270675 - Mail left on Server not deleted when deleted from Inbox -- possibly MrPostman related.

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[Sami Mikhail]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: version 0.9+ (20041118)

Account Settings:
Leave Mail on server == checked.
for at Most n days == not checked.
Until I delete or move them from Inbox == checked.

Mail never gets deleted from server. Regardless of how it is moved out of the
Inbox (filtered, manually deleted) or removed from Trash. 

This is happening on all my accounts. 
POP3 Access to my provider's POP3 server
POP3 access to Yahoo and Hotmail through MrPostman.

All three behave the same.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Leave Mail on server == checked.
2.for at Most n days == not checked.
3.Until I delete or move them from Inbox == checked.
4.get mail
5.delete some identifiable sub-set
6.empty trash to make sure it's good and gone
7.get mail again (assuming that's when the delete is sent.)
8.go check on server via HTTP interfaces: mail is still there. (Yes I did log
out and log in just to make sure they are rereading the appropriate inbox.)


Actual Results:  
Mail is left on server indefintely

Expected Results:  
Mail is deleted when I remove it from the Inbox.

Comment 1

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

> 7.get mail again (assuming that's when the delete is sent.)

I think I saw a Mozilla mail&news bug for same problem but I can not remember
bug number.
As far as I remeber, "delete" request is not "when get", is "after get", then
deletion is probably not effective when non-continuous connection, although it
is not certain.

(Q1) Do you use ADSL? Or dial-up?
(Q2) Can you get POP3 protocol log?
     See http://www.mozilla.org/quality/mailnews/mail-troubleshoot.html#pop
     - set NSPR_LOG_MODULES=POP3:5 when POP3
     Attach log file to this bug(text/plain;), please.
     Please note that log file is overlayed when restart.

Comment 2

[Sami Mikhail]

This is happening at work: Continuous full bore T1 connection. I don't think
that's the issue.

I will try to get a log when I get into work later on this afternoon.

Comment 3

[Sami Mikhail]

Attachment: POP3 Log

Status:
Hotmail: no mail deleted.
Yahoo:	 no mail deleted.
Home (augusmail.com): no mail deleted.

Comment 4

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

"DELE" command was issued to 5 mails in your log.
(Sorry but I can not distiguish account because of parallel session)
See your mail box(Easy way is : compact folder, then edit folder file).
And search mails which has "X-ULID: YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY" header.
Where is it? In Inbox? Or other mail folder? How did you move it?

            (UIDL response)
             RECV: XXX YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
                   where XXX       = mail number in this session
                   where YYY...YYY = UIDL

            (UIDL response)
Line= 7888  0[274798]: RECV: 735 30a1007f
Line= 7906  0[274798]: RECV: 744 30a12922
Line= 7910  0[274798]: RECV: 746 30a12a57

Line= 8657  0[274798]: SEND: DELE 735
Line= 8673  0[274798]: SEND: DELE 744
Line= 8682  0[274798]: SEND: DELE 746

            (UIDL response)
Line=12249  0[274798]: RECV: 5 641_283464_13561_1638_4175_0_5940_15919_2065674171

Line=12326  0[274798]: SEND: DELE 5

            (UIDL response)
Line=12938  0[274798]: RECV: 740 30a12838

Line=13696  0[274798]: SEND: DELE 740

Comment 5

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Correction. Sorry for spam.
"X-UIDL:" header instead of "X-ULID:" header.

Comment 6

[Sami Mikhail]

Attachment: 5 log files.

ok, I may have uncovered something. (Or else I'm confused.)

Rather than try to parse through the log file and do the UIDL search/replace
mark thing (because I'm lazy). I decided to run t-bird once for each account...


When T-bird first comes up, it does the fetch for all the accounts. I wait
'till it's done. Then I delete some messages (I tried to delete several
manually, and several from the "Delete mail marked as junk..." menu to see if
that would make a difference. It didn't as it turns out.)

So what I saw:
augustmail.txt and august2.txt: main pop account goes directly to the pop
server. everything working like a champ now (!)
yahoo.txt: going through Mr.Postman to yahoo. also worked like a champ.
hotmail.txt hotmail2.txt: going through Mr.Postman also. DID NOT WORK AT ALL.

