239133 - Mail Should Synchronize with POP Server on Exit

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Networking: POP, defect)

Description

[Ben Ruppel]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040322 Firefox/0.8.0+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040322 Firefox/0.8.0+

As described in Bug 185791, actions taken in Mail/Thunderbird on POP mail
account messages are not transmitted to the POP server unless a biff or a Get
Msg command occurs.  This means that one can delete several messages in Mail,
close mail before a biff or Get Msg command happens, and then see those deleted
messages still on the server if one accesses that server through webmail or
another mail client.

To one who does not know that a biff or Get Msg command is required to send
changes back to the server, it appears that Mail randomly misses messages and is
not performing the actions that it claims to be.

This bug is a proposal for an interim solution.  Ideally, the POP server would
be updated after every message deletion.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.open a pop mail account
2.delete a message
3.close Mail before a biff happens and without checking for new messages
4.open the pop mail account with a webmail client
Actual Results:  
The messages deleted in Mail still appear in the inbox. 

Expected Results:  
The messages should be deleted in the inbox when viewed through webmail.

Comment 1

[Howard Chu]

(In reply to comment #0)
 
> This bug is a proposal for an interim solution.  Ideally, the POP server would
> be updated after every message deletion.

That would be nice, but that means keeping a POP connection available. Simply
reconnecting on every delete operation would be pretty slow (at least for me,
establishing a POP session/logging in is very slow). Keeping the POP connection
open after a Get Msg command might work, but most POP servers have a very short
client timeout, so they will automatically close the connection pretty quickly.
Also POP servers tend to keep the client's inbox locked on the server machine,
so keeping the session open will interfere with the delivery of new mail there.
All in all, most POP server implementations just aren't well suited to real-time
interactive use of this nature.

Comment 2

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

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 3

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"

Comment 4

[David :Bienvenu]

Yes, Howard's completely right, plus doing things on exit is generally problematic.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to David :Bienvenu from comment #4)
> Yes, Howard's completely right, plus doing things on exit is generally
> problematic.

So WONTFIX?  didn't we wontfix a bug like this?  (I can't find one)

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

per comment 4. (although perhaps a different option is possible that is not done on exit)