K-Mail early disconnect from POP
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I'm not sure if this is: a) operator error b) working as designed c) a bug d) other. On the company POP3 server, we have "inbox" and several other folders. After I start K-Mail, a click on the server name (or on the server's "inbox" folder) causes K-Mail to request authentication, and then to commence download of my mail. However, if I select another folder before the download has finished, the process stops and I get an error message saying that it died unexpectedly before completion. In other words, while downloading 300 messages from the POP server, I can't go read my already-sorted mail without unintentionally (often) killing the server connection. Is that the way it's supposed to work, and what other people experience? My impression is that this is not 100%, but it has happened several times. I'm reluctant to repeat for verification, because a premature disconnect means the messages do not get deleted at the server. I already have many hundreds of duplicates. /kevin
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On June 5, 2002 03:53, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:
I'm not sure if this is:
a) operator error b) working as designed surely not
c) a bug may be
d) other.
On the company POP3 server, we have "inbox" and several other folders. After I start K-Mail, a click on the server name (or on the server's "inbox" folder) causes K-Mail to request authentication, and then to commence download of my mail. However, if I select another folder before the download has finished, the process stops and I get an error message saying that it died unexpectedly before completion.
In other words, while downloading 300 messages from the POP server, I can't go read my already-sorted mail without unintentionally (often) killing the server connection. Is that the way it's supposed to work, and what other people experience?
I do this very often, and no crash. However I remember seeing occasionally crashes before. may be they dissapeared with the upgrade to kde3
My impression is that this is not 100%, but it has happened several times. I'm reluctant to repeat for verification, because a premature disconnect means the messages do not get deleted at the server. I already have many hundreds of duplicates.
Try kshowmail from Mr. Eggert, it is a good tool for cleaning your mail server from duplicates and unwanted mail. I use it to delete spam from my public mail accounts before even downloading it into kmail. HTH, Matt T.
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I have KDE 3.0 (therefore, the most current K-Mail, yes?) Actually, what I have seen is that most -- or all -- of the messages on the server are downloaded to K-Mail, but the retrieval process exits early, before it completes the deletion. The server does not contain duplicates of its own content. It just fails to clean up after I've retrieved -- but only if I've attempted other actions in K-Mail, while the retrieval was occurring. So, the next time I connect, all those messages, plus new ones are downloaded. The previously downloaded copies are on my local system, and are already dispersed to my various folders, by the local filters. My local "inbox" is cleaned out seconds after each new download, so there's no way for either K-Mail OR the server to know that I'm receiving second or third copies of hundreds of messages. K-Mail almost never crashes. It's only the current interaction with the POP server that seems to get cut off, and that can be re-started... at the cost of retrieving many of the same messages again. Anyway, I've learned to watch that little progress indicator at the bottom of the K-Mail main window. If it shows any activity, I avoid starting any other action until it finishes. That's my workaround. But, since I already have many hundreds of duplicates in my folders, is there a K-Mail function (or a unix/linux tool) that will remove dupes from maildir folders? I found no mention of duplicate removal in the documents, nor in any K-Mail FAQ that I've located, so far. Also, the symptom is not consistent. It's merely happened several times in the past few weeks, and I've begun to pay attention to what's happening when a failure does occur. It also seems to happen only after two or three hundred messages have built up on the server (like after a weekend or a few days out of the office). I haven't seen the "process died early" warning when retrieving only small batches of messages. So, when I returned from a week of vacation on Monday, I held my breath and didn't even twitch a finger while 2891 messages were retrieved. Whew! Thank goodness it didn't fail on that one. I'd have been buried under duplicates the next time I connected... I guess I can chalk it up to "another one of life's/Linux's little mysteries". :-) /kevin On Wednesday 05 June 2002 06:09, Matt T. wrote:
In other words, while downloading 300 messages from the POP server, I can't go read my already-sorted mail without unintentionally (often) killing the server connection. Is that the way it's supposed to work, and what other people experience?
I do this very often, and no crash. However I remember seeing occasionally crashes before. may be they dissapeared with the upgrade to kde3
My impression is that this is not 100%, but it has happened several times. I'm reluctant to repeat for verification, because a premature disconnect means the messages do not get deleted at the server. I already have many hundreds of duplicates.
Try kshowmail from Mr. Eggert, it is a good tool for cleaning your mail server from duplicates and unwanted mail. I use it to delete spam from my public mail accounts before even downloading it into kmail.
HTH, Matt T.
participants (2)
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Kevin McLauchlan
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Matt T.