[Dovecot] Thunderbird 1.5 and dovecot 1.0 beta 3 problem
My mailhosting provider has been testing dovecot 1.0 beta 3 as a proxy server and they asked the customers if they would like to test it out and report any issues. I am using Thunderbird 1.5 (IMAP) and have been with this mailhosting company for two months and have no issues at all with their current setup which uses Perdition as their proxy servers.
The problem(s) I am encountered have been reported here a few times previously over the last couple of years but in searching I have not found any concrete solutions. When I first tested it out there was a continuous problem of a failure in saving a copy of an email to the sent folder although the message was sent. One of the staff of the mailhosting company noted this exact problem as well and believed the issue was Dovecot announcing different IMAP capabilities than the real backend IMAP servers (via the CAPABILITY command). This was supposedly fixed and initially there were no issues with the first set of test emails. However, in short order, this problem re-emerged and there would be sporadic failures to copy a message to the sent folder. Another issue would be that every now and then, when clicking on a folder in the left-hand pane (and no other activity going on with Thunderbird like downloading a new mail) Thunderbird would hourglass for 10-15 seconds as if it were trying to open a connection and was having difficulty. The maximum number of connections setup in Thunderbird is the default 5 and I am advised that this is the correct setting with their servers. Reducing the maximum number of connections does not appear to change matters in terms of avoiding these problems.
Changing back to the current system (ie not using the test proxy server) both these issues disappeared. I have been in communication with the mailhosting provider as to my findings but it would be most appreciated if others here would perhaps have some insight into this matter.
Peter
Hello, this problem seems to be well known (more or less). We have these complaints from time to time ("cannot save to Sent folder"). I think there were no problems when we used UW-IMAP (but I'm not sure).
It is not specific to dovecot-beta3. It happened with all dovecot versions, all Thunderbird versions and all OS. AFAIK it is a client problem (Thunderbird).
I found some entries in a Mozilla/Thunderbird forum (I'll try to find the URL, if someone wants it). It seems that this problem exists since at least 2 years within the source code. But since only a few people are having this problem and the developers can't reprocude it, they can't fix it.
If I remember correctly, there were also people reporting the problem with UW-IMAP.
Martin
Peterg wrote:
... The problem(s) I am encountered have been reported here a few times previously over the last couple of years but in searching I have not found any concrete solutions. When I first tested it out there was a continuous problem of a failure in saving a copy of an email to the sent folder although the message was sent. One of the staff of the mailhosting company noted this exact problem as well and believed the issue was Dovecot announcing different IMAP capabilities than the real backend IMAP servers (via the CAPABILITY command). This was supposedly fixed and initially there were no issues with the first set of test emails. However, in short order, this problem re-emerged and there would be sporadic failures to copy a message to the sent folder. Another issue would be that every now and then, when clicking on a folder in the left-hand pane (and no other activity going on with Thunderbird like downloading a new mail) Thunderbird would hourglass for 10-15 seconds as if it were trying to open a connection and was having difficulty. The maximum number of connections setup in Thunderbird is the default 5 and I am advised that this is the correct setting with their servers. Reducing the maximum number of connections does not appear to change matters in terms of avoiding these problems.
Changing back to the current system (ie not using the test proxy server) both these issues disappeared. I have been in communication with the mailhosting provider as to my findings but it would be most appreciated if others here would perhaps have some insight into this matter.
Martin Preen, Universitaet Freiburg, Institut fuer Informatik Georges-Koehler-Allee 52, Raum 00-006, 79110 Freiburg, Germany
phone: ++49 761 203-8250 preen@informatik.uni-freiburg.de fax: ++49 761 203-8242 www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Martin Preen
Hello, this problem seems to be well known (more or less). We have these complaints from time to time ("cannot save to Sent folder"). I think there were no problems when we used UW-IMAP (but I'm not sure).
<snip>
Thanks very much for the reply.
I was doing a search on bugzilla and this type of problem seems to be as old as the hills - the problem copying to the sent folder. This starts some time in 2003 and interspersed there there is a bit of talk of dovecot - about 3 reports
- see from post whereas many other responses do not talk about what the IMAP server is running, mostly because they do not know.
