dovecot - Jan 2006 - Mail.app message numbering for deleted messages

I'm having a strange problem that appeared when I upgraded from 
.99something to 1.0alpha3 and then disappeared for a while and then 
re-appeared when I upgraded to 1.0alpha5.

I am using mbox and IMAP in Apple's Mail.app to read my mail. When I 
delete a message in Mail.app, the message gets marked as deleted in the 
spool and it disappears from the mail listing in Mail. However, the 
message number does not change until I either manually flush the deleted 
messages through mail, or I go offline which deletes the messages from the 
spool.

I have mbox_lazy_writes set to 'no' but this didn't seem to have any
effect on the behavior. I never saw this type of behavior with UW-IMAP 
either, which is what I migrated from.

Thanks.

On Mon, 2006-01-16 at 18:29 -0500, jcn-dovecot@pith.org
wrote:
> I'm having a strange problem that appeared when I upgraded from 
> .99something to 1.0alpha3 and then disappeared for a while and then 
> re-appeared when I upgraded to 1.0alpha5.
> 
> I am using mbox and IMAP in Apple's Mail.app to read my mail. When I 
> delete a message in Mail.app, the message gets marked as deleted in the 
> spool and it disappears from the mail listing in Mail. However, the 
> message number does not change until I either manually flush the deleted 
> messages through mail, or I go offline which deletes the messages from the 
> spool.
> 
> I have mbox_lazy_writes set to 'no' but this didn't seem to
have any
> effect on the behavior. I never saw this type of behavior with UW-IMAP 
> either, which is what I migrated from.
What do you mean by "message number doesn't change"?

To me this sounds like it all works as it should. Deleted messages are
really deleted only until expunge command is given, which is done when
you manually select "purge expunged messages" command or whatever it
was
called in Mail.

Maybe before with UW-IMAP you just had some "automatically expunge
messages" option set?

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On Mon, 23 Jan 2006, Jesse Chan-Norris wrote:
> On Jan 22, 2006, at 6:44 AM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
>
>       On Mon, 2006-01-16 at 18:29 -0500, jcn-dovecot@pith.org
>       wrote:
>       I'm having a strange problem that appeared when I
>       upgraded from 
> > .99something to 1.0alpha3 and then disappeared for a while and then  
> > re-appeared when I upgraded to 1.0alpha5.
> 
> > I am using mbox and IMAP in Apple's Mail.app to read my mail. When
I 
> > delete a message in Mail.app, the message gets marked as deleted in
the 
> > spool and it disappears from the mail listing in Mail. However, the  
> > message number does not change until I either manually flush the 
> > deleted  messages through mail, or I go offline which deletes the 
> > messages from the  spool.
> 
> > I have mbox_lazy_writes set to 'no' but this didn't seem
to have any 
> > effect on the behavior. I never saw this type of behavior with
UW-IMAP 
> > either, which is what I migrated from.
> 
> 
> What do you mean by "message number doesn't change"?
> 
> To me this sounds like it all works as it should. Deleted messages are 
> really deleted only until expunge command is given, which is done when 
> you manually select "purge expunged messages" command or whatever
it was
> called in Mail.
> 
> Maybe before with UW-IMAP you just had some "automatically expunge 
> messages" option set?
I don't think that UW-IMAP was expunging messages because I could open up 
the mbox with pine and see all of the messages flagged as "Deleted"
but
not yet expunged. And when I try a similar test with Fastmail.fm (delete 
the message in Mail, then check using the web interface) the mail is 
marked as deleted in the web interface and does not show up in Mail.app 
but the messages are re-numbered appropriately.

Granted, I have no idea how Mail.app does its numbering (especially since 
Thunderbird doesn't have message numbering), but is it possible that 
there's more information that the IMAP server should be sending back that 
Dovecot isn't?

I've attached a screenshot from my Mail.app that shows the numbering 
issue. The gaps in the message sequence are where a deleted (but not 
expunged) message was.

jcn

On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 14:00 -0500, Jesse Chan-Norris
wrote:
> > Maybe before with UW-IMAP you just had some "automatically
expunge
> > messages" option set?
> 
> I don't think that UW-IMAP was expunging messages because I could open
up
> the mbox with pine and see all of the messages flagged as
"Deleted" but
> not yet expunged. And when I try a similar test with Fastmail.fm (delete 
> the message in Mail, then check using the web interface) the mail is 
> marked as deleted in the web interface and does not show up in Mail.app 
> but the messages are re-numbered appropriately.
> 
> Granted, I have no idea how Mail.app does its numbering (especially since 
> Thunderbird doesn't have message numbering), but is it possible that 
> there's more information that the IMAP server should be sending back
that
> Dovecot isn't?
After trying this out for a while, I think I know what causes it. The
difference with Dovecot and UW-IMAP is that UW-IMAP allows only a single
connection to the mailbox (each new connection killing the old one),
while Dovecot allows multiple.

Mail.app then goes and creates multiple connections to the mailbox, and
after deleting the messages, it uses those different connections to
fetch the mails. Then it somehow gets internally confused and starts
renumbering the mails.

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