurred with a test account, so that's good news. The test version doesn't have v5.0.2 installed along with it, but they're working on the same email account. We're still trying to see if the issue persist.
Regarding the differences between v5 and v6: what are the differences between v5 and v6(.2.4)? We've compared some of the tables in the database, but we can't find any differences in there, so my guess is that the differences are in the logic and user interface.
Which brings me to my next point: we'd like to migrate whatever we have to v6 if v6 resolves the issues we have. Does the upgrade process described on this page also work for our oldest version, version 4.10.1?
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Igor AfterLogic Support
Joined: 24 June 2008 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 6104
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Posted: 17 November 2011 at 3:36am | IP Logged
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Quote:
Regarding the differences between v5 and v6: what are the differences between v5 and v6(.2.4)? |
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Please see the Changelog. Database structure wasn't changed significantly, but the data handling model and the code itself was modified a lot.
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my guess is that the differences are in the logic and user interface. |
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Quite right.
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Does the upgrade process described on this page also work for our oldest version, version 4.10.1? |
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I don't think so. Even for WebMail Pro 5.*, upgrading is not recommended - and for 4.*, it would probably take upgrading to 5.* and then to 6.* version. This was never tested, and we recommend installing the new version from scratch.
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Regards,
Igor, AfterLogic Support
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Robbert Newbie
Joined: 18 April 2011 Location: Netherlands
Online Status: Offline Posts: 6
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Posted: 17 November 2011 at 7:20am | IP Logged
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Igor wrote:
I don't think so. Even for WebMail Pro 5.*, upgrading is not recommended - and for 4.*, it would probably take upgrading to 5.* and then to 6.* version. This was never tested, and we recommend installing the new version from scratch. |
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Ah, I'm sorry: I think I was unclear in what I meant.
I meant the upgrade process for the database, not the software. The process describes an "Update" button to update the database structure:
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[...] you just need to update WebMail Pro database format by clicking "Update" button in Database Settings screen. |
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Could I use that upgrade process to upgrade our database from v4's to v5's to v6's?
Or am I misunderstanding you and are you telling me to start from scratch because older versions handled the data incorrectly, resulting in an incorrect database in the first place? If that's the case, then I understand why you'd want to prevent migration from earlier versions, if at all possible.
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Igor AfterLogic Support
Joined: 24 June 2008 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 6104
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Posted: 17 November 2011 at 8:02am | IP Logged
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The main reason behind the recommendation to use blank install is a different way of accessing emails, for both IMAP and POP3 accounts, between version 6 and previous ones. In previous versions, it was possible to set synchronization mode (Direct Mode, Headers Only, Entire Messages etc.) for Inbox in POP3 case, and for any folder in IMAP case. Starting from version 6, this is not configurable: there's only Entire Messages for POP3 (mails are downloaded to web server in full) and Direct Mode for IMAP (mails are accessed on mail server directly, no sync at all).
Considering this, we cannot predict what happens if, say, some POP3 account was configured for Direct Mode in older version, and the version gets upgraded. Possibly, it will work, but there's a chance it won't, and since those modes are no longer supported, we'd like to minimize the chances of getting those modes in version 6. That's why we issued the "upgrade VS install" warning.
As for database update, it's a solid part of the overall upgrade process. If you update just the database but not the code - we have no idea what's going to happen, and that's most certainly an unsupported case. Anyway, if upgrade is the path you're going to take, be sure to create entire backup copies of webmail installation, including the data folder, and the database dump.
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Regards,
Igor, AfterLogic Support
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Robbert Newbie
Joined: 18 April 2011 Location: Netherlands
Online Status: Offline Posts: 6
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Posted: 18 November 2011 at 3:50am | IP Logged
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I see. Makes perfect sense to me. Thanks for explaining.
Well, the idea I'm toying with is creating a completely blank v6 install and then somehow migrating the data from v5 or v4 to v6.
It's not the mail I'm worried about, nor the accounts. Creating all of the accounts anew is a trivial task and all of the mail is stored on the POP3 server, so there's no need to migrate that as accessing the Webmail Pro inbox would download the mails from the POP3 inbox to the WebMail Pro inbox. Our test install shows that mail will be kept on the server, so nothing changes there. Account creation and mail retrieval would happen according to v6 specifications, without clutter or possibly incorrect data from earlier versions.
What I am worried about, is migrating the agenda and the folder structure from our earlier versions to version 6. There's a lot of important data in there and we can't just tell our customers: 'sorry, you're going to have to recreate your agendas, events and appointments all over and organize your mail all over'. Some people have several hundred emails in them.
Any ideas on how to migrate the calendars, appointments, events and folders from the earlier database to the newer one without performing an upgrade of the older database?
The other strategy I had in mind is the upgrade process, but cleaning up the database after the upgrade process and before it is used. Cleaning up would mean to set the sync. mode of all pop3 boxes to Entire Messages and whatever else has changed so that everything is as if it has been inserted via the V6 software application.
Is this feasible, or this is already part of the V6 database upgrade? Or would you not recommend this approach at all?
Thank you for your assistance!
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Igor AfterLogic Support
Joined: 24 June 2008 Location: United States
Online Status: Offline Posts: 6104
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Posted: 18 November 2011 at 4:03am | IP Logged
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Sorry, there's something I don't really understand. You say you don't worry about mails, but you'd like to keep email folder structure kept. How's that exactly?
Anyway, to proceed with the task you have, you'll need to perform an in-depth examination of database tables used by WebMail Pro. In some cases, copying data is quite straightforward (calendars, events, address book entries). With folders, it's more complicated, considering that only Inbox folder is actually synced with mail server while other POP3 folders are virtual ones so they exist in database only. And for IMAP, pretty much any folder can have its own sync setting.
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Regards,
Igor, AfterLogic Support
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