Mulberry client-side message filtering can be persuaded to search for a nonexistent message ... <tag> UID SEARCH UNSEEN UNDELETED UNDRAFT 12 (OR FROM "Cron Daemon " SUBJECT "Cron /home/sthen/pingme") Dovecot 0.99.10 returns this ... <tag> NO Sequence out of range: 12 I *think* the correct behaviour here is to return a null set of search results and avoid the error message in the client. i.e. * SEARCH <tag> OK Certainly this is how other servers seem to work, and my understanding of the next paragraph from IMAP4REV1 RFC seems to backs this up (though the wording in the RFC isn't 100% clear to me) "Message set ranges are permitted; however, there is no guarantee that unique identifiers be contiguous. A non-existent unique identifier within a message set range is ignored without any error message generated." it's not Mulberry's fault that it sent this immediately after deleting message 12, since on closer investigation this is exactly what my filter rules are asking it to do because I forgot to set "stop if matched", however it would be helpful to change sometime since I'm sure I'm not the only person to have done that (-: of course I've fixed my filters now, so it isn't a high priority for me. Commented protocol log follows, it's not really any more information than above though. --> #4.364 Tue Jul 8 12:54:19 2003 A00448 STATUS INBOX (MESSAGES RECENT UNSEEN UIDVALIDITY UIDNEXT) * STATUS "INBOX" (MESSAGES 0 RECENT 0 UIDNEXT 1 UIDVALIDITY 1052370612 UNSEEN 0) A00448 OK Status completed. --> #2.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:19 2003 A01259 NOOP * 12 EXISTS * 3 RECENT A01259 OK NOOP completed. ... incoming mail ... --> #2.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:19 2003 A01260 FETCH 12 (FLAGS RFC822.SIZE UID INTERNALDATE ENVELOPE BODYSTRUCTURE) * 12 FETCH (UID 140 FLAGS (\Recent) INTERNALDATE "08-Jul-2003 12:54:36 +0100" RFC822.SIZE 2372 BODYSTRUCTURE ("text" "plain" ("charset" "us-ascii") NIL NIL "7bit" 0 0 NIL NIL NIL) ENVELOPE ("Tue, 08 Jul 2003 12:00:11 +0000" "***SPAM*** I wish I could be there" (("Kieth Hairston" NIL "kiethhairston_ji" "sedona.net")) (("Kieth Hairston" NIL "kiethhairston_ji" "sedona.net")) (("Kieth Hairston" NIL "kiethhairston_ji" "sedona.net")) ((NIL NIL "stu" "spacehopper.org")) NIL NIL NIL "")) A01260 OK Fetch completed. --> #2.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:19 2003 A01261 SORT (DATE) us-ascii ALL * SORT 9 1 2 8 3 4 5 6 7 11 10 12 A01261 OK Sort completed. ... filter rule #1 ... --> #2.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:19 2003 A01262 UID SEARCH UNSEEN UNDELETED UNDRAFT 12 SUBJECT "***SPAM***" * SEARCH 140 A01262 OK Search completed. ... ok, it's junk, we want it marked seen/deleted and placed in another folder ... --> #2.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:19 2003 A01263 UID STORE 140 +FLAGS (\Seen) * 12 FETCH (FLAGS (\Seen \Recent) UID 140) A01263 OK Store completed. --> #2.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:19 2003 A01264 UID STORE 140 +FLAGS (\Deleted) * 12 FETCH (FLAGS (\Deleted \Seen \Recent) UID 140) A01264 OK Store completed. --> #2.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:19 2003 A01265 UID COPY 140 "ZZ spam" A01265 OK Copy completed. --> #1.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:20 2003 A00087 STATUS "ZZ spam" (MESSAGES RECENT UNSEEN UIDVALIDITY UIDNEXT) * STATUS "ZZ spam" (MESSAGES 1 RECENT 1 UIDNEXT 2 UIDVALIDITY 1057513495 UNSEEN 0) A00087 OK Status completed. --> #2.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:20 2003 A01266 UID STORE 140 +FLAGS (\Deleted) * 12 FETCH (FLAGS (\Deleted \Seen \Recent) UID 140) A01266 OK Store completed. ... and expunge this message (only) from the inbox: Mulberry checks so that it can keep any other deleted messages in the folder intact ... --> #2.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:20 2003 A01267 UID SEARCH DELETED * SEARCH 140 A01267 OK Search completed. --> #2.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:20 2003 A01268 EXPUNGE * 12 EXPUNGE A01268 OK Expunge completed. --> #2.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:20 2003 A01269 SORT (DATE) us-ascii ALL * SORT 9 1 2 8 3 4 5 6 7 11 10 A01269 OK Sort completed. ... and on to filter rule #2 ... --> #2.364 Tue Jul 8 12:55:20 2003 A01270 UID SEARCH UNSEEN UNDELETED UNDRAFT 12 (OR FROM "Cron Daemon " SUBJECT "Cron /home/sthen/pingme") A01270 NO Sequence out of range: 12