201055 - Automatic mail collection does not work with movemail

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Movemail, defect)

Description

[Daniel Küstner]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030401
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030401

Check for messages at startup and Check for messages every .. minutes do not
work with movemail accounts.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a movemail account.
2. Enable Mail & Newsgroup Account Settings -> Check for messages at
startup/Check for messages every .. minutes.
3. Send some mail to yourself.
4. Wait .. minutes.
5. Restart Mozilla.

Actual Results:  
Nothing.

Expected Results:  
After .. minutes or after restarting Mozilla should have received the mail.

Comment 1

[u63580]

Um, what is "movemail"?

Comment 2

[Dieter Rethmeyer]

Movemail is a "protocol" on Unix/Linux systems where the program "fetchmail" is
used to receive the mail from the mailserver with POP3 (or other protocol).
Fetchmail stores the mail in the directory /var/spool/mail/<username> or
/var/mail/<username> where the mozilla mailclient picks it up and moves it to
the standard mozilla mailbox.

Movemail can be enabled in the mozilla mailclient by editing prefs.js and
changing the protocol entry from "pop3" to "movemail". There is no GUI
functionality in the mailclient, movemail can only be enabled by editing the
prefs.js. Movemail setting is part of at least the German mozilla FAQ.

Comment 3

[David Juran]

So what would happen if you had the inbox at the mailserver NFS-mounted in
/var/mail on your local machine? Would that be enough to confuse mozilla?

Comment 4

[Adam D. Moss]

That shouldn't be a problem.  There's a hacky file-locking mechanism used that
works over NFS.

Comment 5

[David Juran]

I was more refering to the problem that it in that case in reality would move
the mail from and to the same file. I mean the mail file on the server, which it
would pop from would be the same file, but NFS-mounted on the client that
movemail would drop it of to.

Comment 6

[Adam D. Moss]

I don't think that's a problem either, if I understand you correctly.  The
process of 'getting' movemail-mail moves the messages out of the mail spool into
a private mail storage hierarchy in your home directory that's part of your
mozilla user profile.

Comment 7

[Philip K. Warren]

I'm fairly certain that this is because movemail accounts currently do not 
implement the PerformBiff function. Here is an example of how PerformBiff is 
implemented for POP3 accounts:

http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/mailnews/local/src/nsPop3IncomingServer
.cpp#123

Comment 8

[Adam D. Moss]

Attempting reassignment to new default movemail owner.

Comment 9

[Michael Malcom]

Attachment: Proposed patch

Proposed changes to nsMovemailIncomingServer:
* Implement PerformBiff().  This is heavily based on the corresponding method
  in the sibling class nsPop3IncomingServer.
* Implement GetServerRequiresPasswordForBiff().  Always returns PR_FALSE.
* Implement GetDownloadMessagesAtStartup().  Always returns PR_TRUE.

Comment 10

[Philip K. Warren]

Comment on attachment 152887 [details] [diff] [review]
Proposed patch

I have tested this patch and it is working well for me. Thanks for the
contribution. Requesting sr from mscott.

Comment 11

[Philip K. Warren]

Comment on attachment 152887 [details] [diff] [review]
Proposed patch

This is a relatively low-risk fix which I think should be checked in to the
1.8a2 branch. This only affects users of Movemail accounts, and is a really
high priority for those users.

Comment 12

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Comment on attachment 152887 [details] [diff] [review]
Proposed patch

a=sspitzer

Comment 13

[Philip K. Warren]

Fixed. Thanks for the patch.

Checking in nsMovemailIncomingServer.cpp;
/cvsroot/mozilla/mailnews/local/src/nsMovemailIncomingServer.cpp,v  <-- 
nsMovemailIncomingServer.cpp
new revision: 1.19; previous revision: 1.18
done
Checking in nsMovemailIncomingServer.h;
/cvsroot/mozilla/mailnews/local/src/nsMovemailIncomingServer.h,v  <-- 
nsMovemailIncomingServer.h
new revision: 1.7; previous revision: 1.6
done

Comment 14

[Dieter Rethmeyer]

Hello,

I just tested movemail with nightly
Mozilla 1.8a6, Copyright (c) 2003-2004 mozilla.org, build 2004121505

Now movemail does not work at all.
I created a new movemail account, sent a mail to myself and saw it in the
/var/spool/mail/<user> file. But mozilla did not retrieve it with movemail /
does not copy it to <profile>/Mail/inbox, neither with "Get messages" (manual)
nor automatically at startup or after xx minutes. Bug should be reopened, the
fix does not work.

Dieter

Comment 15

[Hans Werner Strube]

Attachment: Port of 201055.patch to mozilla-1.7.x

Attached is a backport of the patch to mozilla-1.7.x, seems to work with 1.7.5
(not tested with earlier 1.7 sub-versions).

Comment 16

[Doug Wright]

*** Bug 238101 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***