Execution of filter 'Junk check' fails with "Empty cache file"

[ais523]

I currently use an Evolution setup in which I retrieve email via IMAP from an unfiltered mailbox, and then use Evolution to automatically filter for spam/junk mail.

This process works as expected upon starting Evolution: all email is retrieved from the mailbox (and thus resides in the Inbox folder, where it arrived), then it's filtered to identify spam, and then the spam is moved from the Inbox to a Junk folder.

However, after Evolution has been running for some time (hard to estimate because it requires an email to be received, but likely 5-10 minutes; it's possible that this is just "one email refresh interval" but also possible that something else is going on), newly received email stops being filtered for spam, and all the email remains in the Inbox. This happens at least in the case of receiving one email at a time, and most likely in the case where multiple emails are received in one send/receive cycle.

When this failure to remove spam/junk happens, there's a yellow banner at the top of the screen saying, for example (the filename is not always the same),

"Error while performing operation.

Execution of filter 'Junk check' failed: Empty cache file: /home/ais523/.cache/evolution/mail/1440221975.23984.44@tundra/folders/INBOX/cur/1f/23052"

I checked the contents of the file in question; it appears to be a copy of the email that was just received, including all headers. (It's possible that there's a race condition here and that the file was empty when the filter looked at it, but became populated just after it errored out, but perhaps something else is going on.)

This behaviour is a problem because it means that either I have to delete junk mail by hand, or else that I have to repeatedly close and reopen Evolution so that the automated system will work.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: evolution 3.18.5.2-0ubuntu3.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-36.55-generic 4.4.16
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-36-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Mon Aug 22 17:19:59 2016
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/evolution
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-06-03 (811 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140417)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
SourcePackage: evolution
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-05-02 (112 days ago)

[Trev Peterson (trev-advanced-reality)]

I have the same issue. It seems like it might be this bug once again:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=737468

I experience this bug for me and for a client that runs evolution as well. I suspect it's pretty common. I error out when running mail filters, downloading mail and moving junk to a physical junk folder.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[blastradius (blastradius)]

I recently installed Debian 8 and I'm getting this same issue, how long do these things normally take too resolve?

[ais523 (ais523)]

I haven't seen this happen on my Ubuntu system for a while. I'm now on Evolution 3.22.3 and Ubuntu 16.10, so I'm guessing it was fixed when a newer version of Evolution was included in Ubuntu via the normal release process.

As for how long these things take to get fixed after an upstream fix, it basically depends on whether the distribution consider the bug important enough to warrant an update or backport (doing these is always somewhat risky, because there's the chance that a fix for one bug could end up unintentionally breaking something else, and there's a definite desire that the system should not become worse as the result of an update). Possibilities on Ubuntu involve pushing the bugfix to everyone (this normally only happens if it's a really big problem or a security problem); pushing the bugfix only to people who've opted in to receiving backports faster; pushing the bugfix only to people who have opted into "proposed changes" to the OS (although I don't know for certain, this is typically done if pushing the change more widely is considered a good idea but there's a worry that something might break in the process); or only pushing the changes out with the next version of the OS.

[Ben Holness (ubuntu16user)]

I also have this problem. I do not have a filter named "junk check" so I presume it is something built in. I turned of junk handling options in Evolution's preferences and now I get the same message but the filter is the top one of my filters list. I have checked in the filesystem and the file exists and is indeed 0 size.

I am using:

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=16.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=xenial
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS"

Evolution 3.18.5.2

This is a big issue if these are real messages that are being truncated! If they are not real messages, or it's just the caching that failed and the message is intact, it's not a big deal.

[Ben Holness (ubuntu16user)]

More information: I get this error each time it happens:

(evolution:2569): camel-WARNING **: Error in execution: Failed to retrieve message

[Ben Holness (ubuntu16user)]

Even more debug! Identifying information replaced with [snipped]

[imapx:M] Have token 'FETCH' id 4366
[imapx:N] Unmark connection 0x5601d92b5240 (server:0x5601d74b93a0) busy after failure, error: Empty cache file: /home/[snipped]/.cache/evolution/mail/[snipped]@[snipped]/folders/INBOX/cur/0f/504517
[imapx:M] got untagged response

(evolution:5063): camel-WARNING **: Error in execution: Failed to retrieve message

[Stephen Allen (stephen-d-allen)]

Affecting Ubuntu Evolution LTS 18.04 too

[cue (keino)]

I finally managed to switch on the Junk Email functionality of Evolution 3 days ago.

I am having the same issue on 16.04.
Any workaround available?

Execution of filter 'Junk check' failed: Empty cache file: /home/myuser/.cache/evolution/mail/1242676916.6866.0@beyond-laptop/folders/INBOX/cur/38/47260

I checked the file and its not empty!

[cwmoser (carl-carteblanc)]

Evolution 3.28.5 in Ubuntu 18.04.1 ... Message Filters are not working