83816 - IMAP: "Remove it immediately" only marks messages as deleted on the server (and hides from UI).

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[1984]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.17 i686; en-US; rv:0.9+) Gecko/20010531
BuildID:    2001053121

IMAP messages are not deleted when model in
Edit->Mail/NewsAccountSetting->ServerSettings is set to Remove it immediately.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Select Remove it immediately setting in Server Settings
2. Delete a message. The message dissapears alright


Actual Results:  If you come back later on the mailbox, or after a press on the
GetMessage button, or just check with another mail client, the message isn't
even marked for deletion.

Expected Results:  The message should at least have been marked for deletion.

I actually have 2 IMAP mail accounts on Mozilla.
The *weird thing* about that problem is that message deletion works well for my
second account, while it has no deletion effect on my first account!
The 2 IMAP servers I get my mail from are both IMAP4rev1 v12.264, but run on
totally different machines.
Where the problem comes from I have no idea, at the beginning I thought it was
maybe coming from the servers, but they seem to are of the same build.

Comment 1

[Aleksey Nogin]

I see the same with Cyrus IMAP4 v1.5.19. I am running 2001060511 on RedHat 7.1
This bug is related to bug 61816, but does not seem to be a duplicate.

Comment 2

[Aleksey Nogin]

OK, I did some invertigating and I found at least two seperate problems.

1) "Delete it immediatelly" does not really delete it immediatelly! Instead, it
marks it as deleted and stops showing it in UI ("Get message"/etc will _not_
show them again). "Compact folder" command will delete those messages. However
accessing the folder using another Imap client will show those messages (marked
as deleted).

2) If you are using a "mark as deleted" mode and you change the mode to "delete
immediatelly" (while still looking at Inbox) it will do something really weird:
- it will delete a message and remove it from UI
- it will think that it's still supposed to show the deleted messages and it
will show them again after next biff (but without the "deleted" icon).
Restarting Mozilla after changing Imap preferences solves this problem.

My questions to mscott and others:
a) Is 1 a bug or a feature?
b) should I keep this bug for (1) and file (2) as a separate bug?

A question to the reporter - do you have any other problems not described by (1)
or (2)?

Comment 3

[1984]

Hello Aleksey,
From what I see/understand/expect you are right to split this bug report in two.
- "Delete it immediatelly" *should* really delete it immediatelly!
- and "2) seems to be a duplicate of bug 61816, didn't found it sorry :-(
  

So I don't see other problems than "1)" and "2)"

Comment 4

[Aleksey Nogin]

OK, updating the summary to clarify that we are talking about (1) here. Namely,
"remove it immediatelly" should really remove them immediatelly from Imap
server, not just remove it from UI and mark deleted on the server.

Comment 5

[Aleksey Nogin]

I filed a bug report anout the second problem - see bug 86225 "Changing IMAP
delete mode does not change the state properly (have to restart Mozilla)"

Comment 6

[Aleksey Nogin]

Clarifying the summary.

Comment 7

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Take a look at bug 60031.

Comment 8

[Aleksey Nogin]

There are many duplicates of the "problem 2" (IMAP delete mode change requires
restart) - bug 60031, bug 74810, bug 86225 and, finally, bug 94660 that lists
this problem as fixed.

Still, AFAIK (haven't try to retest yet) "problem 1" that this bug is about
still exists.

Comment 9

[Denis Antrushin]

To permanently remove message from IMAP server, one must send EXPUNGE
command. But this command doesn't has arguments, so it will remove *all*
messages on server marked as deleted. This means that you can't delete
only messages marked as deleted *after* you changed your prefs to
"delete immediately". Is it okay?

Comment 10

[Aleksey Nogin]

I think that should be OK - the "delete immediatelly" should just send an
EXPUNGE command immediatelly after making any message as deleted... And people
who are uncomfortable with their messages being gone so fast and so
irrevercibly, just shouldn't use this mode.

Comment 11

[David :Bienvenu]

if we did that, people couldn't undo their deletes. This is a wontfix. You can
either compact the folder, or if you select it again and there are more than 5
or 10 deleted messages, we'll expunge the folder.

Comment 12

[Peter Weilbacher]

Sorry, but this is a really stupid remark. When I select "Remove it immediately"
I *expect* that it is removed and that I cannot undo it! If you want to be able
to undo, you can select the trash option or mark as deleted.

If you do not want to implement at least comment 10 then give us a way to see,
that we still have hundreds of messages which are there and taking space. Or do
I have to start up pine every time I want to see that???

Comment 13

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 210067 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Anthony Howe]

WONTFIX!!! How useless is that!  This is a bug.  Clear change in behaviour from
the old version of Netscape 4.7.

Comment 15

[gene smith]

Why I think this needs to be fixed: I have MailNews running at work getting rid
of spam from my imap/exchange INBOX as they come in. Unfortunately, I get 100's
of spams per real email (very low s/n ratio). At home, using Outlook Web Access
(OWA) I still see the 100's of spams mixed with my 1 or 2 useful messages. If
"Remove it immediately" worked I would not see so much noise via the web at home.

Also, OWA (or Outlook for that matter) does not see the "deleted" spam messages
as "marked for deletion" but as just unread. I have not tried other clients.

Granted, I could go to work and compact the INBOX or restart MailNews, but that
would not solve my problem, since MailNews is, when I am home, basically being
used as a spam filtering daemon. (Or possibly I could make a cron job to
periodically restart MailNews ... :)

Comment 16

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

I agree with what Gene said.  This, and other more or less related bugs should
be fixed.  Current model that Mozilla Mail uses for flushing changes to IMAP
server isn't good.  It is just complicating things and creating bugs (this bug,
and some other bugs would be avoided/resolved by using different approach).  If
the model for working with IMAP included commiting changes to IMAP server on
every email check, it would result with less bugs (since the code would be
simpler because the IMAP server would have correct current state of folders),
and happier users.  Yeah, the way Mozilla Mail handles IMAP right now probably
creates less load on IMAP server, less network traffic, and as result it may
seem to the user as if the Mozilla Mail is checking mail faster.  But it isn't
worth all the trouble that we (the users) have because of this approach as soon
as we try to use IMAP as IMAP (and not just as fancy replacement for POP).