What are log files?

[WCSO]

My exchange went down and I found that the public and private store would not mount. After troubleshooting I found with eseutil that both stores were corrupt and I repaired them. The stores would still not mount until I deleted all log and chk files. What are the purpose of these files and what have I lost by deleteing them?

Thanks

 

[Zelandakh]

You have lost the email transactions since the last full backup. In fact the stores would not have been corrupt (usually), just that you have got a mismatch between the stores and the log files that differs pretty much at the checkpoint file.

But log files do quite a bit more than that so don't get lulled into a false sense of security

 

[markdmac]

Depending on what ESEUTIL told you regarding the shutdown state, you may not have lost anything. As Zelandakh has said they are the logs required to replay any messages that have not been commited to the database.

Deleting all logs is a requirement after doing a database repair. The tool even tells you to do it, so it sounds like you missed that part.

I wrote an FAQ on the subject. faq955-5581

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark