[Dovecot] Dovecot vs MBox

[Gregory Sloop]

SH> On 4/30/2013 1:07 PM, Kyle Wheeler wrote:
>> On Tuesday, April 30 at 08:04 AM, quoth Gregory Sloop:
>>> Any ideas where to look next, what I might do to force dovecot to
>>> forget message ID's etc - that might force it to read the whole
>>> mailbox file again?
>> 
>> Find the dovecot.index files for that mbox and delete them. They will be
>> re-generated from the contents of the mbox.
>> 
>> ~Kyle

SH> Apparently Gregory discarded your advice Kyle.

[And you surmise this from what?]

SH> Gregory, this is the first step in fixing such a problem with mbox
SH> storage.  I've had your same issue and similar occur multiple times, and
SH> this normally fixes the problem.  Make sure the user in question in
SH> logged off and delete the index files as Kyle suggested.  When the user
SH> logs back in everything should work.  If it doesn't delete any cache or
SH> sync files on the client MUA (which should have actually been your first
SH> step).  I've seen this problem with Thunderbird a number of times,
SH> though not in a couple of years, since switching to LDA.

This is helpful, and I've already, even before Kyle prompted it,
deleted the dovecot indexes.

SH> While you chided Charles for stating the obvious, you'd have done well
SH> to have provided what he suggested.

I was looking for general pointers as to where one might productively
start. I wasn't berating Charles for not providing an adequate
solution. I wasn't asking for specific answers.

Charles, wrote what was, IMO, far too abrasive and demanding,
and in a condescending tone that - I *must* *prove* the truth of what
I claimed was happening.

Perhaps he didn't mean it the way he said it - I even suspect he
didn't. But *prove* is a really strong term. It implies that the user
is either being dishonest about something, or is too stupid to know
better.

If one doesn't want the questioner to "push-back" against such tone,
then it's probably better to use less strident language and suggest
things more mildly. [And I see he's doubled-down by attempting to
insult me that I don't know how to use grep etc and threatening me of
even worse abuse if I post on the postfix list, complaining of my use
of reply-all etc.]

If I were to pose such follow-up, I'd say something like...
"It's hard to help you without more information. Could you please
provide us with X, Y and Z."

Problem solved.

--
As for more detail - postfix IS putting the messages directly into
this mbox.

I'm checking the mbox with squirrel-mail which uses Dovecot's IMAP -
and I am not aware if SM uses indexes itself or not.

[So I'm not sure if it's a SM problem or a Dovecot problem. It's
probably not an mbox problem since mail sees the messages fine and
simply looking at the mobx doesn't seem to show any obvious corruption
- unless there's some  corruption in the mbox that's handled badly by
dovecot/SM that is handled fine by "mail" - which is certainly
possible.]

The mailbox is a test mailbox I use on the system, and since I have
[and had] some other more pressing issues to attend to, I've yet had
time to go much beyond what I'd done before asking for pointers as
where to look.

As I get more time in the next day or two, I'll go back and see what
more I can gather to determine what the problem is.

-Greg