[MlMt] Uh-oh. Imap just bit me...

[Benny Kjær Nielsen]

On 3 Nov 2013, at 10:37, Seebs wrote:

> On 3 Nov 2013, at 2:21, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:
>
>> I understand that, but as you write yourself then this is how IMAP is 
>> supposed to work.
>
> Is it, though?
>
> I was under the impression there were supposed to be some sanity 
> checks to avoid catastrophic data loss. Stuff like "hang on, while 
> this account has the same name as one I used to use, it looks totally 
> different."

IMAP is specified with the purpose of online access. It is mostly 
concerned about the email client realizing that a mailbox is no longer 
the same (changed UIDVALIDITY) such that the client does not use stale 
cached data. It is actually legal for an IMAP server to report a new 
UIDVALIDITY value every time an email client opens the mailbox. If 
servers actually did this then MailMate would have to delete and refetch 
messages every time the mailbox was synchronized (I've never experienced 
such an IMAP server though).

> I indeed only ever use one mail client. I suppose to some extent I'm 
> really more in the market for which POP3 is a good solution, but 
> MailMate works extremely well for me *except* for this.

I'll put a warning for “deleted mailboxes” high on my list to at 
least prevent that you get into the same problem again.

> And conveniently, my most recent backup of the mail from the blown up 
> server is a few hours after it went offline, so all the mail from 
> there is present.

Great.

> And I found the "Import Messages" feature, so MailMate is now copying 
> about 100k messages up to the IMAP server.

That'll probably take some time.

> Thinking about it, for my purposes, as long as I can recover the data, 
> I don't care that much how it's stored. A local archive feature that 
> produced something which could be reliably re-imported would be plenty 
> adequate for me, most of the time. A feature which, say, moved deleted 
> messages into a separate location and left them there forever would 
> solve my problems just fine, as I could then recover them if I 
> suddenly found a need to.

In theory, MailMate could just never empty its queue of deleted messages 
(deleting from disk and database indexes), but it's not a pretty 
solution, especially not for users with more than 1 email client.

> Alternative suggestion: Your general advice to people about this is to 
> run a local IMAP server. Dovecot's free software. Maybe MailMate 
> should have a "use local dovecot server to stash messages" option. :")

The problem (or feature) with a local IMAP server is that all messages 
are then stored twice locally. Many users would not be satisfied with 
that. (Disregarding any technical issues with MailMate controlling the 
setup of a local dovecot server.)

>> (I'll need to have some breakfast before answering your other 
>> message, but I'll get to it.)
>
> No immediate hurry, as it turns out, I have backups and found "Import 
> Messages" which does about what I want. Next up will be migrating 
> everything from the temporary mail server I was using to the 
> now-restored one.

I hope everything goes well.

-- 
Benny
http://freron.com/crowdfund2014
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