KMail Not Properly Deleting Emails From POP Server

[chipbennett]

Ever since I upgraded from Karmic to Lucid, KMail has exhibited a fairly serious problem: it does not properly delete messages from a POP server, resulting in the same messages being downloaded multiple times.

For reference, bugs are filed on bugs.launchpad and bugs.kde. I haven't seen any sign of a resolution, or any identification of the root cause.

In the meantime, in order for KMail to be at all usable, I have setup the following as a stop-gap (in case anyone else is suffering from the same issue, and needs to be able to use KMail):

1) Disabled automatic checking of email
2) Disabled strigi file-indexing
3) Created an "unread messages" search folder, so that I can quickly delete the duplicate emails
4) Disabled "mark messages read" when viewed in preview pane

Anyone else experiencing this issue? Have any other ideas to resolve it?

[Snowhog]

Re: KMail Not Properly Deleting Emails From POP Server

Anyone else experiencing this issue? Have any other ideas to resolve it?

Nope. Works fine with my ISP. Which ISP are you using?

[chipbennett]

Re: KMail Not Properly Deleting Emails From POP Server

It's not an ISP issue. I haven't changed either my ISP or my hosting provider.

The problem manifested itself only upon upgrade from Karmic to Lucid.

[Snowhog]

Re: KMail Not Properly Deleting Emails From POP Server

Well, if the POP Settings in Kmail (Accounts > Receiving > POP Settings > Leave fetched messages on the server) isn't checked, then I say it must be your ISP. Have you contacted them?

[chipbennett]

Re: KMail Not Properly Deleting Emails From POP Server

Again, my ISP (actually, my hosting provider, not my ISP. I don't use my ISP email address, but rather the email server for my web site hosting account) didn't change, my version of Kubuntu - and therefore, KDE and KMail - changed.

Prior to dist-upgrading from Karmic to Lucid, KMail properly fetched emails from the server, and deleted them. After dist-upgrading, KMail is no longer properly deleting fetched emails, resulting in fetching duplicate emails multiple times.

And note: eventually (sometimes after only a couple duplicates, sometimes after a half-dozen) KMail is able to delete a message from the server. Also, some emails seem to be deleted on first-pass.

So, no: I haven't emailed my hosting provider, and I won't be emailing my hosting provider - because it has absolutely nothing to do with my hosting provider.

Why do you keep insisting it is an ISP (again, what would actually be relevant is my web site hosting provider, since that is the email in question) issue, when nothing with my hosting provider changed, but rather KMail changed?

(Do I need to install Thunderbird, to demonstrate that emails can be successfully downloaded and deleted from the server, to convince you that it is a KMail issue, and not an email server issue? Personally, I think it would be overkill, but I'd be happy to do so.)

[chipbennett]

Re: KMail Not Properly Deleting Emails From POP Server

Here's a screenshot from another bugs.kde bug report, showing the same behavior (and this person is not possibly using either my ISP or my hosting provider email server):
[img width=400 height=232]http://bugsfiles.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=42903[/img]

That bugreport is for Arch. Here's someone using OpenSuSE having the same issue.

This is definitely a KMail issue, not a mail server issue.

[Snowhog]

Re: KMail Not Properly Deleting Emails From POP Server

This is definitely a KMail issue, not a mail server issue.

Well, as you originally asked, and I replied, I don't have this problem, so it isn't "deniitely a KMail issue" or it would be affecting everyone. It might have something to do with the fact that you "don't use my ISP email address, but rather the email server for my web site hosting account" and something about the way that server is configured for POP is a tad different than a standard ISP POP server configuration. That's purely a guess, but ...

What version of KDE are you running?

[chipbennett]

Re: KMail Not Properly Deleting Emails From POP Server

This is definitely a KMail issue, not a mail server issue.

Well, as you originally asked, and I replied, I don't have this problem, so it isn't "deniitely a KMail issue" or it would be affecting everyone.

Say what? Since when does every bug affect every user? That makes no sense. Has every bug in the history of KMail (or KDE SC as a whole, or any other part of the OS or kernel) affected you? Did you claim that a bug wasn't a valid bug, just because it didn't affect you?

It might have something to do with the fact that you "don't use my ISP email address, but rather the email server for my web site hosting account" and something about the way that server is configured for POP is a tad different than a standard ISP POP server configuration. That's purely a guess, but ...

Are you even reading what I'm writing? I didn't change my mail server. I dist-upgraded Kubuntu.

I changed web hosts at the beginning of January. For five months, I had not even a whiff of this problem.

The first time I ran KDE-PIM after dist-upgrading from Karmic to Lucid, I had this issue.

Why is this so difficult to grasp? My mail server didn't change. My web host didn't change. My ISP didn't change.

KMail is the only part of this entire process that changed. This is a KMail issue. (Or perhaps a KDE issue. Most definitely, it is not a mail server issue.)

Look, I'm not trying to be obstinate here, but this is getting frustrating. I've said the same thing three or four times now, and you keep going back to the one thing that hasn't changed (my mail server).

What version of KDE are you running?

I'm running kubuntu-ppa, so I've got KMail 1.13.3, on KDE SC 4.4.3 (Kubuntu Lucid, dist-upgraded from Karmic, not clean-installed.)

[THHHB]

Re: KMail Not Properly Deleting Emails From POP Server

I can report a similar issue. I am using three freemail accounts with kmail and since either the last KDE launchpad update in Karmic or the update to Lucid (it definitely started after an update), Mail sometimes is fetched more than once. I have always (since 8.04) had Kmail set to leave the messages on the server.
The mails it fetches again seem to be random, some are 2+ years old, others are more recent. Sometimes (like once or twice so far), when it happens, this is preceded by an error message from Kmail saying something about a failed command (quoted as "" or similar). Also sometimes (a bit more often), I get errors about the server not supporting whatever Kmail needs to determine which mails have already been fetched (Kmail should have that info in its own database files anyway...).

Kmail is set to poll the servers once every 15 minutes, my machine runs like 10h/day, and the problem occurs about every 2-3 days. My setup is the same as the OP's. Since Akonadi has quieted down a bit, this has become the most annoying bug in Kmail/Kontact

Edit: Just got the error message again.

Edit2: The other error message I mentioned. This morning, Kontact fetched 20+ old emails from one of my accounts. Starts to get really annoying

[chipbennett]

Re: KMail Not Properly Deleting Emails From POP Server

And here's one more bugs.kde bug report of the same issue, in which the problems once again started upon upgrade to Lucid, and for which the suspicion is akonadi/nepomuk/MySQL.

I've also begun running KMail as standalone (rather than integrated w/Kontact), as it seems to be more stable in dealing with this issue (that is, doesn't freeze as often when downloading multiple-duplicate emails).

Another oddity of this issue is that filters aren't getting applied properly, especially for duplicated emails. The original (usually) gets filtered properly, but the duplicates don't always, and are sometimes left in the inbox.

Given the number of akonadi/nepomuk/mysql-related KMail bugs that have cropped up since the Lucid, I think it's safe to say that the issue is KMail-related, and not mailserver-related.