[Dovecot] Can't get Thunderbird 2 to delete a folder under mdbox (Dovecot 2.0beta5)

[William Blunn]

William Blunn wrote:
> Can't get Thunderbird 2 to delete a folder under mdbox (Dovecot 2.0beta5)
>
> I have built Dovecot 2.0 and installed it under "/opt/dovecot2".
>
> I have done the minimum configurations necesary to get it to work with 
> SSL, systems users but with a secondary password database, and set up 
> mail location as "mdbox:~/dbox".
>
> I had to create the directory "dbox" in the user's home directory to 
> get things working.
>
> Using Thunderbird 2, I can happily copy messages into this system and 
> read them out again, and that all works.
>
> In the user's "~/dbox" directory, I get a "storage" directory and a 
> file "m.1".
>
> I can also create folders, and nested folders, and put messages into 
> those and read them out again, and that all works.
>
> If I try to delete a folder through Thunderbird 2, what happen is that 
> the folder gets moved to be under a folder "Trash" (which Thunderbird 
> calls "Deleted").
>
> So if I had a folder "foo" and deleted it, I end up with a folder 
> "Trash/foo" (which Thunderbird calls "Deleted/foo").
>
> Fair enough: Thunderbird is doing a trash can model on folders.
>
> I then go to remove the folder foo from "Trash". Thunderbird doesn't 
> complain, and the folder disappears from the folder list.
>
> But upon re-starting Thunderbird, we see that the folder "foo" is 
> still there under "Trash". So it seems the folder was never properly 
> deleted.
>
> Perhaps this is a bug in Thunderbird 2, but since this is a beta 
> Dovecot with a new storage subsystem, I thought I would suggest that 
> it might be an issue with Dovecot 2.0beta5.

I have some more information on this:

(I have now configured a "namespace" under Dovecot in order for force 
Dovecot to present the hierarchy separator under IMAP as ".".)

If I do a manual IMAP session to Dovecot, I can successfully delete the 
folder "Trash" / "foo" (now called "Trash.foo") using the IMAP "DELETE" 
command.

If I use Thunderbird's "Empty Deleted" option from the "File" menu, then 
that seems to properly delete the folder under "Trash" ("Deleted").

If I try to delete a folder under "Trash" ("Deleted") by doing 
right-click then selecting "Delete", this does not properly delete the 
folder --- it appears to disappear, but comes back on a re-start of 
Thunderbird.

So that would seem to put the ball back with Thunderbird 2, which 
probably means the issue is likely to close about now because there is a 
workaround and it is the old version of Thunderbird.

Regards,

Bill