Dovecot and Apple's Mail.app not playing nicely?
Hi all,
Is there anything cute one has to take into account when using Dovecot with users of Apple’s Mail.app? Behavior I’m seeing is that if I delete or move messages via Webmail (Roundcube, Horde, or even ActiveSync via Mail.app on my phone), they do get moved or deleted. However, if I take the same actions in the desktop mail client, when logging in to the Webmail (or phone) app, I see the messages still seeming to be in the Inbox.
Is this known behavior? A peculiarity in Apple Mail?
-- Coy Hile coy.hile@coyhile.com
Hi Coy,
Is there anything cute one has to take into account when using Dovecot with users of Apple’s Mail.app? Behavior I’m seeing is that if I delete or move messages via Webmail (Roundcube, Horde, or even ActiveSync via Mail.app on my phone), they do get moved or deleted. However, if I take the same actions in the desktop mail client, when logging in to the Webmail (or phone) app, I see the messages still seeming to be in the Inbox.
Is this known behavior? A peculiarity in Apple Mail?
I don't see this behavior with Apple Mail 12.4 / MacOS 10.14.6 (using imap, as pop3 does not support folders).
You could configure mail_log_events and see what happens:
plugin { # Events to log. Also available: flag_change append mail_log_events = delete undelete expunge copy mailbox_delete mailbox_rename # Available fields: uid, box, msgid, from, subject, size, vsize, flags # size and vsize are available only for expunge and copy events. mail_log_fields = uid box msgid size subject }
When I move an email into another folder with Apple Mail it's moved on the server immediately. Upon deletion it might get flagged as deleted and expunged later (probably a month after). You can right click on the folder and choose "Erase Deleted Items" to remove them from the server, or configure the time span in Mail's preferences.
Best regards Gerald
For testing mail programs (postfix and dovecot), it is reasonable to use a scripted client application on a separate machine.
Scripting started with unix shell scripts, but got a big boost with Sol Libes' tcl/expect.
From those early days, we now have 'puppet', 'chef', 'fabric', 'ansible', ... to test and manage complex multi-machine systems.
A relatively new scripting entry is 'nimscript'. The underlying code is 'nim' and nimscript shares the same syntax as nim. (Not necessary to learn a separate language such as ruby, python or tcl).
Nim and Nimscript have a number of explicit parallel operators in an asyncdispatch library. newAsyncSmtp and 'await' are some of the features used in this script. The script can be used as a library module for a custom application or it can be run as a standalone sample script. The phrase 'when isMainModule:' detects when it is run as a standalone.
Being based on Nim - means that it works on Windows-MacOS-Linux-(and 20+ other OS), so no portability problems. Nim is a compiled language with GC and is as fast as 'C'.
Take a look at https://christine.website/blog/how-send-email-nim-2019-08-28 for more information. And there is 'nim-lang.org' too.
On 3 Sep 2019, at 15.30, Coy Hile via dovecot dovecot@dovecot.org wrote:
Hi all,
Is there anything cute one has to take into account when using Dovecot with users of Apple’s Mail.app? Behavior I’m seeing is that if I delete or move messages via Webmail (Roundcube, Horde, or even ActiveSync via Mail.app on my phone), they do get moved or deleted. However, if I take the same actions in the desktop mail client, when logging in to the Webmail (or phone) app, I see the messages still seeming to be in the Inbox.
Is this known behavior? A peculiarity in Apple Mail?
I am using Apple Mail.App in Macbook, iPhone and iPad. And in fact quite many of us internally are doing the same and I can't see that behaviour. Mail.App correctly obeys \Deleted flag and does not show the mails in folders.
Sami
On 2019-09-03 09:22, Sami Ketola via dovecot wrote:
On 3 Sep 2019, at 15.30, Coy Hile via dovecot dovecot@dovecot.org wrote:
Hi all,
Is there anything cute one has to take into account when using Dovecot with users of Apple’s Mail.app? Behavior I’m seeing is that if I delete or move messages via Webmail (Roundcube, Horde, or even ActiveSync via Mail.app on my phone), they do get moved or deleted. However, if I take the same actions in the desktop mail client, when logging in to the Webmail (or phone) app, I see the messages still seeming to be in the Inbox.
Is this known behavior? A peculiarity in Apple Mail?
I am using Apple Mail.App in Macbook, iPhone and iPad. And in fact quite many of us internally are doing the same and I can't see that behaviour. Mail.App correctly obeys \Deleted flag and does not show the mails in folders.
Sami
That's exactly the converse of what I'm seeing. Mail.app sets the
\Deleted flag, or flags a message as Junk
and moves it to the Junk folder. But when I login via, say, Roundcube,
it still shows in the inbox, though
greyed out with a little (/) icon (which I assume is the deleted flag.)
If I move or delete the message via
the webmail client, it actually gets moved to Junk or Trash. (Or
wherever I moved it.)
FWIW, I think this applies only to deleted messages (where Mail.app may just set a flag rather than actually moving the messages to Trash) and to Mail.app's own Junk processing. (Things flagged as Spam and moved to Junk via Sieve do end up in the Junk folder.)
-- Coy Hile coy.hile@coyhile.com
On 3 Sep 2019, at 15.30, Coy Hile via dovecot dovecot@dovecot.org wrote: Hi all, Is there anything cute one has to take into account when using Dovecot with users of Apple’s Mail.app? Behavior I’m seeing is that if I delete or move messages via Webmail (Roundcube, Horde, or even ActiveSync via Mail.app on my phone), they do get moved or deleted. However, if I take the same actions in the desktop mail client, when logging in to the Webmail (or phone) app, I see the messages still seeming to be in the Inbox. Is this known behavior? A peculiarity in Apple Mail? I am using Apple Mail.App in Macbook, iPhone and iPad. And in fact quite many of us internally are doing the same and I can't see that behaviour. Mail.App correctly obeys \Deleted flag and does not show the mails in folders. Sami
That's exactly the converse of what I'm seeing. Mail.app sets the \Deleted flag, or flags a message as Junk and moves it to the Junk folder. But when I login via, say, Roundcube, it still shows in the inbox, though greyed out with a little (/) icon (which I assume is the deleted flag.) If I move or delete the message via the webmail client, it actually gets moved to Junk or Trash. (Or wherever I moved it.)
FWIW, I think this applies only to deleted messages (where Mail.app may just set a flag rather than actually moving the messages to Trash) and to Mail.app's own Junk processing. (Things flagged as Spam and moved to Junk via Sieve do end up in the Junk folder.)
Apple Mail does not show messages anymore when the \Deleted flag is set. They are moved to trash only if a mailbox for deleted messages is set in preferences. Usually they are removed (expunged) from the server a month later. Roundcube on the other hand displays \Deleted messages greyed out (strikethrough in some versions) by default.
The ability to just mark messages as \Deleted is a nice feature. Imagine deleting 100000 small statusmails without unnecessary i/o. It may stress your disks (local and server) when that many mails are moved around before being expunged.
Best regards Gerald
participants (4)
-
Bob Gustafson
-
Coy Hile
-
Gerald Galster
-
Sami Ketola