Notifies of "new" old mail when unread buffer is overrun

[Emmet Hikory]

Binary package hint: mail-notification

To reproduce:
    Configure mail-notification to check a gmail account (not tested with others)
    Ensure "Display seen mail" is unchecked
    Enable Message popups
    Allow the gmail mailbox to collect > 20 unread messages (spaced so that each generates a popup)
    Read some of the most recently received messages, so the number of unread is < 20
    Duplicate popups will occur for those unread messages that had previously not been shown in the hover summary and have returned (due to the read messages).

     Tested with mail-notification 4.0~rc2.dfsg.1-4 (AMD64) under feisty GNOME.

[Jean-Yves Lefort (jylefort)]

This only occurs if a Gmail error occurs between the two checks. When an error occurs, MN clears the message list of the mailbox. Therefore, the next time it checks the mailbox, it considers all the messages as new.

I'll think about making MN remember messages across errors. However, the Gmail error is caused by a bug in GnomeVFS (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/mail-notification/+bug/165053).

By the way, next time you should report MN problems in its upstream bug tracker (https://bugs.launchpad.net/mail-notification/), unless you believe that the problem is specific to your distribution.

[Emmet Hikory (persia)]

I'm uncertain that this is the cause, as I observed this behaviour also when setting the check interval to a fairly long period, and trying across logins: with hundreds of unread messages, reading mail from an alternate location would always result in new popups (unless the gmail-vfs error is more prevalent than is obvious from the mentioned bug).

[Jean-Yves Lefort (jylefort)]

Unless I've overlooked something, this problem should only occur if there is a mailbox error between two checks (unlikely scenarios are Gmail returning an empty message list, or returning non-unique message identifiers).

I've just committed a fix in my CVS repo (messages are no longer cleared when an error occurs). If you still experience this problem after upgrading to the next version of MN (which will be out soon), please add more feedback.

[Jean-Yves Lefort (jylefort)]

Should be fixed in 5.0-RC1.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 alpha?

[Hew (hew)]

Marking Fix Released since 5.4 exists as of Intrepid.