PowerMail Engineering wrote: >Tim Hodgson wrote: > >>I have an instance of a partial message in PM right now. I can see it on >>my ISP's webmail interface, but PM is refusing to retrieve the rest of >>it. Are there any more details I could give you that might help? > >I checked with Tim privately; no message was lost. However a message >remained on the server, which should have been deleted, as his account >is configured to delete the message from the server after retrieving >them. All this will be fixed for the next release.
This excellent resolution begs the question why I have yet to get any response from CTM regarding 2 longstanding bugs concerning disappeared messages, messages being kept on server even though they have never been downloaded and some of these messages being redownloaded again and again. I have written about this many times both to the Powermail discuss list and to CTM support, as early as when I first started using PowerMail with version 3 and at least the problem redownloading remains today. As a matter if fact while I was writing this the connection to one popmailserver hung and I have to stop it. I'll be surprised if that won't give me duplicate messages. This situation is why I translated a remove duplicate script some years. Before that my DB was in chaos. Last time I posted a lengthy message on the subject was in the thread "Email not downloading" on january 24th. No-one seems to care much about such a serious problem at CTM nor at the list, which is a letdown. I have volunteered in private messages to CTM to help pinpoint the cause, I have logged and analyzed my connections and postulated theories on what could be going on. What more do I have to do in order to get some attention to this problem? It's very frustrating. Quote from "Email not downloading": >I found this: > >With account settings changed to "Leave messages on server": Unchecked, >"Remove from server after _ days": Unchecked and "Remove from server when >removed locally" (The latter probably unnecessary): Unchecked, then >PowerMail behaves like this: > > >1. PowerMail request (with UIDL command) and gets a message list, all >those listed are fetched (LIST) and then deleted (DELETE) one by one. >2. On recheck, with application Popmonitor or via IMAP in PowerMail, 5 >messages with the same server assigned IDs as in the earlier received >message list were listed at server, even though PowerMail supposedly >deleted them in the previous session. 4 of those messages had be marked >by the server as received by the client (The header Status:R was added). >One particular message hadn't been received and indeed couldn't be found >in my DB either. >3. At a later point with more messages fetched, more messages was left at >the server post fetching. The earlier unreceived message remained. >4. Even more connections later there were still messages left post >fetching, but >*they were not the same messages*! >5. The unreceived message was also gone, but still wasn't found in my DB. >I did find one message that was only partially retrieved form the right >sender, so this could be the one. It seems this particular message never >was retrieved fully, so I lost the message. > >Conclusions: >A: Messages may linger at some mail servers even after they have been >marked for deletion by PM. Unclear why exactly, but one theory is >specific server settings affect the behavior. These messages may later >after several connections still be retrieved, but later than what should >have been the case had everything went according to user expectations. >B: Some messages may be left in a semi-retrieved state, but will be >removed from the server later, even when not fully retrieved. Most likely >because the server regards them as received, but that's just a theory >currently. > >As I have experienced buildup of thousands of messages like A above, I >know for a fact it's a real problem. I've experienced that on several >accounts on different servers since version 4 of PowerMail. Because of >this I didn't leave messages on server, but deleted them when fetching >them. This worked, but I couldn't leave messages even for a day of risk >of retrieving duplicates. This situation drove me to make the DeleteDups >script, as I was swimming in multiple messages. >On my own server (with AppleMailServer) I left all messages (21 000 last >year) and didn't have a problem until late autumn last year. >What's really disconcerting however is B above. Messages should never be >lost unintentionally. > >I suggest that you people try and watch if any messages have been left >behind on your accounts, with tools like PopMonitor or via IMAP, post >your info and see if we can find a pattern. Application "Net Tool Box" do >network dumps that can be filtered on the POP port 110. >I could really need the help solving this. Remember that solving this is >for everyones safety and not only for fixing my problems. Please help. > >My logged connections (edited): <http://<www.tankekraft.se/powermail/ >issues/conn_log_edit.txt> PM 5.2.3 Swedish | OS X 10.4.5 | Powerbook G4/400Mhz | 1GB RAM | 30GB HD
