[Dovecot] Bug / Problem - Dovecot and Thunderbird

[wc_fbsd at xxiii.com]

Greetings,

I've been running Dovecot for a couple years now.  Currently 1.0.b8 
on FreeBSD i386.  I just switched to Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 
(windows) for an IMAP client, and am having some problems that appear 
to be at least partially attributable to Dovecot.

After configuring the IMAP account, TB fetched the list of folders on 
the server, but was displaying several folders that had been deleted 
from the server months ago.  When I tried to access or delete the 
folders from TB, it produced an error message (imap command failed, 
or something similar.)  Some other folders had been moved from the 
root to sub-folders -- they still showed in the root, but not the 
sub-folder, thus were inaccessible.

I looked all through the client's config files, but couldn't find any 
reference to them.  From a shell on the server, I also verified they 
did not exist.

I discovered they were still referenced in the .subscribe file, and 
had index files in .imap on the server.  I deleted those, restarted 
the server processes, and refreshed the folders in TB, and the 
problem was resolved.  But required manual intervention on the server.

Not sure if this is a bug or just client issue, but since those files 
are maintained by Dovecot, I'm inclined to say "bug".  Disclaimer:  I 
know next to nothing about the internals of IMAP!

   -Thanks,  Wayne