On 24/07/2015 10:37, Jas Reehal wrote:
Hi All,
This is my first post to this list. I have recently upgraded to dovecot version 2.2.10.
- I have one POP3 user who does not want to delete his email on the server.
- He has accumulated over 19000 messages, and the 'dovecot.uidlist' file has more than 19000 lines!
- Occasionally now when he has received one or more new emails, and his email client does a 'get new mail' operation (POP3) he begins to receive email he has already received previously.
last time this happened all 19000+ messages were delivered again, leaning to duplicate entries in all his mailboxes.
I have reproduced this issue with a dummy email account with a POP3 client, leaving all messages on the server. I have delivered 20000 messages to this email account, each about 1.3k ins size and each
with ....Subject: Message number <n> Body containing "Message number <n>" where <n> is 1 to 20000
now occasionally if I send another message to this email account, and then check for new messages using a POP3 client I get more messages downloaded than I expect!
The 'dovecot.uidlist' file is not corrupt, but I beleive due ti it's size (number of lines) the is an issue on compiling a ' POP3 drop-list'. I have attached a file 'dovecot-a.txt' which shows the 'dovecot -a' output from my server.
Based on what I have investigated I believe that this issue may not be correlated with a migration to version 2.2.10, but more to do with the number of messages retained on the server.
Is there anyone who has any insight into what is happening and if there is any remedy, perhaps a "pop3_client_workarounds =" or other POP3 or UIDL directive in the conf files?
The user is stubbornly resisting migration to IMAP, because of the time and effort he says will be required to replicate his organised filing/storage of messages on the server.
not a fix for the technical issue, but it is very easy to delete the messages on the server, create an imap account on the same mua (email client) and then drag the emails/email folders from the pop account to the imap account. This will take a little while as the client instructs the imap server to recreate the structure server side. if you are using maildir format it is easy enough to check that the structure has been created properly. Then the pop account can be removed from the client, and his/her email directory structure has been preserved. I used this method when migrating users to dovecot using imap from their isp using pop, when using thunderbird email client, and one of those users has over 24000 emails. if using a different email client it is worth experimenting on a test account first. It is also a good idea to backup the emails first "just in case". regards, Tim
Kind Regards Jas Reehal