Quick guide to mail Inbox recovery on Zoo...

or "What happened to all of my mail!!?"

The ever-helpful Zoo crew have cooked up a simple process for the restoration of a deleted or damaged Inbox.

For legal reasons, we can only keep one day's worth of Inbox files in our backup library.  You must restore you Inbox within one day of the damaging event or your good backup will be lost.

The restoration process only will recover messages which have been backed up.  The backup process occurs overnight; if you damage you Inbox at 9:00 am, you will not be able to recover any messages lost between the Inbox backup and 9:00 am.  Sorry... that is just the nature of the beast.

1. SSH to zoo and log in
   You need to be at the "Zoo" prompt to be able to recover files.
   See the UVM Software archive to download ssh if you don't have it.
   SSH documentation is available online.
    
2. Enter 'recoverinbox' at the Zoo prompt, then press "Enter".
   You will see the following information scroll on your screen:

   
   
   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
   zoo> recoverinbox
   
   Hello [network-ID], we will restore your INBOX to a folder called
   INBOX.restored.20040202 in your mail directory.
   
   
   Ok, done.  Your INBOX has been restored to INBOX.restored in your
   mail directory.  You can access this mailbox with Pine, IMAP, or WebMail.
   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
   
   

   When you return to the Zoo prompt, the recovery has completed.
    
3. When you view your mail folders from an IMAP client, Webmail, or Pine you will now see a mail folder labeled "INBOX.restored.YYYYMMDD" (with YYYYMMDD showing the date of the backup).  This is the backup copy of your Inbox.  Just copy the messages you need from this mailbox, then get rid of it.  IT'S SO EASY I CAN"T STAND IT!

If you have questions about this process, please contact the CIT Help Line at helpline@uvm.edu or call 656-2604.