[horde] Imp/Dimp Inbox incorrectly shows 0 emails

[Andy Dorman]

On 12/02/2010 01:17 PM, Michael M Slusarz wrote:
> Quoting Joe Besko <jbesko at msu.edu>:
>
>> Quoting Andy Dorman <adorman at ironicdesign.com>:
>>
>>> Using Horde/IMP/DIMP, Cyrus 2.3 and OpenLDAP (latest debian stable)
>>>
>>> Just updated all Horde packages to latest versions below before this
>>> problem happened...
>>>
>>> Horde 3.3.11
>>> Imp 4.3.9
>>> Dimp 1.1.6
>>>
>>> We have several thousand users over several domains on a cluster of
>>> servers using Horde/Imp/Dimp webmail with Cyrus 2.3 IMAP and virtual
>>> hosts. It works great for everyone except one person apparently...
>>>
>>> Just this past weekend we had one user report an empty Inbox even
>>> though he was sure he had email and indeed, the Horde sidebar folder
>>> showed 17 total /8 unread.
>>>
>>> After much poking and prodding over 3 days here is what we have found...
>>>
>>> - we are unable to recreate this problem on any other account.
>>> - if you do a search on the Inbox with no parameters, you can see all
>>> the email in the inbox.
>>> - If you move all the Inbox emails to another folder, the other
>>> folder shows them correctly
>>> - restarting Cyrus & horde has no effect
>>> - re-indexing the Cyrus mailbox has no effect (and I have confirmed
>>> the mail files, db files and directories all have the proper
>>> ownership and perms)
>>> - when I set this account up on Thunderbird/Snowdove, the Inbox
>>> displays it's contents correctly.
>>>
>>> As a temporary bandaid I have used IMP search to create a
>>> "virtual_inbox" and set that folder to display on login.
>>>
>>> I am now working through the IMP code trying to figure out when/where
>>> IMP decides a mailbox is empty and see what Cyrus IMAP is passing to
>>> IMP to indicate that.
>>>
>>> But I wanted to ask the list if anyone has ever seen this before with
>>> Cyrus?
>>>
>>> In searching the list archives I found one or two instances of a
>>> similar problem, but they appeared to be with a different IMAP server
>>> and hence not applicable to this case.
>>>
>>> Any thoughts are welcome. And when we figure this out I will post
>>> back to the group what we found. Possibly we have stumbled on a
>>> "corner case" for what Cyrus is telling IMP and we can help improve
>>> IMP by figuring out how to handle it. We will see.
>>
>> Check the user's sorting pref on the Inbox. The user may have changed
>> the sort field and failing to display all the entries. You can also
>> find this user's sortpref and delete that and the default sort order
>> will be in effect again.
>>
>> It's been pointed out that the culprit is likely the c-client library
>> causing this to fail.
>>
>> Hope this works for you in this case.
>
> This has come up a few times recently. And nobody has shown that it is a
> Horde issue yet. It sounds instead like a c-client issue. As Joe
> suggested, try changing the sort order in the mailbox. Issues with a
> certain sort style in a mailbox would explain why messages are viewable
> in a virtual inbox vs. the regular inbox.
>
> michael
>

Please do not get me wrong.  I do not think this should be thought of as a 
"Horde" or IMP issue.  If it was we would have thousands of people complaining.

:-)

As it is, we have a single address out of thousands who's INBOX always shows as 
empty when it definitely has read & unread emails in it.  I have:

- configured another address with all the same preferences to try and recreate 
the problem and failed.

- re-indexed the user's mailbox store as the cyrus user (NOT root) using 
cyrreconstruct -r and the INBOX displays correctly in another IMAP client.

So I agree it sounds like an IMAP c-client issue.  And in fact we checked and we 
DID update all the PHP libraries on all our servers the day AFTER the problem 
was first reported.  So if it is a IMAP client issue it has been around for a while.

I was just asking the list if anyone using Cyrus has run into this and if so, 
did they find out anything about it?

FWIW, I did as suggested and tried all the different default sort criteria in 
Mailbox and Folder Display options.  Still no list of emails displayed in the INBOX.

I WILL keep the list posted about anything we discover.  And thank you for any 
other thoughts or ideas you might have.

Sincerely,

-- 
Andy Dorman
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