UNSEEN flag issues with multiple clients

John Stoffel

1 Oct 2019 1 Oct '19

6:45 p.m.

Hi all,

I've been bugged by this issue for a while, and while I see that the \UNSEEN flag is specified in the RFC to be reset once *any* client connects and looks at a mailbox, I was wondering if there's a way to change the behavior so that it's tracked on a per-client basis?

Or if there's even some way to turn it off so that both my iPhone mail client and my main emacs viewmail mail client don't stomp over each other when looking at my mail folder counts of unread messages.

My mail server is running Debian 9.11, which has dovecot 2.2.27-3+deb9u5 as the version. I'm only running IMAP, no POP at all.

Thanks, John

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Sami Ketola

2 Oct 2 Oct

8:14 a.m.

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On 1 Oct 2019, at 21.45, John Stoffel via dovecot dovecot@dovecot.org wrote:

Hi all,

I've been bugged by this issue for a while, and while I see that the \UNSEEN flag is specified in the RFC to be reset once *any* client connects and looks at a mailbox, I was wondering if there's a way to change the behavior so that it's tracked on a per-client basis?

Or if there's even some way to turn it off so that both my iPhone mail client and my main emacs viewmail mail client don't stomp over each other when looking at my mail folder counts of unread messages.

My mail server is running Debian 9.11, which has dovecot 2.2.27-3+deb9u5 as the version. I'm only running IMAP, no POP at all.

A SELECT INBOX updates \Seen flags, A EXAMINE INBOX does not.

there is no configurable value to change the behaviour. Maybe you can change your client to use EXAMINE instead of SELECT.

Sami

John Stoffel

1:33 p.m.

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"Sami" == Sami Ketola via dovecot dovecot@dovecot.org writes:

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On 1 Oct 2019, at 21.45, John Stoffel via dovecot dovecot@dovecot.org wrote:

Hi all,

I've been bugged by this issue for a while, and while I see that the \UNSEEN flag is specified in the RFC to be reset once *any* client connects and looks at a mailbox, I was wondering if there's a way to change the behavior so that it's tracked on a per-client basis?

Or if there's even some way to turn it off so that both my iPhone mail client and my main emacs viewmail mail client don't stomp over each other when looking at my mail folder counts of unread messages.

My mail server is running Debian 9.11, which has dovecot 2.2.27-3+deb9u5 as the version. I'm only running IMAP, no POP at all.

Sami> A SELECT INBOX updates \Seen flags, A EXAMINE INBOX does not.

Sami> there is no configurable value to change the behaviour. Maybe Sami> you can change your client to use EXAMINE instead of SELECT.

I kinda figured it wasn't an easy issue to address. Since one of my clients is an iPhone, I doubt I can fix that client. :-)

But hmm... maybe it's not the iPhone causing problems, but my emacs based mail client viewmail, and that I have the source for. Thanks for the hint, I'll see if I can chase this down more.

John

John Stoffel

2:01 p.m.

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"John" == John Stoffel via dovecot dovecot@dovecot.org writes:

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"Sami" == Sami Ketola via dovecot dovecot@dovecot.org writes: On 1 Oct 2019, at 21.45, John Stoffel via dovecot dovecot@dovecot.org wrote:

Hi all,

I've been bugged by this issue for a while, and while I see that the \UNSEEN flag is specified in the RFC to be reset once *any* client connects and looks at a mailbox, I was wondering if there's a way to change the behavior so that it's tracked on a per-client basis?

Or if there's even some way to turn it off so that both my iPhone mail client and my main emacs viewmail mail client don't stomp over each other when looking at my mail folder counts of unread messages.

My mail server is running Debian 9.11, which has dovecot 2.2.27-3+deb9u5 as the version. I'm only running IMAP, no POP at all.

Sami> A SELECT INBOX updates \Seen flags, A EXAMINE INBOX does not.

Sami> there is no configurable value to change the behaviour. Maybe Sami> you can change your client to use EXAMINE instead of SELECT.

John> I kinda figured it wasn't an easy issue to address. Since one of my John> clients is an iPhone, I doubt I can fix that client. :-)

John> But hmm... maybe it's not the iPhone causing problems, but my emacs John> based mail client viewmail, and that I have the source for. Thanks John> for the hint, I'll see if I can chase this down more.

So looking at the traces of my client, I see that it's doing (slightly edited) sets of commands:

VM OK Logged in

VM LIST "" "*"

* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." postfix-users

.
.
.
* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." INBOX

VM OK List completed (0.000 + 0.000 secs).

VM STATUS "INBOX" (MESSAGES RECENT)

* STATUS INBOX (MESSAGES 1013 RECENT 0)

.
.
.
VM STATUS "postfix-users" (MESSAGES RECENT)

* STATUS postfix-users (MESSAGES 1588 RECENT 6)

VM OK Status completed (0.000 + 0.000 secs).

VM LOGOUT

To look at all the mailboxes on the server and see how many RECENT mails there are. For the postfix-users list, I see that there are 6 recent messages. And if I do the list of mailboxes command again, it returns the same count. Then if I go and look at the postfix-users folder with my iphone, I see that I have 11 unseen messages. And without opening a single message, I went back to my other MUA and listed the folders, and now I have 0 unseen messages for 'postfix-users'

I'll have to see if I can log the commands sent by my iPhone from the server side to see what's going on here. But as you can see, it's an annoying behavior.

Thanks, John

Sami Ketola

3 Oct 3 Oct

6:49 a.m.

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On 2 Oct 2019, at 17.01, John Stoffel mailto:john@stoffel.org> wrote: To look at all the mailboxes on the server and see how many RECENT mails there are. For the postfix-users list, I see that there are 6 recent messages. And if I do the list of mailboxes command again, it returns the same count. Then if I go and look at the postfix-users folder with my iphone, I see that I have 11 unseen messages. And without opening a single message, I went back to my other MUA and listed the folders, and now I have 0 unseen messages for 'postfix-users'

I'll have to see if I can log the commands sent by my iPhone from the server side to see what's going on here. But as you can see, it's an annoying behavior.

It might be annoying but I know for a fact being a iPhone user myself that iPhone uses SELECT to open a folder and per-RFC dovecot then must update the flags.

Sami

John Stoffel

4 Oct 4 Oct

8:51 p.m.

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"Sami" == Sami Ketola via dovecot dovecot@dovecot.org writes:

Sami> On 2 Oct 2019, at 17.01, John Stoffel john@stoffel.org wrote: Sami> To look at all the mailboxes on the server and see how many RECENT Sami> mails there are. For the postfix-users list, I see that there are 6 Sami> recent messages. And if I do the list of mailboxes command again, it Sami> returns the same count. Then if I go and look at the postfix-users Sami> folder with my iphone, I see that I have 11 unseen messages. And Sami> without opening a single message, I went back to my other MUA and Sami> listed the folders, and now I have 0 unseen messages for 'postfix-users'

Sami> I'll have to see if I can log the commands sent by my iPhone from the Sami> server side to see what's going on here. But as you can see, it's an Sami> annoying behavior.

Sami> It might be annoying but I know for a fact being a iPhone user Sami> myself that iPhone uses SELECT to open a folder and per-RFC Sami> dovecot then must update the flags.

Blech! That really sucks... is there a better mail client on the iPhone which doesn't use SELECT? Too bad dovecot doesn't support an option to "do the right thing" when iOS mail reader connects.

Thanks for the info, it just confirms what I feared. John

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John Stoffel
Sami Ketola