I deleted all my emails by accident

[james_davis_nicoll]

All I need to do to restore them is to "cd into ~/.maildir" to pick a snapshot. In this context, what does that mean? Online search is not helpful.

OK, further explanation followed:

"You may well have deleted the *contents* of your inbox, but the inbox
itself is still there, as is that link in your home directory. So
(from your home directory):

cd .maildir
snapshot

look at the timestamps and pick the most recent one pre-deletion.

Inbox messages will be in the directory 'cur' once you are in a
snapshot. You can copy the files into ~/.maildir/cur (or
/users/jdnicoll/.maildir/cur"

Ok, so the literal command is
cd .maildir
snapshot

NOT
cd .maildir
and then
snapshot

This gets me a list of snapshots.

if I pick one, I get

Changing directory to /net/mail/spool/panix/7/.zfs/snapshot/2025-05-28-2000.hourly/3/jdnicoll@panix.com

What do I do next?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

With a pinch of salt:

~/.maildir probably is a file folder on whatever computer you're using.

~ may mean, and may resolve as something like /usr/jdnicoll in your case.

"cd" implies using a command shell program - you type strange words, and the computer does things.
Like: cd ~/.maildir

I have no idea if you've got any snapshots, there or anywhere, or how to do anything about them. But it sounds like "an occasional automatic backup".

Robert Carnegie

[kithrup]

Ok, 1) I'm a zfs expert and you can always call me you know. Or zoom. 2) Once you've changed into that directory there, you can do cp -Rv * ~/.maildir/cur

ZFS snapshots are read-only, so you aren't in risk of deleting any of the snapshotted files.