20.14.3.1 To Rebuild Mailboxes

To rebuild mailboxes, use the -r option. You should use this option when:

• Accessing a mailbox returns one of the following errors: “System I/O error” or “Mailbox has an invalid format”.

• Accessing a mailbox causes the server to crash.

• Files have been added to or removed from the spool directory.

reconstruct -r first runs a consistency check. It reports any inconsistencies and rebuilds only if it detects any problems. Consequently, performance of the reconstruct utility is improved with this release.

You can use reconstruct as described in the following examples:

To rebuild the spool area for the mailboxes belonging to the user daphne, use the following command:

reconstruct -r user/daphne

To rebuild the spool area for all mailboxes listed in the mailbox database:

reconstruct -r

You must use this option with caution, however, because rebuilding the spool area for all mailboxes listed in the mailbox database can take a very long time for large message stores. (See 20.14.3.3 reconstruct Performance.) A better method for failure recovery might be to use multiple disks for the store. If one disk goes down, the entire store does not. If a disk becomes corrupt, you need only rebuild a portion of the store by using the -p option as follows:

reconstruct -r -p subpartition

To rebuild mailboxes listed in the command-line argument only if they are in the primary partition:

reconstruct -p primary mbox1 mbox2 mbox3

If you do need to rebuild all mailboxes in the primary partition:

reconstruct -r -p primary

If you want to force reconstruct to rebuild a folder without performing a consistency check, use the -f option. For example, the following command forces a reconstruct of the user folder daphne:

reconstruct -f -r user/daphne

To check all mailboxes without fixing them, use the -n option as follows:

reconstruct -r -n