IMAP Inbox corrupted - Can't delete or move messages

[tmix]

I have been using RoundCube for some time and really enjoyed it. Alas, for the second time my IMAP inbox got "corrupted" (something that never happened with different email clients, and something my Service Provider has never heard before either), so I strongly suspect RoundCube to be the culprit (I have not used any other mail-clients for the last month).

The Symptoms are as follows:

• Delete message in IMAP inbox fails (for all messages in inbox) without error log or message
• Move message from IMAP inbox to different folder fails (for all messages in inbox) without error log or message
• Messages in inbox will be shown multiple times if logged in for some time (Behold, the return of the multiplying undeletable Zombie-Message)
• Overall every action in the IMAP inbox is rather slow (e.g. opening a mail)
• The rest seems to work fine, all other folders work as advertised.

Using a different client (Thunderbird, SquirrelMail?) does not solve the problem. Compacting the inbox does not solve the problem.

This problem is really annoying: moving all messages *again* to a new IMAP account (which takes ages), changing all email addresses *again*, reimporting all address books, email-addresses *again*...

I've attached the (anonymized) log file, yet when this problem occurred (06-May-2009 at around 2 o'clock) nothing was in the logs.

These are the version information which I scratched of some page, I hope them to be helpful.
# Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) DAV/2 PHP/5.2.0-8+etch11 mod_ssl/2.2.3 OpenSSL/0.9.8c mod_perl/2.0.2 Perl/v5.8.8
# MySQL client version: 5.0.32

If you need more info: please ask!

[tmix]

Logfile from the corrupted IMAP inbox (but does not show any specific problem)

[tmix]

This was the las mail (SPAM) I received that I was able to move - maybe it is the problem?

[tmix]

I forgot to mention it: My Service Provider told me that no error was logged in the mailserver logs.

[alec]

What IMAP server/version? If you use caching, try to truncate cache table in mysql. I cannot imagine that roundcube could break inbox, but if so, you probably need to fix it on IMAP server side.

[tmix]

Replying to alec:

What IMAP server/version?

uw-imap, current version.

If you use caching, try to truncate cache table in mysql.

Will take a look into it (don't know were or what settings I should adjust), but I'm afraid I don't have much time at the moment for these kind of things (I have already my hands full managing the contents of my inbox without any such email-problems...).

I cannot imagine that roundcube could break inbox, but if so, you probably need to fix it on IMAP server side.

The response from my SP (roughly translated from German): IMAP-connections may be not properly closed (by RoundCube) and then server-processes may linger on blocking the inbox. He will try to kill these processes, then we'll see. I'll post more when I know more.

I guess the culprit here is a combination of server and client, but I'm not really in a position to file a bug against uw-imap, beginning that I don't know where to post a bug-report and have no access to server-logs or any installation details besides RoundCube... As I said, I had no problems using a different client for years (and this kind of problem was unheard by my SP), so I guess RoundCube does something "differently" (not necessarily "wrong" as per RFC3501) and in a way "unexpected" by uw-imap. So right know I would blame both sides, but am more leaning on uw-imap. Yet still, this should be tracked down on RoundCube's side as well.

[tmix]

Replying to alec:

If you use caching, try to truncate cache table in mysql.

I'm afraid there is a misunderstanding: I log out of RoundCube, close the Firefox tab with RoundCube and then log in using a different Client, but the inbox is still "corrupted". Once the inbox is this state, I can no longer delete or move emails in the inbox. So unless I misunderstood something here, changing caching settings in RoundCube won't help.

[tmix]

Hurray! We have a workaround (for now). My Service Provider killed those pesky lingering uw-imap processes off (or some such) - now my inbox works again.

I guess at the moment it may be ok to go process hunting every couple of months, but once RoundCube (and the combination with uw-imap) is more wide-spread, more people will run into this problem. Could somebody here file a bug report against uw-imap? Or even better replicate this problem? Find out what RoundCube does (and other mail-clients don't) that sends uw-imap to Cloudcuckooland? I'm afraid filing a but against uw-imap is a little bit out of my league...

[egallego]

[I came here looking for an unrelated bug]

Indeed we have seen this error, and the fix was to install Dovecot and run away of UW-IMAP. No more errors like this.

We could fix the error live however by manually editing the corrupted mailbox file.

IMHO this should be closed, given that no IMAP client should be able to corrupt server's file, so it is a UW bug.