[Dovecot] All mail in mbox disappears when using Outlook

[Frank Leonhardt]

I thought I was imaging it but... I have a friend (honestly) that likes to
clear his inbox every month by copying older into a folder (e.g. June-2009).
Every month he complains that all the mail in the new folder has
disappeared. This has happened three times now, and he's sort-of-right. I
now believe it's a bug rather than him.

The setup is Dovecot 1.1.3 on FreeBSD 7.0 and the client is Outlook 2003 SP3
(using IMAP).

What you end up with is a folder called June-2009 with no messages visible.
Outlook reckons it's completely empty - size 0. I don't know how he gets to
this point, but it can't be anything that bizarre - just copying messages.
It's happened three months in a row. However, he can't see the contents and
I can't see the contents using Outlook. Strangely, Eudora and Squirrel have
no problem.

Corrupt mbox file? Probably not. If you copy the problem one, the copy works
fine. The really weird thing is that if you rename the problem file (using
mv) it STILL DOESN'T work. I've considered the possibility that it's got a
bad lock on it, but if so, how come Squirrel and Eudora have no problem?

I've searched as far as I can for any known problems using Outlook.

What next?

Thanks, Frank.


======================================================
# 1.1.3: /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf
log_path: /var/log/dovecot
protocols: imap imaps pop3 pop3s
ssl_cert_file: /etc/mail/certs/dovecot-cert.pem
ssl_key_file: /etc/mail/certs/dovecot-private.pem
disable_plaintext_auth: no
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable(default): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(imap): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_executable(pop3): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login
login_greeting_capability(default): yes
login_greeting_capability(imap): yes
login_greeting_capability(pop3): no
verbose_proctitle: yes
first_valid_uid: 1000
first_valid_gid: 1000
mail_privileged_group: mail
mail_location: mbox:~/mail/:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
maildir_copy_preserve_filename: yes
mail_executable(default): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(imap): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap
mail_executable(pop3): /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/pop3
mail_process_size: 512
mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/imap
mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/local/lib/dovecot/pop3
imap_client_workarounds(default): delay-newmail netscape-eoh
tb-extra-mailbox-sep
imap_client_workarounds(imap): delay-newmail netscape-eoh
tb-extra-mailbox-sep
imap_client_workarounds(pop3):
pop3_enable_last(default): no
pop3_enable_last(imap): no
pop3_enable_last(pop3): yes
pop3_client_workarounds(default):
pop3_client_workarounds(imap):
pop3_client_workarounds(pop3): outlook-no-nuls oe-ns-eoh
auth default:
  mechanisms: plain login
  username_format: %Ln
  process_size: 512
  passdb:
    driver: pam
    args: session=yes dovecot
  userdb:
    driver: passwd
    args: blocking=yes
  socket:
    type: listen
    client:
      path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-client
      mode: 432
    master:
      path: /var/run/dovecot/auth-master
      mode: 384