Closed Bug 185791 Opened 22 years ago Closed 7 years ago

POP3: Mail deleted on the server isn't locally synchronized

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Networking: POP, enhancement)

Product:
MailNews Core
Component:
Networking: POP
Platform:
x86
Windows 2000
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: arnova, Unassigned)

References

Details

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 2000) Opera 6.05 [en] Build Identifier: 20021211 When people use a pop3 account on more than one computer and also use the option "Delete messages from server when they are deleted or moved from Inbox" and delete a message on one computer, the message still appears on the other (second) computer(s). I think this isn't behaviour a user would like. I think the user would rather have message removed from the inboxes of all computer than just the one it was actually deleted. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Enable: "Delete messages from server when they are deleted or moved from Inbox" 2. Computer 1: Delete a message from the inbox & close browser 3. Computer 2: Observe the fact that the message still exists here. Actual Results: The message deleted on another computer still exists on all other computers. Expected Results: Mozilla should detect the deletion of the message on the pop3 server and synchronize this with the local inbox. I think its rather a feature (missing) than a bug. That's why I propose an additional option called "When a message doesn't exist on server remove it from inbox (too)"
I decided to change it from bug to an enhancement as it seems less trivial than I first suspected. This bug can be quite irritating for a lot of people.
Severity: enhancement → normal
Why am I just being ignored with this bug? Its becoming more and more frustrating for me, I have to delete the messages I delete at work from my POP3 account all over again at home every time!
I have a pop3 account set up under Mail. When I have "Leave messages on the server" checked. I also have "Delete messages on server when they are delete or moved from Inbox." Currently, with these settings checked, the messages are never deleted. I have traced my traffic using Ethereal, and the Mail client *never* issues the command to delete the message from the server. The procedure I use is: 1) send a new e-mail to my pop3 account 2) start up ethereal 3) check my e-mail 4) read the new message 5) delete the new message from the inbox 6) empty the trash 7) exit Mozilla I then check my inbox using a second client. The e-mail message is still there! This is a serious bug for me, as I have an office of about 40 people using/trying to use Mozilla to read mail on a pop account.
Allison, the steps in your scenaro would work if you had done a Get Msg or waited for biff to fire before you exited mozilla. The server needs to be pinged again after the delete action to send back the command. This would then remove the message from the server so it would never get download to any other system. This may be considered a workaround at this time, but with a biff set to 1 minute a user would not have to remember to click Get Msg since they would probably have the app open longer than a minute. This bug as originally stated wants our app to search through the messages already downloaded in the Inboxes on any system to see if those messages are on the server, if not then automatically delete them from the local Inbox. I think there are dups of this scenario, I'll look for them tomorrow to see what comment have been made in them.
Arnova, Sounds like you should look for a server with IMAP email. I think IMAP provides this capability since it's designed for the messages to remain archived on the server, where POP is not. Do you know of any mail client that has this feature? Sounds very difficult to implement to me. I wouldn't hold my breath. Changing back to enhancement.
Severity: normal → enhancement
mass re-assign.
Assignee: naving → sspitzer
Mozilla 1.4/Linux still does show the behaviour described in comment #3. And indeed after deleting some messages I have to press the "Get Msgs" button to ping the server again, so that the mails are deleted on the pop3-server, too. The current behaviour may be a good thing if you are deleting messages when being offline. After going online again and connecting the mail-server a second time the mails are deleted there. But being online when deleting a mail should result in a directly deleted mail on the pop-server. This could be controlled via the online/offline-state that already can be switched in Mozilla.
Filed duplicate bug for thunderbird. My take on it is this: Mozilla Mail should make darned sure that deleted messages get deleted at least before Mail is closed. I delete a bunch of messages, close Mail, go to sleep. I get to work the next day and all of the messages are still present when I check my account using webmail. Biff firing and Get Msg are near instantaneous on my broadband connection. How much worse is it on a dialup? I propose two steps towards a solution: A) Mail pings the server as part of its shutdown procedure B) Mail pings the server after delete operations are completed. It doesn't have to be immediate, after every deletion. Mail could wait for a specific period of inaction before it pings the server. This way, the user could delete several files in a row without having to wait for Mail to contact the POP server between each one. What do you say?
Okay, I lied when I said I filed a duplicate bug for thunderbird. The provided categories for the bug reporting wizard indicate that thunderbird is only interested in UI and frontend related bugs. I believe this bug should receive a bit more attention since it makes it appear as though Mail is broken, especially for users who like to set their biff intervals to long periods (to avoid work interruption, for instance). Now that I know that Get Msg and biffing does the trick, this is great. However, to users who do not know this, it seems as though Mail randomly just doesn't succeed in performing the operations the users commands it to perform.
Unless somebody objects, I will post a spinoff bug tomorrow requesting that mail updates POP3 mail servers upon shutdown. That would be a first step.
Filed bug 239133
*** Bug 240697 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Product: MailNews → Core
sorry for the spam. making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs. filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.
Assignee: sspitzer → nobody
Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"
QA Contact: esther → networking.pop
Product: Core → MailNews Core
bienvenu, what is your thinking on this and bug 239133? Asking in part because I don't see precedent for WONTFIX, or accepting for that matter ... and there are some related open bugs :) Bug 333344. And WRT failures which affect currency, bug 263142.
correction, precedent in WONTFIXed Bug 154630? delete messages from server when deleted locally should work immediately. does Bug 239133 - Mail Should Synchronize with POP Server on Exit - seem quite sensible?
We can't tell why a message was deleted from the server - it might have simply been aged away. This is really what IMAP was designed for. But I agree that the lag between deleting a message locally and then having that deletion reflected on the server (which is really the converse of what this bug is asking for) can be a bit problematic.
Seems like this should be wontfix on same basis as bug 154630
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 7 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
See Also: → 239133, 154630
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