Re: Howcome mail deletion time varies?

[Bill Moran]

In response to Chuck Robey [EMAIL PROTECTED]:

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 I use, for my imap-based mail, a combination of postfix, dovecot,
 thunderbird, enigmail (for gnupg), and openssl for browser security.  When
 I delete mail messages, the majority of them delete (what seems to me to
 be) instantaneously, but a small minority of mails takes quite a bit
 longer, about maybe 20 seconds.  Any idea what might be occurring on those
 mails, to trigger this really long delete time?

In my experience, this is most commonly caused by network glitches.

Keep in mind that most (perhaps all?) mailers do not delete an email
in a single step.  Have a look at how Sylpheed deletes an email on
a Cyrus-IMAP server:

[10:49:24] IMAP4 2697 UID COPY 137056 INBOX.TrashDontDelete
[10:49:25] IMAP4 2697 OK [COPYUID 1181242467 137056 39152] COPY completed.
[10:49:25] IMAP4 2698 UID STORE 137056 +FLAGS.SILENT (\Deleted)
[10:49:25] IMAP4 2698 OK STORE completed.
[10:49:25] IMAP4 2699 EXPUNGE
[10:49:25] IMAP4 * 258 EXPUNGE
[10:49:25] IMAP4 * 257 EXISTS
[10:49:25] IMAP4 * 0 RECENT
[10:49:25] IMAP4 2699 OK EXPUNGE completed
[10:49:25] IMAP4 2700 STATUS INBOX.TrashDontDelete (MESSAGES RECENT UIDNEXT 
UIDVALIDITY UNSEEN)
[10:49:25] IMAP4 * STATUS INBOX.TrashDontDelete (MESSAGES 39146 RECENT 0 
UIDNEXT 39153 UIDVALIDITY 1181242467 UNSEEN 26099)
[10:49:25] IMAP4 2700 OK STATUS Completed.

This is a lot of back/forth between the two systems.  If you network is
busy or lossy, you could easily get an odd delay in the overall process.

So, I'd start by investigating/ruling out network issues first.

Second, if the server in question is doing other things (it looks like it
is from your post) then you never know when an incoming email via postfix
has something locked, or the drives are busy, etc.  So, if your network
investigations come up empty, you may want to investigate just what's
going on with this machine and whether it may be more heavily loaded
than you think.

-- 
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com
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Re: Howcome mail deletion time varies?

[Peter Schuller]

 I use, for my imap-based mail, a combination of postfix, dovecot,
 thunderbird, enigmail (for gnupg), and openssl for browser security.  When
 I delete mail messages, the majority of them delete (what seems to me to
 be) instantaneously, but a small minority of mails takes quite a bit
 longer, about maybe 20 seconds.  Any idea what might be occurring on those
 mails, to trigger this really long delete time?

Suggestion: Thunderbird does local compacation of the mailstor, and deletions 
that hit the threshold and trigger this may be slower than others.

(I have a vague sense thunderbird does this; I could be wrong. Assuming the 
server is using Maildir I don't see why this should happen on the serverside, 
nor have I had that experience even with large folders (large enough that no 
mail client can handle them properly)).

-- 
/ Peter Schuller

PGP userID: 0xE9758B7D or 'Peter Schuller [EMAIL PROTECTED]'
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