mailbox

I was getting a fatal error affecting a Zimbra server running 5.0.2. A user with a large mailbox (10gb, 38000 messages) was having problems, so the first thing I wanted to do was re-index their mailbox. This can fix a multitude of sins, but it can also take awhile and it is a very bad thing to cancel.

Anyway, I tried to re-index the mailbox and it would process for awhile and get to about message 2724, then all of a sudden it would start failing to index certain messages, then really crap out. Then it would actually take the Zimbra server down and I would have to restart it each time!

It seemed to be message specific in that mailbox (failed at the same point each time), so I rooted around in the /opt/zimbra/log folder and checked out the logs. I found the message number that it was stopping on, then found it in the message store for the user and renamed it. (The message number in the log is the prefix for the msg file that is stored in the user's store in /opt/zimbra/store/0/##/
where ## is the user's internal number.)

That allowed the reindexing to get past that message, but then it died just a little later.

After a lot of research and turning the problem upside down, I finally figured some things out...