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KidRed · Jun 9, 2003, 03:07 PM

I'm downloading some movies and the space on my hard drive went down to a few hundred megs before I could move some fiels over to a second hard drive. Safari started loosing it's prefs and once I figured it out, everything was cool. Thing is, is that I was going to restart thinking something was flaky, so i quit a few apps. Mail.app was one app i quit before cleaning up some space. Now, when i launched mail.app, it had my mailboxes but my inbox was empty, and my prefs were gone, accounts, and a lot of my saved messages for a certain point and on.

How can I get these back? More so the saved messages that were in my additional mailbox account folders?

K++ · Jun 9, 2003, 08:31 PM

I think this is technically a bug, but Im not sure why it happens. When you change preferences, those preferences aren't actually written until you quit the app or close the pref window or periodically depending on the app. The problem however is that when the HD is full, it overwrites the file but doesn't have enough space for a new file and so you get nothing. When you then relaunch it defaults to the original settings, that was intentional on Apple's part when implementing the prefs database. Unfotunately the situation with your HD full was overlooked.

Your prefs aren't coming back, but your mail is still here. I have no idea whether this will work, but go to ~/Library/Mail/ Each account has its own folder, try dragging them into the pane of Mail.app if Apple's apps are as intuitive as I hope they are, this should work. If not try deleting Mail.app's preferences then on first launch it should see those folders and automatically add them unless you deleted them.

KidRed · Jun 9, 2003, 10:00 PM

Thnaks, I tried dragging the files onto the icon and mail came forward but nothing happend. The folder and account mailboxes were there, but the account set prefs weren't and my inbox of 15 messages was empty.

sandsl · Jun 9, 2003, 10:05 PM

Originally posted by K++:
if Apple's apps are as intuitive as I hope they are, this should work.

lol your expecting too much...

Pinky · Jun 10, 2003, 01:33 AM

The same thing happened to me.

I redid all the accounts (same names), and my mail came back.

You might want to back up the folders...just in case

waffffffle · Jun 10, 2003, 02:07 AM

Your inbox is stored on the imap server and not on hour hard drive (although Mail.app keeps a copy of those messages for quick reading). When you lose your preferences all of your local mail still remains but the account settings are gone, meaning that Mail.app doesn't know where your inbox is. Redoing the settings brings that back as you have discovered.

I have had this problem with many applications as I run down on hard drive space, the worst culprit being WeatherPop. I don't understand why applications lose their old preferences if they can't save the prefs file. The worst thing that SHOULD happen is that new changes to preferences can't be saved but instead the files just disappear, which is really stupid. Apple needs to fix this. Apple also needs to fix the problem of OS X slowing to a crawl when running low on hard drive space.

calumr · Jun 10, 2003, 07:26 AM

This happened very recently to me too, with Mail and Camino prefs being overwritten. Weird.

SMacTech · Jun 10, 2003, 08:40 AM

Originally posted by waffffffle:
Your inbox is stored on the imap server and not on hour hard drive (although Mail.app keeps a copy of those messages for quick reading).

If it is a .mac account it will be imap, but others may be pop accounts.

Cipher13 · Jun 10, 2003, 09:37 AM

That's what happens when you run out of disk space. The system goes nuts and deletes prefs and ****, including bookmarks et al.

KidRed · Jun 10, 2003, 05:20 PM

All my mail accounts are POP and I've re entered all my accounts and my inbox is still empty. So I assume those messages are lost forever? That is a quirky bug.

I would expect an app to quit or throw up an error as Photoshop did, saying ti can not save to disk. Safari would loose the tabs bar and reset itself every time I clicked on something. Mail.app gave no indication there was a problem until I re-launched it. I guess I should not have quit it until I cleared up some room on my HD allowing mail.app to write it's prefs.

tr · Jun 10, 2003, 05:27 PM

yeah, so if you take anything away from this experience, it should be BACKUP! backup your users folder, all the stuff you need is in there. i had a problem with my hd, and had to do a clean install. dropped the backup of my users in 9, and all was well.

tr

Developer · Jun 10, 2003, 05:47 PM

Originally posted by KidRed:
I would expect an app to quit or throw up an error as Photoshop did, saying ti can not save to disk. Safari would loose the tabs bar and reset itself every time I clicked on something. Mail.app gave no indication there was a problem until I re-launched it. I guess I should not have quit it until I cleared up some room on my HD allowing mail.app to write it's prefs.

Nota bene: This is not the app's fault, it's the fault of CFPreferences. CFPreferences has two annoying habits:

1) If it runs out of disk space not just changed perferences are not saved, all preferences are lost.
2) CFPreferences (all of CoreFoundation in fact) does not return any errors. So the app has no chance to notify the user that something went wrong and give him a chance to fix the problem, because the app is never told there was a problem.

The first is probably a result of the second. If CFPreferences itself uses CoreFoundation to do its stuff, it itself doesn't notice a problem, so something like "safe save" can't be implemented.

You could complain at Apple about CoreFoundation not returning errors, but they will just tell you that it's by design - for performance reasons - and your app should just crash or misbehave in case of error (sic!)

philzilla · Jun 10, 2003, 06:33 PM

Originally posted by Cipher13:
including bookmarks et al.

bookmarks are usually safe, when that happens. yer damn cowboy

Spheric Harlot · Jun 10, 2003, 08:46 PM

Originally posted by Developer:
You could complain at Apple about CoreFoundation not returning errors, but they will just tell you that it's by design - for performance reasons - and your app should just crash or misbehave in case of error (sic!)

But it shouldn't be too much of a problem to automatically throw up a "disk is dangerously full - you may experience graceless weirdness soon if you don't do one of the following:" etc. once free disk space gets down to less than a meg or something.

-s*

KidRed · Jun 10, 2003, 09:01 PM

Originally posted by Developer:
Nota bene: This is not the app's fault, it's the fault of CFPreferences. CFPreferences has two annoying habits:

1) If it runs out of disk space not just changed perferences are not saved, all preferences are lost.
2) CFPreferences (all of CoreFoundation in fact) does not return any errors. So the app has no chance to notify the user that something went wrong and give him a chance to fix the problem, because the app is never told there was a problem.

The first is probably a result of the second. If CFPreferences itself uses CoreFoundation to do its stuff, it itself doesn't notice a problem, so something like "safe save" can't be implemented.

You could complain at Apple about CoreFoundation not returning errors, but they will just tell you that it's by design - for performance reasons - and your app should just crash or misbehave in case of error (sic!)

Yea see to a non developer/techie person like myself that sounds stupid. Wouldn't it make more sense to simply prevent further modification of the file if memory doesn't allow it? Like photoshop doesn't allow you to save a file if the disk is full, just prevent further actions rather then wiping everything out.

But yes, after receiving a 80gig FW Lacie HD I will be backing up my user directory every night.