Re: Two problems with new FC3 x86_64 install

[Pawel Salek <pawsa theochem kth se>]

On 12/28/2004 06:55:12 PM, Willem Riede wrote:
> On 12/28/2004 11:05:03 AM, Pawel Salek wrote:
> > On 12/27/2004 10:26:17 PM, Willem Riede wrote:
> > > 2. I deliver mail with procmail to Maildir folders, new messages
> get
> > > delivered
> > > to for exampe ~/Maildir/.Test/new, but don't get noticed by balsa
> > > until Test gets re-opened. Is that normal?
> >
> > No, it is not. I assume that clicking "check" does not make balsa
> > discover them? And the periodic checking does not discover them
> either?
> > I believe that even opening another message from the same folder
> should
> > have the same effect of checking the folder for new messages. In
> any
> > case balsa may not discover that instantly. We might be using
> something
> > like libgamin for this (with all its tradeoffs).
>
> Just read up on gamin. It's a file change monitor, right? That won't
> work in  this case, I think, as we must get our info from the IMAP  
> server as to what  new messages have arrived...

I have misunderstood you. I thought I meant that balsa does not  
discover these mails by itself. It is dovecot that does not discover  
them, is that correct?

IMAP server sends * xxx EXISTS response to notify the client about new  
mail. You can run balsa with -D option and grep the output for EXISTS.

I have checked the dovecot documentation, and I can see that dovecot  
can be configured not to send this response under certain  
circumstances. Check out "client_workarounds" keyword in  
/etc/dovecot.conf - its value should preferably be empty. You probably  
might want to set "mailbox_check_interval" to some low value (30?).

dovecot is in a bit special because it treats NOOP command (No  
Operation) as CHECK while the only purpose of this command is to give  
the server opportunity to send responses it is forbidden to send in  
response to some other commands. It also breaks IMAP standard in some  
more obscure cases, too (when APPEND command fails, the server's  
response will be nonconformant and hang the client). I had used dovecot  
(0.99) for few months in a medium size environment, got hurt few times  
and went back to UW-IMAP (with mbx as the default mailbox format), at  
least for now - 1.x that is under development is supposed to have many  
of these problems fixed. Your mileage may vary, as they say. This is  
off-topic, though.

Pawel