What's the difference between Community, Pro, and Enterprise?Copy Anchor Link

Community (free, AGPLv3) includes all core archiving features: IMAP download, full-text search, RBAC + MFA, import/export, and native backup to an S3-compatible store or a local directory. Pro adds verification and integrations: audit log with hash chain, integrity checks, PDF/Word attachment search, OIDC SSO, analytics, the built-in IMAP server, SMTP journaling, MCP, branding, and restore drills. Enterprise adds the compliance suite: legal hold, GDPR erasure requests, RFC 3161 timestamp anchoring, SIEM forwarding, dual control, and LDAP. See Editions for the full comparison.

CORS errors when accessing the WebUICopy Anchor Link

1. Enable debug logging: BICHON_LOG_LEVEL=debug
2. Check the server logs for the incoming Origin header and configured origins
3. Ensure the browser's exact origin matches an entry in BICHON_CORS_ORIGINS (no trailing slash, no wildcards)
4. In Docker, do not quote the value: -e BICHON_CORS_ORIGINS=http://192.168.1.16:15630

"Incompatible data format detected" on startupCopy Anchor Link

Your data was created by an older version of Bichon and must be migrated. Run ./bichon-admin and select the appropriate migration option. See Migration & Upgrade for the full procedure — including dedicated guides for v0.3.7 → v2.x and v1.x → v2.x.

The container starts but every page shows "503 — service unavailable"Copy Anchor Link

That is Bichon's maintenance mode. When a startup pre-check fails (a legacy data layout needing a bichon-admin migration, an unreadable data root, a license preflight failure on Pro), the process deliberately does not exit — it stays alive and answers every HTTP request with a 503 page explaining the problem and what to do:

• Under Docker, an exited container cannot be docker exec-ed into, which is the only practical way to run the interactive bichon-admin migration. In maintenance mode docker exec -it <container> bichon-admin keeps working, and the Docker healthcheck marks the container unhealthy while it remains reachable.
• The maintenance page is always served over plain HTTP, even when HTTPS is enabled — TLS is not initialized before the startup checks pass.
• If you run Kubernetes, point liveness at /healthz and readiness at /api/status. /healthz stays 200 in maintenance mode so the container is not restarted; /api/status returns 503 so the pod is taken out of service. See Health checks.
• A reminder is written to the logs every 10 minutes (docker logs --tail), so the reason for the outage stays visible.

Follow the steps on the 503 page, then restart the service.

Does "restore" mean recovering from a backup?Copy Anchor Link

It depends — Bichon uses the word in two senses:

• Disaster-recovery restore — rebuild the whole archive from a backup point into an empty directory, via bichon-admin restore. See CLI Tools.
• Message restore — push archived messages back to their source IMAP server (e.g. after they were lost on the mail server). This is not an undo of deletion: deletes in Bichon are permanent, there is no trash or recycle bin.

Neither is the same as message repair, which re-fetches a message's missing content blobs from its source server and restores them in place. Repair is for a message you still have but cannot open, and it never creates a duplicate. See Message Repair.

How do I run Bichon behind a reverse proxy?Copy Anchor Link

Set BICHON_BASE_URL=/bichon (or your sub-path) and configure your proxy:

# nginx example
location /bichon/ {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:15630/;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}

Can Bichon send emails?Copy Anchor Link

No. Bichon is an archiver, not an email client. The optional SMTP server receives emails only — it cannot send, forward, or reply.

Can I merge two accounts into one?Copy Anchor Link

No. Account types are fixed at creation, and there is no way to move mail from one account into another — in particular, an imported archive cannot be folded into a live IMAP account. To search an imported history and a live mailbox together, keep them as two accounts and put both in a View (Pro/Enterprise), which is read-only. See Combining accounts.

What hardware does Bichon need?Copy Anchor Link

• Recommended: 4+ CPU cores, 2+ GB RAM (sufficient for 10+ accounts and 200+ GB of archived data)
• Filesystem: use a mainstream Linux filesystem such as ext4 or XFS; avoid network / virtual filesystems (NFS, VirtIO-FS) for all data directories
• Indices benefit from SSD storage; blob storage can use HDD

How do I reset the admin password?Copy Anchor Link

./bichon-admin
# Select "Reset Admin Password"

Where can I get help?Copy Anchor Link

• GitHub Issues
• Discord
• Wiki