IMAP "Stuck"/deleted Messages

IMAP "Stuck"/deleted Messages

Setup: Three different computer (two laptops, one desktop), all running Ubuntu and Opera 10.20 (build 4744). Connecting to my university's IMAP server, the underlying server is MS Exchange 2007.

Problem: Sometimes messages in IMAP folder get stuck. By this I mean:
1) they show up only locally in one of the computers
2) they are deleted from IMAP folders

Easiest way to detect this is when I move messages from my INBOX to IMAP folders (I know, this is not the Opera way, I use filters too) they don't go anywhere. They just sit there in the INBOX. Firing up Thunderbird/Exchange Webmail will confirm that they no longer exist on the IMAP server.

I figured out how to restore emails that are stuck/deleted from server: just save a local copy, import it and drop the imported message back to IMAP Inbox. But this is obviously not fun, so I'd love to know if anyone else has seen these problems? One obvious solution that I could try is to install Opera 10.10, 10.20 being only in alpha status.

Welcome to the My Opera community.

I get this now and then with Gmail IMAP. Still haven't figured out how to manually trigger the problem so someone can fix it. It's just a left-over database entry.

When this happens, i just shift + del (or right-click -> delete permanently) on the message. That removes it from the mail database.

If you can find exact steps to reproduce, that'd help.

I think it has something to do with selecting a different IMAP folder too soon after you drag a bunch of messages from one IMAP folder to another. But, not sure. Still, I avoid this when dragging messages by waiting for the connection to the server to be complete before opening another IMAP folder.

Originally posted by burnout426:

Welcome to the My Opera community.

I get this now and then with Gmail IMAP. Still haven't figured out how to manually trigger the problem so someone can fix it. It's just a left-over database entry.

When this happens, i just shift + del (or right-click -> delete permanently) on the message. That removes it from the mail database.

If you can find exact steps to reproduce, that'd help.

I think it has something to do with selecting a different IMAP folder too soon after you drag a bunch of messages from one IMAP folder to another. But, not sure. Still, I avoid this when dragging messages by waiting for the connection to the server to be complete before opening another IMAP folder.

I guess our problems are somewhat different, but related. In my case the "left over database entry" is the only thing left of the message, i.e. this happens even when I am not copying the particular message to other folder. This is bad, because there is a chance of valuable message being lost.

As for permanently deleting messages: the first thing I'll do when I install Opera is to disable shift-delete. Way too dangerous.

Originally posted by amigaussian:

In my case the "left over database entry" is the only thing left of the message

That's what I get too.

Ok. Can I ask what version you are using? Just hoping that upgrading to 10.5x soon could help.

Using the latest 10.52 snapshot build.

There's no fix for this and won't be until someone can figure out how to reproduce it.

You could set opera:config#consistency to 0 and restart. That might at least clean up the entries, until it happens again.

And, if you end up using 10.50 or 10.51 (which have broken cache problems), close down Opera and delete your cache, opcache and temporary_downloads folders when you have problems. (Location is in Help -> About Opera)

Thanks. I will have to ponder what to do here. I have been around computers for decades and I know that (especially in open source community) often in Internet forums you get people totally overreacting to bugs that affect them ("OMG, this is the worse version ever/ I can't believe they released the version with this bug" etc). But given that email data integrity is very important to me, I will have to think about switching back to Thunderbird for awhile, because of the frequency of which this keeps happening to me. I'd hate to do that, since I absolutely love the speed of the integrated browser, rss reader and mail client of Opera. I'll try to follow your advice on not switching IMAP folders too quickly first to see if that makes a difference.

I was trying to see if there was anything in accounts.ini that I could play with to maybe help with the problem, but nothing obvious stood out.

Originally posted by amigaussian:

I was trying to see if there was anything in accounts.ini that I could play with to maybe help with the problem, but nothing obvious stood out.

You can turn off idle by setting it to 0. You won't get notified of new messages till the next automatic check interval (5 minutes).

You could also edit incomingN.txt that corresponds to the IMAP account force single connection.

