[Dovecot] Messages not expunged

[Jackie Hunt]

> 
> 
> On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 10:48 -0600, Jackie Hunt wrote:
> > UofW imap server ran fine, messages gone.  With dovecot I found
> > the messages were not being expunged.  The log indicated they
> > were, but then said 262 messages existed at the end.  After more
> > checking, I found the file system I was using was low on disk
> > space (<50M).  As soon as I added more disk space, and reran the
> > test with dovecot the messages were indeed expunged.
> >=20
> > Is this normal imap protocol behavior?  I thought I would see
> > an error message or something in the dovecot log.  Does dovecot
> > duplicate the mailbox before expunge?  There wasn't room on our
> > system to do that.
> 
> No, there's no duplication and it should have given an error if it
> couldn't delete the mails, unless it thought that they already were
> expunged. Did you test with mbox or maildir? I'd guess there's some
> syncing problem.

Thank, Timo.  I found my error.  I was recreating the mailbox
before each test run, but I wasn't deleting the index files used
by dovecot.  Once I added that to my test, messages are expunged
properly by dovecot.

I looked again at the log and saw:

dovecot: Aug 25 10:52:52 Error: IMAP(lib): mbox sync: UID inserted in the middle
 of mailbox /home/lib/mail/BigBox (525 > 1, seq=1, idx_msgs=260)
dovecot: Aug 25 10:56:33 Error: IMAP(lib): mbox sync: UID inserted in the middle
 of mailbox /home/lib/mail/BigBox (787 > 1, seq=1, idx_msgs=262)

which sounds like the syncing problem you referred to.

Is there any documentation about the index files used by dovecot?  For
testing purposes, I'm curious about when they are rebuilt (on a SELECT
of a mailbox?)  If we do have an issue is the best course of action 
to delete/move them and have dovecot recreate them?  

Thanks much!

Jackie
--
Jackie Hunt                                                       
ACNS                                    Voice:  (970) 663-3789     
Colorado State University               FAX:    (970) 491-1958
Fort Collins, CO  80523                 Email:  jackie.hunt at colostate.edu