kmail: all mail folder are missing

[Andreas Mahel]

Am Samstag, 17. Dezember 2016, 16:26:58 CET schrieb dirk:
> Hello,
> 
> by canceling a kmail 4.8.5 resource in system control of KDE 4.8.5 on a
> linux box with opensuse 12.2 kmail terminated.
> After this all mail-folder and current mails are missing.
> 
> Until now I thougt my mail an mail-folder were located in
> /home/user/Mail. In this folder tere are actually a lot of mails and
> folders but only until year 2012.
> 
> Where do I find the configured mail-folder of kmail?
> 
> Is loss of all mails in this situation possible?
> Searching the filesystem does not help.
> 
> After termination of kmail new mail and new mail-folders are now located
> in ~/.local/share/local-mail, possible the standard folder.
> 
> What to do to find my older mails?
> 
> There is a 3 days old backup file present. Which folder an files are to
> restore?
> 
> --
> Dirk

Hi Dirk, 

I'm not sure if I understand your issue / question correctly, therefore I'll 
act strictly humand and answer a question I understand ;-)

First thing I'm unclear about is where you don't find your "old" mails any 
longer. Do you have kmail running (again) and the local folders don't show 
anything? Or have you been hunting the mails on your hard disk, but haven't 
found them (except for the pre-kmail2 ones which reside in ~/Mail)?

As you mention ~/.local/share/local-mail: yes, that's the standard folder for 
kmail2 local mails. At least almost, as this maildir folder will most likely 
never see an actual mail, because all mails would be in (logical) sub folders.
And the sub folders of  a maildir folder named foo will physically not be 
located within foo, but rather within a hidden directory .foo.directory

So if you are looking for those mails on disk, you might need to have a look 
at ~/.local/share/.local-mail.directory (and potentially the hidden sub folder 
structure therein).

HTH,
Andreas

-- 
Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.