Originally posted by amigaussian:

But given that email data integrity is very important to me, I will have to think about switching back to Thunderbird for awhile, because of the frequency of which this keeps happening to me.

I don't remember if 10.20 has any bugs in this area. You could try 10.52 when it goes final and see if it fixes things (stops it from happening again) before switching to Thunderbird.

Originally posted by burnout426:

Originally posted by amigaussian:

I was trying to see if there was anything in accounts.ini that I could play with to maybe help with the problem, but nothing obvious stood out.

You can turn off idle by setting it to 0. You won't get notified of new messages till the next automatic check interval (5 minutes).

You could also edit incomingN.txt that corresponds to the IMAP account force single connection.

Originally posted by amigaussian:

But given that email data integrity is very important to me, I will have to think about switching back to Thunderbird for awhile, because of the frequency of which this keeps happening to me.

I don't remember if 10.20 has any bugs in this area. You could try 10.52 when it goes final and see if it fixes things (stops it from happening again) before switching to Thunderbird.

Thanks. I'll try that and hope it will make a difference. The forcing single connection has certain logic to it, so I'll try that first.

Ok, after quick testing changing the force connection=1 seems to make a difference. I am not saying it cures it, but at least when I spent last ten minutes moving 4 test messages from IMAP folder to IMAP folder everything worked out just great.

Originally posted by amigaussian:

Ok, after quick testing changing the force connection=1 seems to make a difference. I am not saying it cures it, but at least when I spent last ten minutes moving 4 test messages from IMAP folder to IMAP folder everything worked out just great.

Please post back though if that turns out not to help.

Originally posted by burnout426:

Originally posted by amigaussian:

Ok, after quick testing changing the force connection=1 seems to make a difference. I am not saying it cures it, but at least when I spent last ten minutes moving 4 test messages from IMAP folder to IMAP folder everything worked out just great.

Please post back though if that turns out not to help.

I will, but so far so good (24 hours in). Thank you for the tip.

Last update (more than week in), if someone is interested/for posteriority:

1) I was overly optimistic, this occasionally still happens, but I think "force single connection=1" helps
2) A workaround when you get a "stuck message" is to save it locally (as in "File Save As"), delete the original, import the local copy and copy back to IMAP server
3) It seems that I am not risking loosing any emails under the current situation. Occasionally I have to check my three computers and see if Opera reports same total number of messages on the Imap server. If not, I have found that you can find the stuck messages very simply:
a) On computer A mark all messages on IMAP server as unread
b) On computer B mark all messages on IMAP server as read
c) The messages on computer A that remain unread (minus "Welcome to Opera Mail" message) are your stuck messages that only exist locally. Do 2) on them.

I guess this is now for me at a level of inconvenience that I can live with. Especially since having all computers be 100% sync at all times is not crucial if I can occasionally make them totally sync with this cumbersome procedure.

If you can create a test account for the IMAP server you're using, you could file a bug report and include the login info for the test account so someone at Opera can test and try to reproduce. (If you do file a bug, please mention the link to this thread and post the bug number (minus the @...) here.

Sorry, unfortunately a zero chance of a test account. I would help if I could.

O.K. You could try this though, if you want:

start
run
cmd.exe
telnet imap.example.com 143
. capability

and post back the name of the IMAP server software (if it reports it) and the capability list.

If the IMAP server only supports TLS, you can use openssl instead of telnet:

openssl s_client -crlf -quiet -connect imap.gmail.com:993 
. login username password 
. capability

(If you don't have OpenSSL, you can get OpenSSL light from here)

(Edit: Stupid post. Forgot you mentioned your OS and IMAP server earlier. But, I'll leave this here for good measure.)

Took awhile to figure out:

a01 login username password
a01 OK LOGIN completed.
a02 capability
* CAPABILITY IMAP4 IMAP4rev1 AUTH=NTLM AUTH=GSSAPI AUTH=PLAIN IDLE NAMESPACE LITERAL+
a02 OK CAPABILITY completed.