[horde] Server side email searches with ActiveSync not working

Wed Apr 25 18:28:22 UTC 2018

Ad-Min wrote
> Sebastian Arcus-2 wrote
>> On 18/04/18 09:08, Sebastian Arcus wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 17/04/18 14:53, Sebastian Arcus wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 17/04/18 13:16, Ad-Min wrote:
>>>>> Sebastian Arcus-2 wrote
>>>>>> I am struggling to get server side email searches working with 
>>>>>> ActiveSync.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My setup is:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Lighttpd 1.4.49
>>>>>> Dovecot 2.2.33
>>>>>> Exim 4.90
>>>>>> PHP 5.6.35
>>>>>> Postgresql 9.2.24
>>>>>> Horde 5.2.17
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have tested imap searches through Thunderbird (there is an option 
>>>>>> "run
>>>>>> search on server) and it is working fine and fast. I assume this
>>>>>> means
>>>>>> Dovecot is configured correctly and can do imap searches?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have tested the Horde email searches on an iPhone 5S with iOS
>>>>>> 11.2.6
>>>>>> and a Jolla phone with Sailfish 2.1. Both of them have email
>>>>>> configured
>>>>>> in ActiveSync mode. On both of them, if I force them to search on the
>>>>>> server only, they sit there saying "searching" for a few minutes, and
>>>>>> then return no results (and no error either).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On the server side, I can see the command being sent by the device to
>>>>>> Horde in the individual device ActiveSync log 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> </snip>
>>> 
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But I just can't be sure it is actually passed to Dovecot - at least
>>>>>> I
>>>>>> can't see anything in the Dovecot logs to indicate that.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Are there any other settings needed for ActiveSync server side email
>>>>>> searches to work? Can I troubleshoot this further, or look in any
>>>>>> other
>>>>>> logs?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Any advice much appreciated.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I had a similar issue (windows, hmailserver as backend). My problem 
>>>>> was not
>>>>> that it doesn't work, but rather that clients timed out searching 
>>>>> very large
>>>>> mailboxes. I was not able to fix this, but it works fine on smaller
>>>>> mailboxes. You didn't mention anything about mailbox size, so I'm just
>>>>> throwing this out there.
>>>>>
>>>>> I looked at my imap logs on hmailserver and confirmed that the search 
>>>>> was
>>>>> actually talking place. The issue was the search took about 4 minutes
>>>>> to
>>>>> complete and the clients (all that I tried) timed out after 60 or 90
>>>>> seconds.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would start by enabling imap logging in your mail server and 
>>>>> looking to
>>>>> see if the search is actually talking place. Likely it is (since that 
>>>>> is a
>>>>> working function of horde activesync), so maybe you can track down 
>>>>> the error
>>>>> from there.
>>>>
>>>> Thank you for answering and the suggestions. In the meanwhile I have 
>>>> spent a number of hours last night investigating. One of the 
>>>> possibilities I considered is large mailboxes which would mean long 
>>>> search time. I logged over telnet to Dovecot and manually ran a SEARCH 
>>>> BODY imap command. This indeed took over 5 minutes to return results.
>>>>
>>>> Then I configured Lucene FTS indexing plugin in Dovecot - and after 
>>>> indexing the mailbox, the search started over the telnet session went 
>>>> down to less then 1 second! Still, no joy over ActiveSync.
>>>>
>>>> Then I went and enabled debugging in Dovecot to the highest level of 
>>>> verbosity. Still, there is no sign of SEARCH commands being sent from 
>>>> Horde to Dovecot. I'm not really sure what is happening, but the 
>>>> ActiveSync server-side email search seems to be broken somehow. I have 
>>>> posted a bug report at Horde.org - maybe someone will get a chance to 
>>>> look into this.
>>> 
>>> OK - I think I finally figured out the mystery. My IMAP server in 
>>> horde/imp/config/backends.local.php was using an old syntax:
>>> 
>>> $servers['secure-imap'] = array(
>>> 
>>> This syntax is not even present any more in the current backends.php - 
>>> so I guess it must have been defaulting to the simple IMAP server - 
>>> which, again, I am guessing that it doesn't support server side email 
>>> searches.
>>> 
>>> I should have read the upgrade DOCS a lot more closely - but it doesn't 
>>> help at all that there are no warning or error messages in the Horde log 
>>> when an ActiveSync device initiates server-side email searches, but the 
>>> back-end doesn't support it (or at least I didn't find any errors in the 
>>> logs, even in debug mode).
>>> 
>>> Now everything is working fine and server-side searches return results 
>>> correctly. I thought I would post here, in case anyone else stumbles 
>>> over the same problem.
>> 
>> I am sorry to report that this problem has reared its head again. The 
>> server-side email searches through ActiveSync are being so unpredictable 
>> to the point that 1 in 20 might work.
>> 
>> My Dovecot server has Lucene full text indexing enabled, and if a run a 
>> BODY search through Thunderbird, passing the search to the server over 
>> IMAP, the results come back in 2 seconds, on an Inbox with 20 000 emails.
>> 
>> The same search executed from a phone through ActiveSync doesn't return 
>> any results.
>> 
>> I've turned up debugging all the way up in Dovecot, and when searching 
>> from the phone, all I see is just a bunch of EXAMINE imap commands - no 
>> SEARCH command. I don't know if Horde is supposed to use SEARCH imap 
>> command, or has a different way of doing server side email searches?
>> 
>> Any thoughts on this would be gratefully appreciated.
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> 
> 
> Are you aware that nearly all mobile activesync clients don't work
> properly?
> I tested almost every one from the google play store and none of them
> worked
> perfectly, except one called Nine. $15 and worth every penny. The only
> other
> mobile activesync client that worked (90%) was the built in email in
> lineage
> OS. Even the official MS outlook app for android stinks (but the search
> does
> work, if I recall correctly). If you're using iphone, its probably the
> same,
> but I couldn't say for sure. 
> 
> 
> 
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By the way, after seeing the poor quality of android clients, I asked here
to make sure I wasn't crazy. 

http://horde.690.n7.nabble.com/Android-clients-td141850.html

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