[Dovecot] Couldn't init INBOX: Can't sync mailbox: Messages keep getting expunged

[Timo Sirainen]

On Fri, 2008-05-02 at 18:13 -0700, David Jonas wrote:
> Upon upgrading from 1.0.2 to 1.1rc4 I see this error for many of our users:
> 
>   Getting size of message UID=1 failed
>   Couldn't init INBOX: Can't sync mailbox: Messages keep getting expunged
> 
> Logging in with IMAP I would see a bunch of messages with no subject or 
> time and blank bodies (usine horde/imp).
> 
> Removing dovecot.index.log, dovecot.index.log.2, or dovecot-uidlist 
> fixes the problem for the account (I chose dovecot.index.log). I imagine 
> that forces a rebuild of the indexes. Removing other files in the 
> directory didn't seem to make a difference, including dovecot.index or 
> some arbitrary non-dovecot file.
> 
> Is there a more conventional way around this problem?

If you can show me a way to reproduce the problem I can fix it. I've no
idea why it could happen constantly.

The main problem anyway is that getting a message's virtual size fails
because the message appears to have been expunged. So Dovecot
re-synchronizes the mailbox, which should get rid of the expunged
messages. But again it fails the same way, so Dovecot gives up and fails
with the error message.

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