The situation is this: when I start Pegasus, I get a message which asks me to enter a username. When I enter »bosjo», a new message appears claiming that there is no such user. I have also tried some »identity names», but without success.

I think what has happened is this: Some days ago, my old NAS died, or at least I'm not able to get it to work anymore. This contained the mail directory for Pegasus until a few years ago, then I move this directory to my new NAS. It seems I did that in an improper way, so that something was still active on the old NAS. If I remember correctly, I just copied the mail directory to the new NAS, and changed the address somewhere, but probably not the right place. I have now used pconfig32 to change the address in pmail.cfg; I think that address was still pointing to the old NAS. It now contains the address J:\HOME\MAIL~N (J is the new NAS [I have also tried J:\HOME\MAIL~N, which seemed more logical, but it did not work either]). The mail directory is J:\home\mail\bosjo. New mail has been added to the folder files in that directory, but PMAIL.INI seems very old, and probably has not been used for a long time.

I think I am using some kind of hybrid of Pegasus; I installed 4.80 a few months ago, but immediately had a nasty crash pasting something when composing a message. I then downgraded back to 4.73, but still had some problems with pasting in new messages, so I assume a part of 4.80 did survive the downgrade. I don't think that has anything to do with this problem, but added this information for completeness.

Assuming that I can extract the mail directory from the old NAS (I think the harddisk is gone, but I took a backup each night of some directories, and hope the mail directory is among them), how do I piece together a working pegaus environment on my new NAS? And if I cannot retrieve the directory from the backup, what hope is there for retrival of my old email?

Thanks in advance for any help!

/bosjo

First, you say that you used pconfig32 to set the address to J:\HOME\MAIL~N. This should be J:\HOME\MAIL~N (note the backslash after \MAIL). Be sure to use pconfig32 to change it. Don't edit PMAIL.CFG directly.

The existence of an old PMAIL.INI file is concerning. If indeed the mailbox location in PMAIL.CFG was pointing to the old NAS then I suspect that is where you new mail directory is.

You mention that new mail has been added to the folder files on the new NAS but mail only goes into folder files when it is copied or moved there, either intentionally or by a filter. Until then it sits in the new mail directory, each message as a .CNM files. So, either something is preventing the PMAIL.INI file from being written to (set to read-only perhaps?) or there is another PMAIL.INI file that is being used. Figuring this out will be easier if the edit in the first paragraph works. If you can get Pegasus Mail started, go to the Help pull-down menu item, select About Pegasus Mail, and the click the Info button. Locate the paths that it shows for the home and new mailbox locations and post them in a reply.

It is likely going to be valuable to determine whether the \Mail directory is in the backup of the old NAS.

Looks like the backslash you focus on gets lost in the forum post, Brian: I'm now trying again with duplicating the one you're emphasizing J:\HOME\MAIL\~N - now this time it works ... no idea why the combo of BS + tilde doesn't work without escaping ...

Thanks Michael. That may be what happened in the original post as well. If so, then I think it reinforces my thinking that the new mail directory was on the old NAS.

I have checked the backup, and it seems fine. Several files have timestamps indicating that they have been in use since the switch to the »new» mail directory (for example, pmail.ini), so obviously the mail directory was still on the old NAS, but the folders on the new. My handling of the transition from one NAS to the other has clear signs of senility, or temporary(?) idiocy, and has landed me in this mess; I hope somebody with a clear head can help me out.

Indeed there was a missing backslash in the attempt i mentioned within the double parenthesis; if I remember correctly, I then got a message stating that something was terribly wrong and I needed to exit immediately to avoid messing up things (even more, I assume).

So my first idea is to take all the files on the old NAS that has changed since the transition and move them to the proper places on the new NAS; edit pmail.ini to change all places the old NAS is mentioned; add the backslash using pconfig32; and then make a new attempt. Is that a good plan, or is there something else I should do?

I think so, but COPY, don't move, so as to preserve the original content. As a safety measure, make a copy of the backup and of the new NAS mailbox directory before starting.

The existence of a PMAIL.INI file on the new NAS indicates that you must have copied the mailbox directory files to the new NAS at some point. If so, there will be other duplicate files so as you copy from the backup to the new NAS be sure the new NAS has the most recent version of each file.

I am calling it a night. I will check back in about 10 hours.

Success! The plan worked perfectly, and I have pegasus working as it should. Many thanks for your help!