But, as I said, on the non-beta IMAP server of my mailhosting company this problem never occurred in 2 months and over a 1000 sent emails.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=206408
Peter
On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 17:58 +0000, Peterg wrote:
My mailhosting provider has been testing dovecot 1.0 beta 3 as a proxy server and they asked the customers if they would like to test it out and report any issues. I am using Thunderbird 1.5 (IMAP) and have been with this mailhosting company for two months and have no issues at all with their current setup which uses Perdition as their proxy servers.
The problem(s) I am encountered have been reported here a few times previously over the last couple of years but in searching I have not found any concrete solutions. When I first tested it out there was a continuous problem of a failure in saving a copy of an email to the sent folder although the message was sent.
There have been bugs in Dovecot before that have caused the sent-mail-saving problems, but those aren't related to proxy server at all.
Are you using SSL with these connections?
I looked at the code but didn't see any obvious problems. But I suppose there could be something..
On 20/02/2006 9:18 AM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 17:58 +0000, Peterg wrote:
My mailhosting provider has been testing dovecot 1.0 beta 3 as a proxy server and they asked the customers if they would like to test it out and report any issues. I am using Thunderbird 1.5 (IMAP) and have been with this mailhosting company for two months and have no issues at all with their current setup which uses Perdition as their proxy servers.
The problem(s) I am encountered have been reported here a few times previously over the last couple of years but in searching I have not found any concrete solutions. When I first tested it out there was a continuous problem of a failure in saving a copy of an email to the sent folder although the message was sent.
There have been bugs in Dovecot before that have caused the sent-mail-saving problems, but those aren't related to proxy server at all.
Are you using SSL with these connections?
I looked at the code but didn't see any obvious problems. But I suppose there could be something..
Thank you for your reply. I am using SSL.
I do understand that an individual is trying to work out what needs to be done to have full logging on the proxy so that what exactly is happening at the time these problems arise can be more understood.
Peter
On Feb 20, 2006, at 9:23 PM, Peter Georgeu wrote:
On 20/02/2006 9:18 AM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
My mailhosting provider has been testing dovecot 1.0 beta 3 as a
proxy server and they asked the customers if they would like to test it out
and report any issues. I am using Thunderbird 1.5 (IMAP) and have been with this
mailhosting company for two months and have no issues at all with their
current setup which uses Perdition as their proxy servers.The problem(s) I am encountered have been reported here a few
times previously over the last couple of years but in searching I have not found
any concrete solutions. When I first tested it out there was a continuous
problem of a failure in saving a copy of an email to the sent folder although
the message was sent. There have been bugs in Dovecot before that have caused the sent-mail-saving problems, but those aren't related to proxy
server at all. Are you using SSL with these connections? I looked at the code but didn't see any obvious problems. But I
supposeOn Wed, 2006-02-15 at 17:58 +0000, Peterg wrote: there could be something..
Thank you for your reply. I am using SSL.
I do understand that an individual is trying to work out what needs
to be done to have full logging on the proxy so that what exactly
is happening at the time these problems arise can be more understood.
I don't think logging itself helps. If it's Dovecot's fault, it's
more likely that it just enters some state where it stops proxying.
For example internally if either server's or client's output buffer
gets full, it stops reading more input from the other side. Once the
output buffer gets emptier it again starts processing more input.
It's possible that there's a bug somewhere in there..
Hmm. Now that I looked at the code, it is kind of ugly and difficult
to follow. I think I'll rewrite parts of it tomorrow.
On 20/02/2006 11:32 AM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
On Feb 20, 2006, at 9:23 PM, Peter Georgeu wrote:
I don't think logging itself helps. If it's Dovecot's fault, it's more likely that it just enters some state where it stops proxying. For example internally if either server's or client's output buffer gets full, it stops reading more input from the other side. Once the output buffer gets emptier it again starts processing more input. It's possible that there's a bug somewhere in there..
