[Dovecot] Why is "UIDVALIDITY changed" fatal?

[Todd Burroughs]

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005, Chris Wakelin wrote:

> I've got several users testing Dovecot IMAP at the moment, but some of
> them are also accessing their mail via UW-IMAP at other times. (I've
> warned them about accessing the same folder simultaneously via
> UW-IMAP and Dovecot!) In addition, we have special folders "AutoSpam"

> However, in some cases UW-IMAP seems to change the UIDVALIDITY value
> (not sure why!) and when Dovecot tries to sync it notices this and
> gives up with a fatal error on opening that folder. Opening the folder
> a second time is then OK.

I have this problem as well, but I don't think that it is UW doing it in
my case.  If I switch my mailbox back and forth, I don't see the problem.

The most common case here is some of our support mailboxes where several
people log into them at once (I know, they shouldn't...).  This causes
all sorts of these errors, but dovecot recovers from them and the support
staff doesn't seem to notice.  Also, the mbox hasn't become corrupted
so far, which is a really good thing.

Maybe your users are doing the same thing?

Todd