[Dovecot] Thunderbird 1.5 and dovecot 1.0 beta 3 problem

[Martin Preen]

Hello,
this problem seems to be well known (more or less). We have these
complaints from time to time ("cannot save to Sent folder"). I think
there were no problems when we used UW-IMAP (but I'm not sure).

It is not specific to dovecot-beta3. It happened with all dovecot
versions, all Thunderbird versions and all OS. AFAIK it is a client
problem (Thunderbird).

I found some entries in a Mozilla/Thunderbird forum (I'll try to find
the URL, if someone wants it). It seems that this problem exists since
at least 2 years within the source code. But since only a few people
are having this problem and the developers can't reprocude it, they
can't fix it.

If I remember correctly, there were also people reporting the problem
with UW-IMAP.

Martin

Peterg wrote:
>... 
> The problem(s) I am encountered have been reported here a few times previously
> over the last couple of years but in searching I have not found any concrete
> solutions. When I first tested it out there was a continuous problem of a
> failure in saving a copy of an email to the sent folder although the message was
> sent. One of the staff of the mailhosting company noted this exact problem as
> well and believed the issue was Dovecot announcing different IMAP capabilities
> than the real backend IMAP servers (via the CAPABILITY command). This was
> supposedly fixed and initially there were no issues with the first set of test
> emails. However, in short order, this problem re-emerged and there would be
> sporadic failures to copy a message to the sent folder. Another issue would be
> that every now and then, when clicking on a folder in the left-hand pane (and no
> other activity going on with Thunderbird like downloading a new mail)
> Thunderbird would hourglass for 10-15 seconds as if it were trying to open a
> connection and was having difficulty. The maximum number of connections setup in
> Thunderbird is the default 5 and I am advised that this is the correct setting
> with their servers. Reducing the maximum number of connections does not appear
> to change matters in terms of avoiding these problems.
> 
> Changing back to the current system (ie not using the test proxy server) both
> these issues disappeared. I have been in communication with the mailhosting
> provider as to my findings but it would be most appreciated if others here would
> perhaps have some insight into this matter. 

---------------------------------------------------------------
Martin Preen, Universitaet Freiburg, Institut fuer Informatik
Georges-Koehler-Allee 52, Raum 00-006, 79110 Freiburg, Germany

phone: ++49 761 203-8250      preen at informatik.uni-freiburg.de
fax: ++49 761 203-8242        www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de