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Bug 519954 - Duplicate IMAP messages if viewed with another client
Duplicate IMAP messages if viewed with another client
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: evolution
Classification: Applications
Component: Mailer
2.22.x (obsolete)
Other All
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: evolution-mail-maintainers
Evolution QA team
evolution[imap]
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2008-03-02 18:26 UTC by Mikael Nilsson
Modified: 2014-04-26 19:04 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: 2.21/2.22



Description Mikael Nilsson 2008-03-02 18:26:11 UTC
Please describe the problem:
Message are sometimes duplicated.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Receive new mail
2. Mail gets filtered, moved to other folder F
3. Read mail from other client (mobile mail client in this case)
4. Other client still sees the mail in inbox
5. Go back to evolution after a while
6. Now, the mail is of course not found in INBOX
7. However, *two* copies of the mail is seen in the folder F, one read and one unread.

Actual results:


Expected results:
Evolution should not see two distinct mail.

Does this happen every time?
Yes.

Other information:
I'm trying to replicate the exact sequencing, but the above is what I think happens.

I'm running ubuntu hardy.
Comment 1 André Klapper 2008-03-02 20:37:54 UTC
IMAP? please make sure to "synchronize" evolution with the imap server first and report back.
Comment 2 Mikael Nilsson 2008-03-03 14:17:51 UTC
Pressing the "offline" button and letting evo synchronize does *not* help, I still see duplicates.

IMAP: yes, it's a dovecot server. 
Comment 3 Mikael Nilsson 2008-03-03 18:24:32 UTC
Actually, the situation is much worse than this:

1. Start evolution
2. Silently drop internet connection
3. Read mail using other client
4. Bring network back up
5. evolution reconnects
6. I now have duplicates of *every* *single* *mail* in INBOX!

This is repeatable.

So this seems related to when the IMAP connection dies for some reason.

For the record, I'm using a broadband modem with a manual wvdial config, that does *not* announce network status over dbus. So I have to bring evo online manually. In the case of a modem hangup, the above happens.
Comment 4 Matthew Barnes 2008-03-11 00:36:22 UTC
Bumping version to a stable release.
Comment 5 David Booth 2009-11-25 02:45:23 UTC
I have been seeing a similar problem of Evolution 2.26.1 occasionally re-downloading all messages, thus causing thousands of duplicates.  I spent a long time trying to isolate the problem.  My ISP (which uses a Dovecot server) insisted that the server is issuing stable message IDs and that the only way the entire inbox could be re-downloaded is if the client had requested it.  After accessing all of my email through a proxy that logged *all* traffic between my Evolution client and the server, I confirmed that Evolution is indeed asking for the *same* messages again when it re-downloads all messages.  I have not been able to figure out what triggers the re-download of all messages though.  :(  If some Evolution guru could figure this out it would *very* nice, as it's extremely annoying when this happens, both because it takes about an hour to re-download all messages and because I then have thousands of duplicate messages in my inbox.  I am using POP.  

I have seen that there is a plugin for deleting duplicates, but I already have a script for deleting the duplicates, the main problem is that it renders Evolution unusable for an hour every time this happens.

Any suggestions?
Comment 6 David Booth 2009-11-25 02:46:19 UTC
BTW, as a temporary (but unsatisfactory workaround), I wrote a perl script called
cleanemail.perl for deleting duplicate 
or previously moved or deleted messages from your Evolution or Eudora
email files.  It is especially useful for cases in which your 
email client loses track of which messages it has downloaded from your 
mail server, and consequently downloads all messages again, thus creating
thousands of duplicate messages in your Inbox.  (Thus, unfortunately, happens
to me regularly in Evolution, and it is quite a pain because it takes a LONG
time to re-download all of my messages.)

The source code is available
at http://dbooth.org/2009/cleanemail/
and the opening comment explains its usage.
Comment 7 André Klapper 2012-06-26 17:24:10 UTC
Removing duplicates is now supported in Evolution itself; however I wonder if this is still a problem in 3.4.2 or 3.2.3?

> 2. Mail gets filtered, moved to other folder F

Also on the same IMAP account?
Comment 8 André Klapper 2013-08-24 14:54:12 UTC
Hi Mikael, 
if you have time, could you please check again whether this issue still happens in Evolution 3.8.5 (which has a new IMAP+ backend) and update this report by adding a comment and changing the "Version" field and provide information about your distribution? Thanks a lot.
Comment 9 André Klapper 2014-04-26 19:04:38 UTC
Closing as OBSOLETE per lack of response from reporter.

Please reopen if this still happens in 3.12.x or 3.10.x.