98774 - mail should update message status on server immediately, not wait for "Compact"

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[Michael Cramer]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.3+) Gecko/20010904
BuildID:    2001090408

When new mail arrives in Mozilla and it is read/marked/deleted/whatever, the
IMAP server is not notified until you "Compact Folder" (or, presumably, on Exit,
if "Compact on Exit" is enabled). If you have a second IMAP client running --
such as Gnome's MailCheck applet -- it just keeps spinning, thinking you haven't
noticed the new mail.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set up Mozilla and a separate IMAP client to point at the same account.
2. Send yourself some new mail.
3. Wait for both apps to see the new mail
4. Read the new mail in Mozilla


Actual Results:  Mozilla doesn't change the status of the message on the server,
so the second client continues to think there is new mail waiting. Compacting
the folder (by hand, or on Exit) is needed to send the changes to the server.

Expected Results:  Mozilla should mark the messages as read right away -- or at
least batch the read-message actions and commit them when it checks for new mail
the next time. Tying it to the "Check Mail" interval seems like a reasonable
compromise if we don't want to send imap commands back and forth every time we
read a message.

This is likely to be connected to bug 83816, which deals specifically with
deleting messages.

Comment 1

[Alex Fishman]

This is absolutely the most annoying bug in Mozilla right now!  Everyone I know
hates this more than anything, and says to me "Yeah I like mozilla, but its IMAP
client is broken"  Please fix it!

Comment 2

[hanasaki]

All of my folders are name .FolderName

Comment 3

[Keyser Sose]

Marking NEW.

Comment 4

[Jeff Hedlund]

This is also annoying when Mozilla crashes and I have already read 30 or so
messages and it redownloads them all after restarting Mozilla.  Even worse, it
creates duplicates in filtered folders (due to it copying it their again).

I am using Build ID: 2002021203

And I have noticed it in the last few weeks of builds as well.

Comment 5

[Calvin Liu]

Works for me.
Reporter, would you try again? If it works, please mark it as WORKSFORME and close it.

Comment 6

[Michael Cramer]

Nope...it's still doing the same thing. Steps:

1) Read all mail and compact. Wait for gnome mail-check to stop spinning.
2) Send new mail from a different account.
3) Wait for both mozilla and mail-check to show new mail.
4) Read mail in mozilla.

At this point, mozilla correctly recognizes there is no new mail. Mail-check on
the other hand continues to spin. Also, the headers of the message in my IMAP
account are unchanged.

5) 'Compact' the folder in mozilla.

The following four lines are now added to the headers of the message in the IMAP
account and mail-check eventually stops spinning:

Status: RO
X-Status: 
X-Keywords:                 
X-UID: 6466

It seems to me that these headers should be written much earlier, allowing other
applications to see that Mozilla has read mail, without having to wait for a
'Compact'.

Comment 7

[Eamon McDermott]

Was this ever fixed? I'm still having this problem on 1.3

Comment 8

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

No, apperently it was never fixed.  I'm using 1.4.1 on work and 1.6b at home,
and it seems they both still have this same problem.  Plus there's (most likely
related?) bug that even Mozilla gets confused from time to time by this.  It
goes something something like this: I delete some unread messages, and when
Mozilla rechecks for new mail it shows there's some new mail in that folder,
after I click on the folder Mozilla opens it and shows no new messages.

I guess developers wanted to decrease load Mozilla places on IMAP server by not
minimazing number of updates.  This works if you use single application
(Mozilla) preferably from single computer.  But then you really don't need IMAP.

Could somebody implement configuration option to have Mozilla update message
status (and actually commit deletitions and moving messages from one folder to
another) at least on every "new mail check"?  This would be *very* appriciated
by all those of us who are using different email clients (sometimes
simultaniously).  This would place more load on IMAP server, and make "new mail
check" somewhat slower, but when you have need for something like this, there's
really no other way around it.

Comment 9

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

Hm, I just realized I have couple of typos.  Most serious one is one extra
"not", that sentence should read:

I guess developers wanted to decrease load Mozilla places on IMAP server by
minimazing number of updates...

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

is this resolved?

Comment 11

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

Looks like it works OK now in Thunderbird 1.0.8.

Comment 12

[David :Bienvenu]

What this bug is really asking for is for us to issue CHECKs occasionally, to force the imap server to really commit changes we've been making on the server all along, and presumably tell other connections about those changes. What we did, long ago, was promote NOOP (the command we issue to check for new mail) to CHECK. You can also change the hidden pref "mail.imap.noop_check_count" to 1 so that we will always use CHECK to check for new mail. We also issue CHECK if there have been more than 10 flag changes.