Aagh! Update to Leopard Lost My Mail!

[mrlynn]

Just updated my MBP from 10.4.11 to 10.5.6.

Mail opens, but all the messages have disappeared, and you have to force quit to get Mail to quit.

Did a quick search, and found this thread: http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1...msg-686436

which recommended an easy solution from a Specialist on the Apple Discussion Forums:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa...ID=1849306&tstart=30

This involves moving the Mail folder from the Home Library to the Desktop, letting Mail create a new one in the Library, then moving the old one back.

But when I attempted to move the Mail folder, instead of moving the Finder COPIED the darned thing!

Then when I opened Mail, got the same result (no messages).

I noticed that when I tried moving the Mail folder that I didn't have permission (it's in my Standard User Home folder, as I normally work as a Standard User, with a separate Administrator for when I need it). I went to Get Info and made my Mail permissions Read and Write (to all enclosed items), but that didn't seem to help.

So I'm stuck. How do I get my mail back?

/Mr Lynn

PS This is the worst Mac upgrade I've seen—lost my printers, too. What else?

[Ken Sp.]

If the mailboxes are there, highlight one mailbox then in the top menu Mailbox>rebuild. Repeat for each mailbox

[mrlynn]

Ken Sp. wrote:
If the mailboxes are there, highlight one mailbox then in the top menu Mailbox>rebuild. Repeat for each mailbox

Nope, nothing happens.

What's more bizarre, is that I don't seem to have "sufficient access privileges" to save changes to any of my documents!

I tried rebuilding Permissions, twice. Didn't solve that. I'm thinking this is related to the Mail problem.

What's going on?

/Mr Lynn

[saintyohann]

There's a problem going from Pre-Leopard straight to 10.5.6...has to do with rules.

There's an article on it somewhere on Apple's site: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2537

If you don't have permissions, on the folder you need to select the mail folder and get info on it, give yourself permissions and set it to all enclosed files first.

[mrlynn]

saintyohann wrote:
There's a problem going from Pre-Leopard straight to 10.5.6...has to do with rules.

There's an article on it somewhere on Apple's site: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2537

If you don't have permissions, on the folder you need to select the mail folder and get info on it, give yourself permissions and set it to all enclosed files first.

Thanks. That's just what I did: logged off as me (Standard User), logged on as me (Administrator), selected my SU Home folder, and give me (SU) Read AND Write permissions to everything enclosed.

THEN, I logged back on as me (SU) and went through the rigamorole outlined by this Good Samaritan Adamast in the Apple Discussions, and it worked! My mail is back!

The clue was having to copy the Mail folder from my Library to my own Desktop.

Now why in the world did the update to Leopard screw up the permissions?

And what else did it screw up?

Anyway, it's long past my bedtime. Thanks Saintyohann and Ken SP for chiming in on such short notice.

/Mr Lynn

[Doc]

Leopard's installer seems to have trouble with previously-migrated or updated user accounts. Did you upgrade to 10.4 or migrate one or more user accounts to that Mac from another Mac at some point?

Get info on a few files and folders in your Home folder and make sure that the owner and group info are correct. The owner should be your user and the group should be "staff" on just about everything.

You might also have ACL problems. They are sort of like extended permissions on top of regular UNIX permissions. Sometimes they get set wrong by the installer.

As a precaution, I'd strip ACLs from each Home folder and then put 'em back properly using the Reset Password Utility.

This is the Terminal command to remove ACLs from your Home folder:

chmod -R -N ~

After removing ACLs, boot from the installer disc and run the Reset Password Utility from the Utilities menu. Use the Reset Home Folder Permissions command to put the ACLs back on the folders where they belong.

[chopper]

Good old Leopard, what an upgrade.

[geeceeart]

Just found this solution and it seems to work for everyone so far.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa...ID=8731455�

Isn't it ironic that Mail, one of Apple's core apps, has this kind of problem?
OTOH, we could be dealing with Vista!