dovecot - Jun 2007 - Phantom message using mixed namespaces

Hi, all.

At home, I have a mailbox where mbox is the default (for inbox and some 
smaller mailboxes) and all my lists are in a Maildir format.

I'm building a mailstore server at work where I want to use Maildir as 
the default mailstore, but I want to keep mbox on the side to aid in 
archiving messages.

My configs are as follows for mail location and namespaces:

Home:

mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u

namespace private {
    separator = /
    inbox = yes
    hidden = no
    prefix = "mbox/"
    location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
}
namespace private {
    separator = /
    prefix = "Maildir/"
    location = maildir:~/Maildir
}

Work:

mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir

namespace private {
    separator = /
    inbox = yes
    prefix = "Maildir/"
    location = maildir:~/Maildir
}
namespace private {
    separator = /
    hidden = no
    prefix = "mbox/"
    location = mbox:~/mail
}

Here's the thing:

My home mailbox server looks the way it should, offering me "mbox" and
"Maildir" names to expand for more mailboxes.

Work on the other hand, by and large, works as well (in fact, I based 
its config on the home machine's config with some slight changes). 
However, strange things started happening the moment I did a "mkdir 
~/mail" while I was at the machine's prompt to make ready for an mbox 
repository.  My mail program nearly immediately shows a "phantom 
message" in the main inbox.  If I try to select this "phantom
message",
the mailer goes into a very tight loop (I've tried this with Seamonkey 
and T'bird with the same results.  I get cycles of these in the log:

Jun 12 11:29:14 (censored) dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<xxxx>, 
method=PLAIN,
  rip=x.x.x.x, lip=y.y.y.y
Jun 12 11:29:14 (censored) dovecot: IMAP(xxx): FETCH for mailbox INBOX 
UID 3 got
  too little data: 0 vs 512
Jun 12 11:29:14 (censored) dovecot: IMAP(xxxx): Disconnected: Disconnected

I'm running the Dovecot 1.0.0 under FreeBSD 4.11 (work) (I can't run 
anything later on this machine, strangely enough; I haven't tried any of 
the later releases since updating the BIOS recently, however) and 
1.0.rc17 under Ubuntu Feisty (home).

If I need to provide more info, please let me know.  I'd also be 
interested to know if it's something dumb I'm doing or if it perhaps may
be a bug.

Thanks!

--Ian.

On Tue, 2007-06-12 at 10:59 -0700, Ian R. Justman wrote:
> Work on the other hand, by and large, works as well (in fact, I based 
> its config on the home machine's config with some slight changes). 
> However, strange things started happening the moment I did a "mkdir 
> ~/mail" while I was at the machine's prompt to make ready for an
mbox
> repository.
mkdiring ~/mail should make no difference to messages in INBOX.
> Jun 12 11:29:14 (censored) dovecot: IMAP(xxx): FETCH for mailbox INBOX 
> UID 3 got
>   too little data: 0 vs 512
cd Maildir
ls -l new cur|grep `grep '^3 ' dovecot-uidlist|sed 's/^3 //'`

What does it show?

Deleting dovecot.index.cache will probably fix this too.

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Timo Sirainen wrote:
> cd Maildir
> ls -l new cur|grep `grep '^3 ' dovecot-uidlist|sed 's/^3
//'`
> 
> What does it show?
While in ~/Maildir:

$ ls -l new cur|grep `grep '^3 ' dovecot-uidlist|sed 's/^3 //'`
-rw-------  1 xxxx  xxxx  119374 Jun 11 14:28
1181669235.P39856Q0M530312.(censored).(censored).(censored):2,S
drwxr-xr-x  2 xxxx  xxxx     512 Jun 12 10:31 mail:2,S


I suspect that my shell's not telling me what my pwd is in the prompt 
and some mistaken assumptions on my part might be a good bunch of my 
problem. :)

To that effect:

$ echo $PS1
\u@\h\$

Though I kinda lied; I said "mkdir mail" assuming my pwd was
"~" when in
fact I didn't know what actual my pwd is, rather than a "mkdir
~/mail".
  As such, that phantom message appeared in my inbox.

Since this is not a production machine (well, yet, anyway), I wiped 
things and tried again.  Things appear to be OK now.

Sorry about making you go through a Stupid Moment(R) of mine and thanks 
for the tips.  :)

--Ian.