Hmm. Now that I looked at the code, it is kind of ugly and difficult to follow. I think I'll rewrite parts of it tomorrow.
My email hosting provider advised that he had installed "last night's" code - that night being the evening of February 20th - which had two cleanups related to the proxy code:
2006-02-20 17:17 Timo Sirainen tss@iki.fi * src/login-common/login-proxy.c: and fix for last cleanup..
2006-02-20 17:14 Timo Sirainen tss@iki.fi * src/login-common/login-proxy.c: Minor cleanups
Have tested it for much of this morning, afternoon and evening and 14 times out of 15 it will copy to the sent folder fine and then after sending the message it will seemingly hang on sending (but it actually does send the message). I then hit cancel and then I am advised by a prompt that it could not copy to the Sent folder. I hit retry and it fails again. I hit retry again and seemingly a failure again to copy and then I hit retry and it works. I end up having two copies of the email in the Sent folder but only one actual message is sent (this is with emails between a couple of my accounts at the same mail hosting company).
Reverting back to the standard (non-beta) proxy of my mailhosting company everything works fine with no issues of this type at all.
Peter
On Feb 22, 2006, at 7:26 AM, Peter Georgeu wrote:
On 20/02/2006 11:32 AM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
On Feb 20, 2006, at 9:23 PM, Peter Georgeu wrote: I don't think logging itself helps. If it's Dovecot's fault, it's
more likely that it just enters some state where it stops
proxying. For example internally if either server's or client's
output buffer gets full, it stops reading more input from the
other side. Once the output buffer gets emptier it again starts
processing more input. It's possible that there's a bug somewhere
in there.. Hmm. Now that I looked at the code, it is kind of ugly and
difficult to follow. I think I'll rewrite parts of it tomorrow.My email hosting provider advised that he had installed "last
night's" code - that night being the evening of February 20th -
which had two cleanups related to the proxy code:
They were really cleanups which shouldn't have changed anything. The
rewriting is still in todo..
On Monday, February 20, 2006 14:32, Timo Sirainen said:
I don't think logging itself helps. If it's Dovecot's fault, it's more likely that it just enters some state where it stops proxying. For example internally if either server's or client's output buffer gets full, it stops reading more input from the other side. Once the output buffer gets emptier it again starts processing more input. It's possible that there's a bug somewhere in there..
Hmm. Now that I looked at the code, it is kind of ugly and difficult to follow. I think I'll rewrite parts of it tomorrow.
Fyi, I notice the *_stream_destroy() changes listed in the ChangeLog, so I tried CVS dovecot-20060301. However, Peter and other users of the proxy still encounter the original problem that Peter described... Thunderbird hangs sometimes when saving messages to the Sent folder. It still saves a copy, but Thunderbird hangs until you hit cancel.
Are there still some proxy rewrites left to be done that may fix this?
Bill
Timo Sirainen wrote:
On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 17:58 +0000, Peterg wrote:
My mailhosting provider has been testing dovecot 1.0 beta 3 as a proxy server and they asked the customers if they would like to test it out and report any issues. I am using Thunderbird 1.5 (IMAP) and have been with this mailhosting company for two months and have no issues at all with their current setup which uses Perdition as their proxy servers.
The problem(s) I am encountered have been reported here a few times previously over the last couple of years but in searching I have not found any concrete solutions. When I first tested it out there was a continuous problem of a failure in saving a copy of an email to the sent folder although the message was sent.
There have been bugs in Dovecot before that have caused the sent-mail-saving problems, but those aren't related to proxy server at all.
Which version fixed these bugs ?
Martin
Are you using SSL with these connections?
I looked at the code but didn't see any obvious problems. But I suppose there could be something..
Martin Preen, Universitaet Freiburg, Institut fuer Informatik Georges-Koehler-Allee 52, Raum 00-006, 79110 Freiburg, Germany
phone: ++49 761 203-8250 preen@informatik.uni-freiburg.de fax: ++49 761 203-8242 www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de
participants (5)
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Bill Boebel
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Martin Preen
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Peter Georgeu
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Peterg
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Timo Sirainen