Now, I've fairly sure I wasn't halucinating before so:
1. Could the difference in behavior be attributed that I was only checking one
account at a time rather than waiting for the full mail refresh? (I have t-bird
set up to check all mails every 10 minutes -- never seeing mail deleted on that
refresh.)
2. With the Hotmail account I'm not ever seeing a DELE in the log. which is
probably why the mail is not getting deleted from that account (!) It is set up
exactly the same way as the other accounts. Is it possible that the issue here
is in account set up rather than in account processing?

Fairly sure I've just muddied up the waters pretty good with my methodology.
I'd be glad to try other things...

Comment 7

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

See
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=68124&atid=520159&func=detail&aid=981770
(This was found by searching "delete" in Bugs at MrPostman site in SourceForge)
Possibly something wrong in MrPostman.

Comment 8

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Sami Mikhail, add "MrPostman" in summary for other user's convenienece in
searching/understandig bug.

Comment 9

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Just information.
Similar phenomenon for Hotmail and "hotmail popper" has been found in
Mozillazine forum.
 http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=19017
Something wrong in Hotmail server or proxy software for hotmail?

Comment 10

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #6)
> So what I saw:
> augustmail.txt and august2.txt: main pop account goes directly to the pop
> server. everything working like a champ now (!)
> yahoo.txt: going through Mr.Postman to yahoo. also worked like a champ.
> hotmail.txt hotmail2.txt: going through Mr.Postman also. DID NOT WORK AT ALL.

I'm not a professional of analyzing protocol log and I do not want to look into
unrelated log data (I'm more lazy than you :-) )
Sami Mikhail, get protocol log for problematic account only, and watch
panacea.dat entries(UIDL for mails left on server is saved in this file).
 (1) Change Server Settings, and confirm all settings are set properly
    (1-1) Check for new messages at startup
          Enable this option for Hotmail account only
    (1-2) Check for message every NN minutes
          Enable this option for Hotmail account only  
 (2) Shutdown Thunderbird
 (3) Keep back up of panacea.dat in mail directry for the Hotmail account
     (See "Server Settings/"Local Directry")
 (4) Start Thunderbird with POP3 protocol log
 (5) Move a mail in Inbox to other folder,
     then see mail source and record X-UIDL header data(UIDL of the mail) 
 (6) Shutdown Thunderbird and keep backup of protocol log file
 (7) Keep back up of panacea.dat, then search UIDL of the moved mail
 (8) Start Thunderbird with POP3 protocol log
 (9) Mail check at start up is done
(10) Wait for next automatic mail check
(11) Wait for next automatic mail check again
(12) Shutdown Thunderbird and keep backup of protocol log file
(13) Keep back up of panacea.dat, then search UIDL of the moved mail
(14) See all POP3 protocol log files and check "UIDL" response and "DELE"

Comment 11

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Correction.
Keep backup of popstate.dat for UIDL data instead of panacea.dat
(I'm confusing with other bugs...)
Sorry for spam.

Comment 12

[Sami Mikhail]

Sorry it's been a while since last update. The issue only crops up on my work
set up and I have been swamped and will now be out of there for the rest of the
week.

I did almost what WADA suggested, only not exactly. What I saw was that the DELE
command is never generated for the Hotmail account.

On return to work I will go ahead and follow the procedure exactly and report
back the findings.

Question: Could this have anything at all to do with the fact that both accounts
are hosted on the same server (as far as Thunderbird is concerned anyway,
because they both have localhost for the server....) I know I'm reaching here,
but I can't figure out why I'm seeing the expected behaviour on Yahoo but not on
Hotmail. I would have expected to at least see the DELE being sent, with some
kind of error coming back.

PS: Updated summary as suggested

Comment 13

[Sami Mikhail]

For what it's worth:
The setting on MrPostman to only download Unread HotMail emails was confusing
the issue. T'bird was never seeing the Unread Emails on the server in order to
delete them.

D'Oh!!

Changing status to Invalid because this is NOT a T'bird bug. (If this is NOT the
correct statuts to change this to, please correct or let me know what to change
it to.)

Thanks for all the help!