Re: [Evolution] imap server errors when sending mail.

[Ian Perryman <iperryma altera com>]

On Mon, 2003-07-14 at 11:37, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-07-14 at 09:59, Ian Perryman wrote:
> > Ever since I have started using evolution, I have had difficulty with
> > sending mail reliably.  Sometimes the message would be mangled in my
> > "sent" folder after being sent, sometimes it would be left in the
> > outbox, only to be resent the next time I sent a message ( recipients
> > would receive multiple copies).  Long delays would occur when sending
> > before the message would be transferred from the outbox to the sent
> > folder.
> > 
> > I could not find anything in the archives on this topic, so I I ran
> > evolution as follows:
> > iperryma>export CAMEL_VERBOSE_DEBUG=1
> > iperryma>evolution > tmp/evolution_dump 2>&1
> > 
> > I am using imap with a MS Exchange Server to view my mail. I leave the
> > mail on the server.
> > 
> > I use SMTP to send mail to an internal host mail server (no SSL) and
> > no authentication.
> > 
> > Occasionally, I get error messages when sending mail.  A pop up window
> > with something  like "an error occured but message was sent ok".
> > 
> > The message is still sitting in my "outbox" but indeed the recipients
> > received the mail.
> > 
> > In the output file the following lines appear:
> > 
> > (evolution:5696): camel-imap-provider-WARNING **: Unexpected response
> > from IMAP server: Subject: BAD Protocol Error: "Unidentifiable command
> > specified"
> > sending : A00011 NOOP 
> > received: From: BAD Protocol Error: "Unidentifiable command specified"
>
> looks like a broken server... NOOP is an IMAP command that clients send
> to the server just to let the server know that we are still interested
> in seeing our mail. Basically, after a set period of time of inactivity,
> some servers will disconnect their clients. NOOP is meant to prevent
> this auto-disconnect.
When you say " broken server" do you mean the server is doing the wrong thing, or could this be due to a bad network connection?  The imap server is on the local lan, but the SMTP server is on a remote part of the Altera  intranet.  This does not occur every time I send a mail, but only occasionally.

Evolution does not die when this occurs, just behaves badly (IMHO).  Evolution recovers (eventually) after several minutes (~15-30min).  I have tested that the network is up and I can ping both the imap server and the SMTP host which sends the mail.  I don't know if there are brief outages or perhaps lost packets during the time, but there are no other error messages in the dump file I get from evolution.

My other theory is that the SMTP server is heavily loaded, and sometimes does not respond in time. Or perhaps the disk space gets full and the message cannot be buffered, leading to the mangled messages that I sometimes find in my "sent folder".

Perhaps if evolution checked imap status before sending the mail, and if not available, try reconnecting.  When ready, send the mail out via SMTP, when ack'd move the message from the outbox to the sent folder.

Ian


> >  
> > 
> > (evolution:5693): camel-imap-provider-WARNING **: Unexpected response
> > from IMAP server: From: BAD Protocol Error: "Unidentifiable command
> > specified"
> > sending : A00012 LIST "" {1+} 
> > % 
>
> another perfectly valid command...
>
> > 
> > Any ideas what might be going on? This behaviour does not occur for my
> > colleagues using Mozilla in a similar configuration.
>
> broken server as far as I can tell...
>
> Jeff
>
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Ian Perryman