Hey all. I am a relatively new Courier-IMAP mail server administrator. I have been having a couple of problems with my mail clients, but I re-built the RPM today with the --enable-workarounds-for-imap-client-bugs option and things seem to be better already. Stupid broken mail clients ;).

Anyway, I am having a problem with fetchmail (this problem existed even before the enabling of the workaround for the imap client bugs).

The problem is this:

I use fetchmail as a backend for xbiff to let me know when I have new mail. Nothing fancy, it just flags if I have any unread messages in my mailbox at all.

It worked fine with UW-imapd. But with Courier-IMAP, the xbiff flag never goes on, even if I get new mail. Here is the log of the conversation that fetchmail gives when I use it when I know there is new mail in my box:

Enter password for bj...@mail.ischo.com: fetchmail: 5.3.1 querying mail.ischo.com (protocol IMAP) at Wed, 26 Jul 2000 13: 18:55 -0400 (EDT) fetchmail: IMAP< * OK Courier-IMAP ready. Copyright 1998-2000 Double Precision, Inc. See COPYING for distribution information. fetchmail: IMAP> A0001 CAPABILITY fetchmail: IMAP< * CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 CHILDREN NAMESPACE THREAD-ORDEREDSUBJECT SORT fetchmail: IMAP< A0001 OK CAPABILITY completed fetchmail: Protocol identified as IMAP4 rev 1 fetchmail: IMAP> A0002 LOGIN "bji" "*" fetchmail: IMAP< A0002 OK LOGIN Ok. fetchmail: selecting or re-polling default folder fetchmail: IMAP> A0003 EXAMINE "INBOX" fetchmail: IMAP< * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Recent) fetchmail: IMAP< * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS ()] No permanent flags permitted fetchmail: IMAP< * 13 EXISTS fetchmail: IMAP< * 1 RECENT fetchmail: IMAP< * OK [UIDVALIDITY 964048848] fetchmail: IMAP< A0003 OK [READ-ONLY] Ok 13 messages (12 seen) for bji at mail.ischo.com. fetchmail: IMAP> A0004 LOGOUT fetchmail: IMAP< * BYE Courier-IMAP server shutting down fetchmail: IMAP< A0004 OK LOGOUT completed fetchmail: normal termination, status 0

Fetchmail exit status 0 indicates new mail. Great!

Now I run fetchmail a second time, without having touched my mailbox in any way at all (so the new mail is still there, unread):

Enter password for bj...@mail.ischo.com: fetchmail: 5.3.1 querying mail.ischo.com (protocol IMAP) at Wed, 26 Jul 2000 13: 20:09 -0400 (EDT) fetchmail: IMAP< * OK Courier-IMAP ready. Copyright 1998-2000 Double Precision, Inc. See COPYING for distribution information. fetchmail: IMAP> A0001 CAPABILITY fetchmail: IMAP< * CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 CHILDREN NAMESPACE THREAD-ORDEREDSUBJECT SORT fetchmail: IMAP< A0001 OK CAPABILITY completed fetchmail: Protocol identified as IMAP4 rev 1 fetchmail: IMAP> A0002 LOGIN "bji" "*" fetchmail: IMAP< A0002 OK LOGIN Ok. fetchmail: selecting or re-polling default folder fetchmail: IMAP> A0003 EXAMINE "INBOX" fetchmail: IMAP< * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Recent) fetchmail: IMAP< * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS ()] No permanent flags permitted fetchmail: IMAP< * 13 EXISTS fetchmail: IMAP< * 0 RECENT fetchmail: IMAP< * OK [UIDVALIDITY 964048848] fetchmail: IMAP< A0003 OK [READ-ONLY] Ok 13 messages (13 seen) for bji at mail.ischo.com. fetchmail: IMAP> A0004 LOGOUT fetchmail: IMAP< * BYE Courier-IMAP server shutting down fetchmail: IMAP< A0004 OK LOGOUT completed fetchmail: normal termination, status 1

Now fetchmail's exit status is 1, meaning no new mail. Bummer.

Looks like the server is responding that there are no "recent" messages, and fetchmail interprets this to mean, "no new mail".

UW-imap's server must have had a different concept of "recent" messages, because it presumably left the unread messages as "recent" since I still had not read them.

Does anyone have any comments on this situation? Is fetchmail broken? Is Courier-IMAP broken? Was UW-imap broken? Is my understanding of how this stuff should work broken?

Thanks! Bryan

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