Re: [Evolution] Messages vanish from Junk folder (apparently) when it is opened

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Sat, 2015-01-24 at 16:10 -0500, Dennis Reichel wrote:
> Comments and Wild Speculations Follow :)

Comments, wild speculations and top posting ...

> Virtual Folders, I presume are like the search folders which can be
> created to aggregate a list of messages according to some criteria. It
> seems that the Junk folder is not virtual because the the messages
> reside in the Junk folder, not their original folder.

On what basis do you say that?

Unless you specify that "Junk" is a real folder, it *is* a virtual
folder.  Two things you need to know: first, a virtual folder contains a
list of messages in other folders that satisfy certain criteria, the
messages are not moved anywhere, they are still in their original place,
the criterion for the Junk folder is that the message has the junk flag
set; second, messages tagged as junk are not displayed in their original
folder - perhaps there should be an option to "Show Junk Messages", like
it's possible to show deleted messages.

For virtual folders, such as the junk folder, it is often instructive to
add a column called "Location" to the view - this will show the folder
that the original message actually resides in.

> Launching Evolution with too many debugging options enabled, I saw SQL
> errors about inserts failing because the table for junk did not exist.
> (true this table could be in memory only and therefore fit the bill
> "virtual", but that seems unlikely)  

Virtual folders have nothing to do with only residing in memory.  I seem
to also remember saying in my first reply to you that there might be
database problems ... it sounds like somewhere along the lines one of
the databases didn't get upgraded properly.

> A reason one might think Junk is a virtual folder is because of the
> email account configuration options to use "real" folders when setting
> up IMAP accounts.  I *think* "real" means this will be a folder hosted
> by the IMAP server, not "real" as opposed to "virtual".

No, it's real vs virtual.  The "real" folder can reside anywhere, not
just on an IMAP server.

> Anyhow, my problem was resolved by option Junk Messages: "use real
> folder" and selecting the spam folder defined by the IMAP server.

Yes, because you no longer need to keep a database of the junk messages
(because it's not a virtual folder), hence the errors go away.

If there is a spam folder on your IMAP server, does that mean that spam
filtering is performed on the server?  Usually server based filtering is
a much better prospect.

> What would have been the best CAMEL_DEBUG options to set for
> troubleshooting this issue?  If I see it again I'll file a bug report.

The SQL error messages should be displayed without any debug options
being set, just run Evo from the command line.

But as a first option I would advise creating a new separate Linux
account so you have a completely clean environment and set up the IMAP
account on that to see if the errors are reproducible there.

P.