Applicable to:
- Plesk Onyx for Linux
Symptoms
-
Site Import extension was used to import mail in Domains > example.com > Mail Importing
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After the messages are imported, Apple Mail shows date and time of import on these email messages
Cause
All emails have both Sent and Received date information in their headers.
Rather than using this info, Apple Mail uses the server's file system date, which was changed.
The request to restore correct timestamps on import exists as #PMT-4559.
Resolution
As a workaround, apply one of the following solutions:
Note: This solution will affect only newly downloaded messages. In case messages were downloaded beforehand, timestamps will not be updated. For that, use the second solution.
-
Connect to the server via SSH
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Ensure that the
patchprogram is installed:# apt install patch -y 2>/dev/null || yum install patch -y
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Download the patch file and unpack it:
# curl -LO https://plesk.zendesk.com/hc/article_attachments/360028740894/PMT-4559_linux.patch.tar.gz
# tar xf PMT-4559_linux.patch.tar.gz -
Apply the patch to the migrator backend:
# (cd / && patch -p0) <PMT-4559_linux.patch
Note: By default, only messages created in the last 2 days will be modified. This is done to prevent changing timestamps on non-imported messages. It can be tweaked by setting a different value to the UPDATED_BEFORE variable in script.
-
Connect to the server via SSH
-
Download and unpack the script:
# curl -LO https://plesk.zendesk.com/hc/article_attachments/360030985574/PMT-4559_mtime_update.sh.tar.gz
# tar xf PMT-4559_mtime_update.sh.tar.gz -
Run the script with the target mailbox, or multiple mailboxes:
# ./PMT-4559_mtime_update.sh jdoe@example.com admin@example.org
Comments
7 comments
There seems some bugs...
1) the timestamp-change-script does not work on all mail files...
here is an example:
grep -m1 '^Date' "filename" | cut -d' ' -f3-
Feb 2018 15:16:34 +0100
... but... cat file manual ...
Date: 13 Feb 2018 15:16:34 +0100 ... so .. changing f3 to f2 gives
13 Feb 2018 15:16:34 +0100
but on other files f2 gives
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 11:42:00 +0100
file:
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2019 11:42:00 +0100
so SOMETIMES there is a day included, sometimes not ! it seems to depends on the email client of the sender.
Some mails have the right file timestamp (i edited them manually) but does not show correctly in apple mail... it stays the import date
2) there seems different paths depending on plesk version / linux
'/usr/local/psa/admin/plib/modules/site-import/backend/lib/python/parallels/core/extras/mail-migrator/linux/plesk_mail_migrator/providers/maildir': No such file or directory
....
root@local:~# find / -name provider.py
/opt/psa/admin/plib/modules/wp-toolkit/vendor/plesk/plesk-migrator/backend/lib/python/parallels/core/extras/mail-migrator/linux/plesk_mail_migrator/providers/imap/provider.py
/opt/psa/admin/plib/modules/wp-toolkit/vendor/plesk/plesk-migrator/backend/lib/python/parallels/core/extras/mail-migrator/linux/plesk_mail_migrator/providers/maildir/provider.py
/opt/psa/admin/plib/modules/panel-migrator/backend/lib/python/parallels/core/extras/mail-migrator/linux/plesk_mail_migrator/providers/imap/provider.py
/opt/psa/admin/plib/modules/panel-migrator/backend/lib/python/parallels/core/extras/mail-migrator/linux/plesk_mail_migrator/providers/maildir/provider.py
i solved the problem by extracting the tar files of the mailnames manual and copy the existing files with rsync -a /extract_domain.tld/ /var/qmail/mailnames/domain.tld
by extracting the backup.tar with tar -xf all timestamps are correct. this is a huge plesk bug
@Peter Hansen,
The clients indeed may skip the day of week part of the date as specified in the RFC 2822: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822#section-3.3
Script was modified to extract the whole value of the 'Date:' header and process it.
The path of the module's files does not depend on the Plesk version. As noted in the article, this issue is related only to the Site Import extension, as it loads the messages through IMAP and does not preserve the timestamps.
From the output I see that only Plesk Migrator is installed on the server, the Migrator should not be affected by this issue: it transfers messages over `rsync` and packs data into archives, preserving original timestamps.
@Alexandr Bashurov,
I restore a backup of a domain and all timestamps where set to the restoration timepoint. This behaviour is also submitted here:
https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020362873-File-timestamps-are-reset-upon-the-restoration-from-backup
Never the less, I got the same problem with the mailaccounts, because all files had the wrong timestamp. The correct timestamps are saved in the backup.tar archive. For me, it only works if I rsync the manual extracted files of the tar archive over the restored files. But I will try your updated version of the script later. Maybe it works now.
@Peter Hansen
Let us know the results, please. You may drop a comment here or create a request to our support as per https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/213608509-How-to-submit-a-request-to-Plesk-support- if you want us to investigate the issue in more details. Thanks!
Again... Seems not to work !
1) File list
2) Script with Verbose = true
3) result of maildir with example cat
@Peter Hansen
Please note the following: by default, only messages created in the last 2 days will be modified. This is done to prevent changing timestamps on non-imported messages. It can be tweaked by setting a different value to the UPDATED_BEFORE variable in script.
Try changing the UPDATED_BEFORE="2" value to a higher one, for example, to 10 or 30.
If you have already changed this value, can you please tell me to which value? Thanks.
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