Evolution: Messages aren't deleted from POP mail server with SSL encryption after specified number of days

[Amit Tendulkar]

Binary package hint: evolution

Evolution doesn't delete an email from the POP3 email server (with SSL encryption) after a specified number of days and the mailbox quota on the server gets full.

Steps to reproduce
- Configure a POP3 email account with
  - Server type: POP
  - SSL encryption
  - Auth type as "password"
- Under Edit->Preferences-><select account name>->Edit->receiving options->Message storage
  - Keep "Leave messages on the server" as ON
  - Keep "Delete after X days" as ON and put say "5" days in place of X
  - Keep "Disable support for all POP3 extensions" as OFF
- Make sure that the server name and account details provided in the above setup contains more than five days old emails and the server also has a web-interface (or IMAP interface) to cross-check the presence of emails on the server
- Do a send-receive of emails from the account
- Make sure the old emails are fetched in your local Inbox
- After send-receive, log on to the web interface or connect through an IMAP interface to check whether the emails older than 5 days are deleted from the server

Expected result
- The old emails should be deleted from the server

Actual result
- The old emails are not deleted and remain on the server.

Evolution version used: evolution 2.12.1
OS: Ubuntu 7.10
uname -a output: Linux lap432 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Dec 18 08:02:57 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for your report, which mail server are you using?

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

It looks similar to http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=499932

[Amit Tendulkar (amit-tendulkar-gmail)]

It is a Mirapoint email server (company's internal email server: http://mirapoint.com/) and have POP3-SSL, IMAP-SSL and web mail access. I have confirmed from my colleagues that the "email deletion after X days" feature is working from MS Outlook. Even evolution deletes emails if the "Leave messages on server" is set to unchecked.

[Amit Tendulkar (amit-tendulkar-gmail)]

I suppose the status "New" is more appropriate than "Confirmed" at this stage of discussion.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Ok, thanks linking the upstream task.

[bitsent (bitsent)]

This one got me too--Evolution 2.22.2 using POP3/SSL. I configured it to "Leave messages on server" and "Delete after 9 day(s)" but I have over three months of email on the server which I now need to clean up. This problem did not occur in Outlook using the same email server and account.

[CoudCoud (coudertmatthieu)]

I have this problem on Evolution 2.22.2
With a POP account provided by www.free.fr

Evolution Version: 2.22.2
OS: Ubuntu 8.04
Email Account: POP (No Encryption)
Days before Deleting: 7days
Disable support for all POP3 extensions: Un-Checked
Leave Messages on server: Checked
Automatically check for new email: 10min
Server Requires Authentication for SMTP: Checked

I also reported this on http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=499932

[Enrico Gueli (e-gueli)]

I can confirm this, with a Yahoo! POP3 server (pop.mail.yahoo.it). With Thunderbird, with the same settings, old messages get deleted as expected.

Evolution Version: 2.22.2
OS: Ubuntu 8.04
Email Account: POP (SSL Encryption)
Days before Deleting: 7days
Disable support for all POP3 extensions: Un-Checked
Leave Messages on server: Checked
Automatically check for new email: 10min
Server Requires Authentication for SMTP: Checked

[JAL (jlijster)]

I can also confirm this with an additional issue: Evolution doesn't clean up pop mail on mail server period. Not with the use of "Delete after X days' as not when the settings saying to clean up de mailserver directly after retreival (so no checkmarks set).

Using:
Ubuntu 2.6.24-19-generic (x86_64 bit version)
evolution 2.22.3.1

external mailserver running on a RAQ. Large commercial organisation is running my webserver. Never had any problems with them (subscription period of 8 yrs plus) and their infrastructure has (and still does) always worked with WIN/Outlook/Echange Server/Thunderbird and Linux/Kmail/thunderbird etc.

The problem is specifically with evolution. It simpy doesn't clean up the server, not directly nor does it do it after x days (if so setup).

I have been tracking this bug for a while now and I must say that it is taking way to long to fix. If you want to become a vailble and sustainable (business) alternative for outlook/echange and finally get the business users over stuff like this should not be happening anymore!

I really hope this gets fixed soon, since I am a really big fan of the whole open source project, however for me this is a yet another signal that evolution is still not ready to fulfill the Exchange functionallity that we need to run for our businesses. And at the end of the day that is waht we use it for ;-)

Kind Regards JAL

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

fixed upstream, thanks for reporting.

[Zubin (zparihar)]

If its fixed upstream, when can we get a package for Ubuntu Hardy ready?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the new version is in intrepid

[Zubin (zparihar)]

Thats awesome that its fixed in Intrepid, but some users plan on keeping Hardy because of its LTS. Any timeline for a Hardy package release?

Zubin Parihar

[Zubin (zparihar)]

Does any one know of the status of this bug fix for evolution in Hardy???

Is this bug closed because its fixed in Intrepid? What about all the LTS users? I though there would be bug fixes for 3 years on the Desktop?????

Can some one please let me know? This bug is rather annoying and its makeing me look at options such as KMail or Thunderbird.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

there is lot of bug fixed in intrepid and everything can't be applied to stable, the lts version get security updates and important bug fixes, that one is not a priority right now could be a candidate if somebody is wanting to work on it though

[Zubin (zparihar)]

Thanks for the quick reply Sebastien

Zubin

[QuentinHartman (qhartman)]

I'm running Intrepid and I'm still seeing this problem. Evolution reports itself as version 2.24.1 . I have my deletion interval set to 30 days, but I now have over 120 days worth of mail accumulated on the server...

[Sewi (sebastian-willing)]

I can confirm this, also Intrepid and Evolution 2.24.1. The mails are also not being deleted if you check "keep on server" and delete them from your local inbox (with or without emptiing the trash).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could anybody still having the issue comment on the bugzilla bug too?

[uMac (uvaio)]

same problem on 2.24.2. Also from time to time evolution forgets about emails it downloaded already and starts to download all old emails from the server again. It happened to me twice. but this is probably not related to this bug so I'll search for similar bug report.

[cement_head (andorjkiss)]

This is totally ridiculous. Please provide a patch for Hardy.

- CH

[unggnu (unggnu)]

This is still an issue in Jaunty and was never working at least since Breezy.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

don't reopen closed bug because you have a similar issue better to open a new bug

[unggnu (unggnu)]

I have not a similar issue, I have exact the same. But who cares, it is up to upstream anyway.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

what would be useful is to open an upstream bug then if it's up to upstream as you wrote

[cement_head (andorjkiss)]

Hi Sebastien,

  Any chance this will get backported to Hardy? Or...can I help in doing that...or are there SO many dependencies that this would be a monster of a task?

Thanks,
Andor

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt (benh-kernel)]

I noticed that too, for some time, it seems, POP3 mails aren't deleted from the server for me neither,
and I not checked "Leave messages on server", Jaunty doesn't appear to have fixed it for me.

[unggnu (unggnu)]

Could you please also report it upstream then? http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=514827

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt (benh-kernel)]

This problem disappeared for me after I checked "Delete after N Days" checkbox, and set N to something short, like 1. Before, I had neither that nor "Leave messages on server" checked. This might be a normal behaviour thus, but confusing, as one would normally expect that setup to delete messages immediately.

I'll update the upstream bug too.

[cement_head (andorjkiss)]

Still would like some information about this possibly being backported to HARDY.

[cement_head (andorjkiss)]

The fix doesn't work

[cement_head (andorjkiss)]

The fix doesn't work - still in Lucid, that's 5 iterations of Ubuntu that this bug has persisted through.

- CH

[tictactoe (xavier-garel)]

I also confirm that this bug still exist ; it's very annoying :-(