GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 418608
PGP signed messages copied or moved from IMAP inbox to local folder by filters are corrupted
Last modified: 2009-04-29 16:42:46 UTC
Please describe the problem: Frequently but not always PGP-signed unencrypted messages that are copied or moved by Evolution filters from my IMAP "Inbox" to local folders become unreadable. Evolution displays the following text in the gray area above the message area and does not display the message content, even if "view message source" is selected: Error verifying signature Cannot verify message signature: Incorrect message format Steps to reproduce: 1. Set up filters to move or copy messages from IMAP Inbox to local folders 2. Attempt to read PGP-signed message in local folder 3. Actual results: In the majority of cases the PGP-signed message becomes unreadable. Occasionally messages from the same sender display correctly. Expected results: Messages should be correctly moved or copied to local folders without being transformed into an incorrect message format. Does this happen every time? No. Approximately 80-90% of all PGP-signed messages exhibit this problem. Other information: Several similar versions of Evolution on CentOS 5 beta and Fedora Core 6 exhibit this problem. The first instance if the problem was observed March 7, 2007. No evolution updates occurred on or immediately before that date. The same messages can be read OK directly from the IMAP folder, moved to another IMAP folder and read OK there, or manually copied to a local folder and read. The same messages downloaded with POP protocol from a different system/account/ISP with filters applied are OK.
This is a more general and less deterministic problem than I previously reported. Just did a test with a fresh install of CentOS5 public beta in a VMware Workstation VM, set up a new user account, set up Evolution to access the IMAP server, and am now experiencing the "Incorrect message format" even on new messages on the IMAP server in the Inbox that have never had any filters applied, as well as on some that were previously filtered to other IMAP folders but could still be read OK from the "real" system. Tested on the freshly installed system with both evolution-2.8.0-11.el5 from the CentOS 4.92 public Beta and with evolution-2.8.0-33.el5 locally rebuilt from the recently-released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 SRPMS. On the system where the problem was originally encountered, the messages in the IMAP folders can be read successfully with the same evolution-2.8.0-33.el5 RPM version that fails to read them on the freshly-installed instance. Copies of the messages in local folders still generate the error. A better label for the bug might be "PGP signed messages from IMAP server are corrupted"
possibly the cache is corrupted or else imap got broken such that saving to the cache is broken, but any messages cached prior to the breakage still work?
(In reply to comment #2) > possibly the cache is corrupted or else imap got broken such that saving to the > cache is broken, but any messages cached prior to the breakage still work? If you mean local cache, the fresh-install test would disprove that. If you mean on the server, the seemingly random nature of the problem - can read some messages but not others from the same users to the same lists - seems to preclude that problem. My best guess is that it has something to do with the IMAP communications between the server and the local client that Evolution is not handling properly. Tried Thunderbird from the same Linux machine, same user account, to the same IMAP account and it had no problems.
Additional information. The problem is not even consistent on the same message. Apparently due to anoter bug messages can be left on the IMAP server even after Evolution has supposedly moved them to the local machine. After logging out and restarting Evolution, I frequently find messages on the server that should have been moved to the local machine. Some of those messages are the same ones that previously showed the "incorrenct message format" error, and some of those can be successfuly read the second time around. I fear this is a very elusive bug. There is also another error message that may appear in red italics in the gray area above the message window on messages whose content is lost: Error verifying signature parse error These errors may occur even for senders whose signatures are in my local .gnupg/ database.
Hi Philip, still there? Could you try with 2.26.x, as that's the actual stable version series? I wonder whether it did this also when you applied filters by hand, with Ctrl+Y, or only as a part of messages retrieval and an automatic filtering of your IMAP Inbox.
Sorry, I am unable to try 2.26.x as the current version on RHEL-5 derived CentOS 5.3 is evolution-2.12.3-8.el5_2.3, and my employer has put a Mac on my desktop so my email client is now Thunderbird.
Just tested, and I cannot reproduce it with 2.26.1. I'm closing this now, but please reopen if you'll face on this or later version. Thanks.