deleted e-mail messages return upon arrival of new mail

[David Talmage]

I use KMail2 in Kontact on Kubuntu 11.10, upgraded from 11.04 yesterday. When I delete a message in my IMAP INBOX folder, it appears to be moved to the IMAP Trash folder. After I empty the IMAP Trash folder, the deleted message reappears in the IMAP INBOX folder when a new message arrives.

When I delete a message, the IMAP INBOX message count decreases and the IMAP Trash message count increases. KMail2 complains: "onespeeddave.com: Select failed, server replied: A000128 NO Mailbox does not exist, or must be subscribed to." Each message I delete produces one of these complaints.

When I empty all trash folders, the IMAP Trash folder appears to get emptied. The message count goes to zero. KMail2 repeats its complaint once per deleted message.

When a new message arrives in the IMAP INBOX folder, the messages I deleted are also there.

http://userbase.kde.org/KMail/FAQs_Hints_and_Tips#Error:_Could_Not_Determine_Resource_Status suggests it is the fault of a Courier IMAP server. If that's the truth, then I am stuck with this problem because I can't make my ISP change its IMAP server. I don't think I should have to do that. I think it is up to the KMail2 developers to fix the problem.

The previous version of KMail did not have this problem.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: kmail 4:4.7.2+git111007-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12.20-generic 3.0.4
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Oct 14 13:29:14 2011
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release amd64 (20101007)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: kdepim
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-14 (0 days ago)

[David Talmage (talmage-acm)]

I believe that this bug was caused by the failure of the migration tool. The bug I reported is likely related to Bug 872478.

I deleted my IMAP account. Then I recreated it. KMail2 seems to work as expected now. The error messages are gone. KMail2 can delete messages now.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Eduard Pertíñez (eduard-b)]

Same error here. VEEERY annoying. I tried to redo the IMAP Account and to change trash. Nothing works. Trash is configured to be the local one and even i f I delete everything in, the problem continues:

<IMAP Account Name>: Select failed, server replied: A<six digits incremental number> NO Mailbox does not exist, or must be subscribed to.

Is there any way to get more info about what exactly is tying to do when the problem arises?

Is NO a name for a Mailbox?

Subscriptions on server side are not set. Only local.

[jtheuer (mail-jtheuer)]

Same here. I deleted my old dimap account after migration but the new account still has the same issues (although I cannot relate that do deleting messages specifically.)

[David Talmage (talmage-acm)]

I want us to revisit this bug.

While it's true that I no longer receive the "Select failed" messages, about two weeks ago Kmail2 stopped deleting messages from my Trash folder. File->Empty All Trash Folders still appears to empty the folder. The message count becomes zero and the folder appears empty. After a while, after I receive new e-mail, the message count in the Trash folder climbs higher and higher. It grows over time, as if each check for e-mail adds more to it. The oldest message in the folder as I type this report is November 26, 2011. There are multiple copies of each message.

[Eduard Pertinez i Juncosa (eduardp)]

Updated kubuntu to 4.7.3 and it continues sending the message it is annoying and disturbing. I found someplace it was solved on version 4.7.4 could anybody confirm?

[David Talmage (talmage-acm)]

This is still happening, even after the last few KUbuntu updates that included changes for Kontact.

[Tom (uckcdk-thomas)]

Its extremly annoying. I am using Kubuntu and I have the latest version 4.8.1 of KDE and 4.8.0 of Kontact. No changes since the official introduction of Kontact2 in Kubuntu.

Has anyone found out a solution on that in the meantime? I recieve this message more than 1000 times a day.
"Select failed, server replied: A003075 NO Mailbox does not exist, or must be subscribed to."

[Muh Muhowic (ultrabla)]

still happening.

KMail 5.0.2

[JanMalte (janmalte)]

I can confirm this for using Courier IMAP.

I was using the same setup for a long time using KDE 4 without this bug. After upgrading to Kubuntu 14.10 this bug appeared suddenly for my IMAP accounts on Courier servers.
Deleting Akonadi and all configuration and setting up the account again didn't solved this issue.

[Kim Lilliestierna (kill-t)]

Haveing the same problem on kubuntu 15.10

Mail is usually not delted on an imap server, it is only *marked* as deleted, and wll be permanently erased when the server receives a "EXPUNGE" command. the akonadi imap connector and / or kmal2 have 2 problems:

1. it does no longer send EXPUNGE if the imap server is a Courier server it seems ( for me it works on my Dovecot account but not on the Courier), this can be verified by enabling imap debuging and restarting akonadi. connecting to a Courier server and delteing or moving a mail vill show that no EXPUNGE commands are sent, while trying on a Dovecot EXPUNGE is sent all over the place.

2. Kmail does not fully respect the imap Deleted flag and therfoer still handles deleted mail, even though it does know that the mail is deleted since it is greying it out, but, if anny scripts are running (spam filtering, rules to move mail etc) the script engine will stil act on deleted mail as if it was normal, and try to act on it ie moving, deleting etc.

Since both moving and deleting is actuall a copy / delete operation this wil go on for ever filling up trashcans and spam folders etc.

One work around is to use another mail client (webmail, thunderbird etc) that actually issues EXPUNGE, det not so good part is that one needs to go through all folders that have "deleted" mail, and the problem will reaper the moment one uses Kmal to delte or move a mail.

That measn that for now Kmail is more than useless if you happen to have a courier imap account...

[JanMalte (janmalte)]

Is someone working on this regression? How soon can we expect a patch for this? Is something needed to create a patch?

I'm asking because I want to know if it is necessary to setup Thunderbird as E-Mail client for the next time, instead of KMail2

[Kim Lilliestierna (kill-t)]

Importance still sett to undecided ?, what do we need to do to get that bumped up a couple of noches ? This bug is a showstopper.

[Kim Lilliestierna (kill-t)]

upstream KDE bug: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=354056

[JanMalte (janmalte)]

This is fixed upstream in GIT now

[bamyasi (iadzhubey)]

Still here in Kubuntu 17.04 w/KMail 5.4.3 and dovecot IMPA server