IMAP folder subscriptions lost after Plesk repair/reinstallation

[Azurel]

Username:

TITLE

IMAP folder subscriptions lost after Plesk repair/reinstallation

PRODUCT, VERSION, OPERATING SYSTEM, ARCHITECTURE

Plesk 18.0.80#1, AlmaLinux 8.19

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION

After accidentally removing Plesk packages with dnf, I restored Plesk using the repair/reinstallation process. Mail data and mailboxes were intact, but some IMAP folder subscriptions were missing afterwards.


Example:

doveadm mailbox list -u [email protected]

showed:

INBOX.ABC
INBOX.DEF

but:

doveadm mailbox list -u [email protected] -s

did not show all folders.

Re-subscribing the folders in the IMAP client fixed the issue.

Is this expected behavior after a Plesk repair/reinstallation, and is there a recommended procedure to preserve IMAP subscriptions?

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

1. Remove Plesk packages using dnf.
2. Restore the Plesk installation using the Plesk repair/reinstallation process.
3. Verify that mailboxes and mail data are still present.
4. Connect an IMAP client to an existing mailbox.
5. Notice that some previously existing IMAP folders are no longer visible.
6. Check the mailbox on the server:
doveadm mailbox list -u [email protected]
The missing folder is still listed.
7. Check IMAP subscriptions:
doveadm mailbox list -u [email protected] -s
The missing folder is not listed.
8. Subscribe to the folder again in the mail client. The folder becomes visible again.

ACTUAL RESULT

After the Plesk repair/reinstallation, some users no longer see previously existing IMAP folders in their mail clients.The folders and emails still exist on the server, but the IMAP folder subscriptions are missing.

EXPECTED RESULT

After a Plesk repair/reinstallation, existing mailboxes, messages, IMAP folder structure, and IMAP subscriptions should remain unchanged. Users should see the same IMAP folders in their mail clients as before the repair process without manually subscribing to folders again.

ANY ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

(DID NOT ANSWER QUESTION)

YOUR EXPECTATIONS FROM PLESK SERVICE TEAM

Confirm bug

 

[Sebahat.hadzhi]

Thank you for the report, @Azurel . Could you please confirm which Plesk packages exactly have you removed? If you have removed all Plesk packages you shouldn't be able to use the repair utility itself over the command line or GUI? Thanks in advance.

 

[Azurel]

I had removed the Plesk installation (version 18.0.79#4) using dnf, accidentally. Afterwards I restored it to 18.0.80#1.

After the package removal (130 packages), the Plesk GUI was no longer available. I tried dnf history undo 821 but that not worked. So I had to recover the installation from the command line. As I had never had to restore a Plesk installation before, I followed the recovery procedure (asked Gemini) using the Plesk installer.

Initially I tried:

wget https://autoinstall.plesk.com/plesk-installer
chmod +x plesk-installer

./plesk-installer --select-release-current --reinstall-patch --upgrade-installed-components

This did not work (no gui appeared). I then tried:

./plesk-installer --select-release-current --install-component base

but received:

ERROR: The product 'plesk' is not installed yet.
ERROR 1049 (42000): Unknown database 'psa'

To continue the recovery, I recreated the psa database and restored it from the latest available backup:

mysql -e "CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS psa;"
zcat $(ls -t /var/lib/psa/dumps/mysql.daily* | head -n1) | mysql psa

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start psa

After .... the GUI became available again and fixed some strange error messages, I ran the Plesk repair/check for all services, including the mail service.

All domains, databases, mails and so on was luckely not deleted.

The IMAP subscription issue was directly noticed and reported after the re-install.