[Dovecot] All mail in mbox disappears when using Outlook

[Frank Leonhardt]

Adam McDougall wrote on 07 August 2009 15:01
> Frank Leonhardt wrote:
> > Timo Sirainen wrote on 03 August 2009 20:11:
> >
> >> On Mon, 2009-08-03 at 20:03 +0100, Frank Leonhardt wrote:
> >>
> >>> Any suggestions about where I could look for a clue will be followed
> up
> >>> immediately. I'm new to Dovecot, but not BSD. My next step will be to
> >>>
> >> put a
> >>
> >>> network analyser on it.
> >>>
> >> Looking at the imap traffic could help, especially if you can reproduce
> >> "works" and "doesn't work" cases. You could use also
> >> http://wiki.dovecot.org/Debugging/Rawlog
> >>
> >
> > I saw that a few weeks back and thought I'd give it a go - the analyser
> > looks less scarey ;-)
> >
> > I've had some progress. The problem was the same on 1.1.16. However, if
> I
> > rename the mbox file to something completely different (rather than
> adding a
> > suffix as I had done before) it all suddenly starts to work. The old
> file
> > was called "inbox090630". It doesn't like "inbox090630-1" but it's okay
> > about "Inbox-09-06-30". Moving the file name back makes everything
> disappear
> > again. Unsubscribing and subscribing alone makes no difference.
> >
> > It's obviously looking like an internal Outlook problem. I'll check it
> out
> > with other IMAP servers and see if I can confirm it. However, I'll let
> > Microsoft fix it themselves.
> >
> > Thanks for all your help!
> >
> This sounds like an issue I've noticed with Outlook myself, in that
> whenever it sees
> a mail folder starting with the word "inbox" (whether it is "inboX" or
> "iNbOX" or
> "inbox-dfsjaf"), Outlook always looks for "Inbox" or "Inbox-dfsjaf" (it
> uppercases the
> I and lowercases the "nbox" before passing the request to the backend).
> Thus when
> I was converting my users from UW imap mboxes to Dovecot IMAP, I took
> care in
> my conversion script to rename folders on their behalf if they start
> with "inbox"
> so they are "Inbox" instead.  Also, if you have a mailbox called
> "Inbox", Thunderbird
> will not see it since it is hidden by the real inbox.
> 
> Workarounds in perl:
>         # If a folder is named Inbox, thunderbird will not see it.
> Rename.
>         $target =~ s/^inbox$/Inbox-renamed-by-migrate/ig;
> 
>         # If a folder starts with inbox (any case, eg. INbOX) Outlook
> won't see it properly.
>         # Outlook expects Inbox(something) or bust.
>         $target =~ s/^inbox(.*)$/Inbox$1/ig;

Thanks - very interesting (and stupid!). I'm glad you've confirmed it's not
my imagination. What WAS MS thinking?

I've reproduced the problem with Outlook 2000 and 2003 so far. Anyone tried
2007?

Is there a general case-sensitivity problem with other folder names?

I'm taking a look at commands-util.c and RCF3501 Section 5.1, which has some
interesting things to say about folders called *exactly* inbox (case
insensitive).

Regards, Frank