Reconcile database with datastore

[Former user]

So I pulled a stupid move and was using mounted external storage for the 'store'. Long story short, my virtual machine storage server crashed and took the piler VM with it. I was able to restore from backup 4 days before it went down, but my 'store' was on a different backup scheme/location and is technically 4 days ahead of the piler virtual machine, filled with files that would not be present in the piler DB.

I have refrained from turning piler back on because I don't know how it will behave. Wondering if I should delete all the outstanding files and try to reconcile the database with the mail store? Will piler overwrite them as it goes through and archives new emails?

Jsuto, could you possibly provide some insight as to what will happen when I turn piler back on? Thanks a ton.

P.S. It's now on local storage to the VM so this shouldn't happen again. Learned my lesson.

[Former user]

Sorry! Forgot to log in before posting.

[Janos SUTO]

Well, piler creates a unique id (40000.....xxxxx) for every email, so nothing will be overwritten. The trouble is that you actually need the mysql database to properly restore archived emails, because deduplication info is kept there. The sphinx db is also important since it's the first thing that is queried. If it's also reverted to a 4 days old state, then your archive is practically also reverted to a 4 days old state.

It's safe to start piler it will continue archiving new emails, and able to present any emails it has in the mysql (and sphinx) database. The only question is whether you can gather the emails archived in those 4 days? If so, and you can import them, then everything will be ok, except you have some stale files in the store directory.

[Former user]

Turned piler back on and it's archiving fine. Thanks for the info.