UPDATE - After thorough server investigation:
I've performed a complete system check and can confirm the following:
SYSTEM VERIFICATION:
✓ System locale unchanged: en_US.UTF-8 (verified via 'locale' command)
✓ /etc/default/locale contains: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
✓ No locale changes in system history
✓ All other SmarterMail services running normally (SMTP, IMAP, POP, Webmail)
✓ Stats files are being generated correctly (2.7MB in /etc/smartermail/Stats/)
✓ Service restarts cleanly but error persists on every startup
✓ Disk space: 50% usage, no storage issues
✓ No changes to system configuration before or after the update
ERROR CONSISTENCY:
- The systemEncoding error appears TWICE in the log on every service start
- Occurs immediately after "SmarterMail Starting" message
- Happens before any user interaction with the reports module
- The error is written by the MailService process itself during initialization
FRONTEND VS BACKEND:
- Frontend error "Maximum date range exceeded (max: 5 years)" is misleading
- Backend logs show NO date range validation errors
- The actual problem: Report API endpoints return HTTP 500 (Internal Server Error)
- The systemEncoding validation fails → Reports API crashes → Frontend shows
generic "date range exceeded" error as fallback
TIMELINE:
- October 27, 22:58 UTC: Updated to build 9427
- October 28, immediately after: Reports completely broken
- No other changes made to the system
CONCLUSION:
This appears to be a regression bug in build 9427's systemEncoding validation
logic that affects Linux installations. The validation incorrectly flags the
system encoding as "changed" even though it has been stable since installation.
The Windows-specific error message ("changing Windows locale") on a Linux system
suggests the encoding validation code may not properly handle Linux environments.
Is there a way to disable this validation or can we expect a hotfix soon?