Re: [Evolution] send/receive race condition on sending mail

[Joe Baker <joebaker dcresearch com>]

Is there any chance that there are two clients talking to the same
IMAP account here?  If so, does the IMAP server actually support
multiple users connecting to the same account.  Some do not although
people to push them to their limits (at risk of corrupting their mbox
mail files).

I use Courier IMAP configured to save mail in the maildir format.  It's
design allows multiple users to connect & maintain an email folder at
the same time.

So this might not be a bug with Evolution at all if the users are 
not complying with the requirements of thier IMAP server.


-Joe Baker

On Wed, 2003-06-11 at 03:07, Not Zed wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-05-29 at 01:25, Mike Godfrey wrote:
> > I'm running evo 1.3.92 on redhat 9, but this is a long-standing problem.
> >
> > I read my mail using IMAP over SSL; I send outgoing mail to the same
> > server using SMTP (no SSL).
> >
> > Problem #1:
> >
> > Sometimes, my IMAP connection dies and I get a string of error messages
> > to the effect that the message/folder I want to access doesn't exist. If
> > I want it to fix itself, I either wait 10 minutes, or if I hit the
> > send/receive button and it renews the imap connection right away.
>
> i think we've tried fixing the problem but not with much success.  we
> want to rewrite imap - and hopefully address this sort of issue - but
> its a big task.  if it gets held off again, we'll probably have to look
> at the existing stuff again.  at least the workaround is simple.
>
> > Problem #2:
> >
> > If I send mail while evo thinks the imap connection is dead, the
> > outgoing mail sits (correctly) in my local outbox until the connection
> > is brought back up, and then it is magically delivered.  However,
> > sometimes it sits for quite a while.
> >
> > If I hit send/receive, the connection is renewed and the outgoing mail
> > is sent on its merry way.  However, sometimes hitting send/receive
> > causes more than one copy to be sent out (ie evo managed to send it out
> > already, but left the message sitting in the Outbox queue).
> >
> > My guess is that the locking mechanisms are not correctly done, causing
> > a race condition, but I'm not a mail protocol implementor, so maybe
> > that's the "correct" behaviour.  But it is annoying that the mail gets
> > sent, but evo lets it sit in my mailbox so that when I hit send/receive
> > a few minutes later, a second copy is sent out.  Surely, some sanity
> > checking should be done with the outgoing queue to make sure a message
> > isn't being sent multiple times.
>
> i would think that the problem is that your sent folder is on the imap
> server.  so it sends the message, and then tries to append it to your
> sent folder.
>
> still, it shouldn't try sending again while the last sending task is
> still running.  there's probably a bug in the sent folder failing case -
> its supposed to just delete the mail from outbox anyway, even if it
> couldn't append to the sent folder, but it could send it.
>
> submit a bug report to bugzilla.ximian.com
>
> some CAMEL_VERBOSE_DEBUG=1 logs might be useful.
>
> > Alternatively, perhaps send/receive (what outlook does) could be split
> > up (what mozilla does).
>
> well in reality it is split.  there's no real reason why sending should
> be conflicting with receieving, except that one or the other might mean
> the dialogue is displayed longer.
>
> > Any comments/suggestions?
> >
> > PS this ongoing issue of imap connections dying led one of my colleagues
> > to drop using evo altogether, which is a shame since one of his grad
> > students is an ex-ximian employee.
>
> "oh well"
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> evolution maillist  -  evolution lists ximian com
> http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/evolution