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Deleting/Moving emails reappear when using IMAP to my own Postfix email server

Andrew DeFaria
Andrew DeFaria
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Finally looking into this again. It's a problem I've been tolerating for quite some time but I finally want to get this fixed. For a while now, TB has had this annoying habit that sometimes when I delete or move a message or series of messages to another folder they seem to go but then immediately reappear. I'm using IMAP to my own Postfix email server. The strange thing is that if I perform the operation (delete or move)again it works successfully this time. So it's kinda hard to reproduce reliably to debug this.

I was asked to log IMAP activity which I'd turned on.

While often the messages just reappear I also, on occasion, see the following popup

I looked at syslog on my server and didn't see anything that indicated what exactly the error was. I'll try to monitor more closely now and report back any additional information.

Finally looking into this again. It's a problem I've been tolerating for quite some time but I finally want to get this fixed. For a while now, TB has had this annoying habit that sometimes when I delete or move a message or series of messages to another folder they seem to go but then immediately reappear. I'm using IMAP to my own Postfix email server. The strange thing is that if I perform the operation (delete or move)again it works successfully this time. So it's kinda hard to reproduce reliably to debug this. I was asked to log IMAP activity which I'd turned on. While often the messages just reappear I also, on occasion, see the following popup I looked at syslog on my server and didn't see anything that indicated what exactly the error was. I'll try to monitor more closely now and report back any additional information.
Attached screenshots

All Replies (2)

Andrew DeFaria
Andrew DeFaria Question owner
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Ok, so I turned on logging and managed to reproduce the problem. There were 5 emails, 4 of which were new. I selected the 1st email (which I had read yesterday) and selected delete. The email quickly re-appeared in Inbox. I selected a few more unread emails, read them and processed their contents. Went to delete them too and they also re-appeared in Inbox. Finished reading all unread email. Then I deleted all 5 emails without a problem. I've attached the log file.

Hmmm... How do you attach a file here? Oh well, it'll be on my webserver for 7 days. Pick it up here - https://defaria.com/tmp/tb.log.

Andrew DeFaria
Andrew DeFaria Question owner
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Some more info. Checking /var/log/mail.err on my Ubuntu 18.04 email server (Postfix/Dovecot) I find:

Jul 1 07:33:38 defaria dovecot: imap(andrew): Error: Corrupted record in index cache file /home/andrew/mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.cache: UID 58267: Broken physical size in mailbox INBOX: read(/var/mail/andrew) failed: Cached message size smaller than expected (106924 < 106926, box=INBOX, UID=58267) Jul 1 07:33:38 defaria dovecot: imap(andrew): Error: copy: i_stream_read(/var/mail/andrew) failed: Cached message size smaller than expected (106924 < 106926, box=INBOX, UID=58267) Jul 1 07:33:38 defaria dovecot: imap(andrew): Error: read(/var/mail/andrew) failed: Cached message size smaller than expected (106924 < 106926, box=INBOX, UID=58267) (uid=66578, box=Trash, read reason=) Jul 1 08:08:33 defaria dovecot: imap(andrew): Error: Corrupted record in index cache file /home/andrew/mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.cache: UID 58263: Broken physical size in mailbox INBOX: read(/var/mail/andrew) failed: Cached message siJul 1 07:32:16 defaria dovecot: imap(andrew): Error: read(/var/mail/andrew) failed: Cached message size smaller than expected (176984 < 176986, box=INBOX, UID=58266) (uid=66574, box=Trash, read reason=) Jul 1 07:33:38 defaria dovecot: imap(andrew): Error: Corrupted record in index cache file /home/andrew/mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.cache: UID 58267: Broken physical size in mailbox INBOX: read(/var/mail/andrew) failed: Cached message size smaller than expected (106924 < 106926, box=INBOX, UID=58267) Jul 1 07:33:38 defaria dovecot: imap(andrew): Error: copy: i_stream_read(/var/mail/andrew) failed: Cached message size smaller than expected (106924 < 106926, box=INBOX, UID=58267) Jul 1 07:33:38 defaria dovecot: imap(andrew): Error: read(/var/mail/andrew) failed: Cached message size smaller than expected (106924 < 106926, box=INBOX, UID=58267) (uid=66578, box=Trash, read reason=) Jul 1 08:08:33 defaria dovecot: imap(andrew): Error: Corrupted record in index cache file /home/andrew/mail/.imap/INBOX/dovecot.index.cache: UID 58263: Broken physical size in mailbox INBOX: read(/var/mail/andrew) failed: Cached message size smaller than expected (1807433 < 1807434, box=INBOX, UID=58263) Jul 1 08:08:33 defaria dovecot: imap(andrew): Error: copy: i_stream_read(/var/mail/andrew) failed: Cached message size smaller than expected (1807433 < 1807434, box=INBOX, UID=58263) Jul 1 08:08:33 defaria dovecot: imap(andrew): Error: read(/var/mail/andrew) failed: Cached message size smaller than expected (1807433 < 1807434, box=INBOX, UID=58263) (uid=125, box=Business/Realitor, read reason=)

For now I've deleted the files under /home/andrew/mail/.imap/INBOX and restarted Dovecot to have it rebuild them. I believe I did this before and it may have helped for a short time but the problem returned. I will report back if I notice anything.