Unfortunately, your message does not give enough information to be able to
make a ful diagnosis. Clearly, you have a problem. Fortunately, you
were prudent and sought instead of fumbling around. Good for you!
Here are some things for you to do to direct your problem to people
who can best you:
The first thing is to identify the name of the IMAP server software that
you use. Do you know which one you installed? Do you remember a name,
such as "UW imapd", "Cyrus", "Dovecot", etc.?
If you don't remember the name, what happens when you give the command
telnet imapserver 143
Substitute the name of your server system for "imapserver", e.g.,
telnet imap.link.net.zm 143
You should get back some text. What is the EXACT and COMPLETE text that
you got?
To get out of telnet, give the command
x logout
and the IMAP server should logout and disconnect.
The second thing, now that we have identified which server you use, is to
record the EXACT and COMPLETE text of the error message that you got.
The exact text is very important. Many users paraphrase the error
message, which is reasonable in normal circumstances; but in cases where
there are many possible messages the exact text is needed to ensure that
we are looking at the correct message and its conditions.
You reported that "the imap server says unknown mailbox". If "unknown
mailbox" is exactly what the server said, then probably I am not the right
person to you. I am the maintainer of UW imapd, and UW imapd does
not have that message, so that means that you use some other server.
Once you get the answers to these two questions, it will be possible to
proceed in a more useful way for you.
Good luck!
-- Mark --
http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.