Re: recurrence of old problem with inordinate delays fetching mail

[Peter Bloomfield <PeterBloomfield bellsouth net>]

Hi Jack!

On 05/25/2021 10:57:31 AM Tue, Jack via balsa-list wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've just returned from a three weeks vacation.  While away, I only used imap for all email access.  I'm now 
> trying to POP3 download all my email.  All mail servers have gone fine except for gmail.  There are a bit 
> over 200 messages, and after somewhere around half of them were downloaded, it started taking over twenty 
> seconds for each additional message.  Based on watching top and on previous experience, I believe the problem 
> is that Balsa applies inbox filters after each new message is downloaded, and this calls html2text on every 
> message in the mailbox, but now I have over 150 messages in my mbox inbox.  In the short term, can anyone 
> suggest a way to find which one is likely causing problems?  In the long run, would it make sense not to 
> apply filters to a mailbox until all pending actions are done - specifically fetching a whole bunch of POP3 
> messages?
>
> I've also tried deleting a few messages at a time from the INBOX, but it just hung, presumably having 
> problems rewriting the mbox file.  I might try deleting all the remaining new messages from the INBOX and 
> then copying one at a time from the IMAP inbox.
>
> I have a vague recollection that in the past, the problem was caused by some HTML only message with invalid 
> HTML that all browsers and other email clients (TBird) handle fine.
>
> (Hopefully I'll be able to find any answers to this by using IMAP for the interim.)
>
> Thanks for any suggestions.
>
> Jack

The long-run fix could get complicated. I've opened an issue [1] where we can discuss strategies for avoiding 
these kinds of delays.

In the short run, if the delays are indeed caused by on-reception filtering, you could perhaps just 
temporarily disable the filters.

Best,

Peter

[1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/balsa/-/issues/58