Is this an IMAP bug or a Thunderbird one?

[dwmtractor]

OK, here's a weird one and I'm not sure if it's Zimbra's problem or Mozilla's:

I have a bunch of clients using Tbird as their IMAP client. They have varying quotas on their IMAP folders, and as is not unusual, once in a while somebody's folder starts getting full. When that happens, they get a little note from my "Your box is getting full, better clean house" script.

I haven't nailed down just what the threshold is, but at something around 87% and up, if they try to delete an offending humongous message (usually with the latest funny video), the Thunderbird client pops up an error "The current command did not succeed. The mail server responded: UID COPY failed" and refuses to delete the message.

I just tried a test of this, and when I logged into the webmail client I was able to delete the message without error.

Any clue what's going on here or what I can do about it (besides shutting down permissions for wmv attachments)?

Thanks in advance,

Dan

[jholder]

Can you grab the mailbox.log when that happens?

[dwmtractor]

Can you grab the mailbox.log when that happens?

Sure. I'll pm it to you.

[dwmtractor]

Sure. I'll pm it to you.

Well, I was gonna PM it to you but the attachment option seems to be missing on PMs. I'll email you instead.

[dwmtractor]

But that log was full and I didn't give you much to search for. Here, I believe, is the entry you'll be looking for, as it traces to my LAN Ip address. I'll blank out my email and leave it otherwise clean:

2007-11-01 15:05:14,436 WARN [ImapSSLServer-6727] [name=me@mydomain.net;ip=192.168.0.38;] imap - UID COPY failed
com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.MailServiceException: mailbox exceeded quota of 52428800 bytes
    at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.MailServiceException.QUOTA_EXCEEDED(MailServiceException.java:246)
    at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.Mailbox.updateSize(Mailbox.java:728)
    at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.Mailbox.updateSize(Mailbox.java:714)
    at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.MailItem.finishCreation(MailItem.java:984)
    at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.MailItem.icopy(MailItem.java:1410)
    at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.Mailbox.imapCopy(Mailbox.java:3968)
    at com.zimbra.cs.imap.ImapCopyOperation.callback(ImapCopyOperation.java:80)
    at com.zimbra.cs.operation.Operation.schedule(Operation.java:180)
    at com.zimbra.cs.imap.ImapHandler.doCOPY(ImapHandler.java:1923)
    at com.zimbra.cs.imap.ImapHandler.executeRequest(ImapHandler.java:368)
    at com.zimbra.cs.imap.ImapHandler.processCommand(ImapHandler.java:239)
    at com.zimbra.cs.tcpserver.ProtocolHandler.processConnection(ProtocolHandler.java:221)
    at com.zimbra.cs.tcpserver.ProtocolHandler.run(ProtocolHandler.java:188)
    at EDU.oswego.cs.dl.util.concurrent.PooledExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)

I'm no guru at this stuff but it looks like maybe it's trying to COPY the message to the trash before deleting it from the inbox?

[jholder]

Here's your problem:
at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.MailServiceException.QUOTA_E XCEEDED

The quota on the account is over it's limit.

[dwmtractor]

Here's your problem:
at com.zimbra.cs.mailbox.MailServiceException.QUOTA_E XCEEDED

The quota on the account is over it's limit.

Yeah, I know that!

The problem is, the quota is being exceeded by a DELETE action! That is, the box is full, but not overflowing, but it is full enough that the big message I'm trying to delete, if added a second time, overflows the quota. This means that the system won't let me delete the message, and I can't get back in quota without deleting it. See what I mean?

[dwmtractor]

To clarify, it appears that what is happening is that, when I try to delete a message in Thunderbird, it is COPYING the message to the trash, and then deleting it from the source folder. If it were to MOVE the message to trash rather than copying it, we wouldn't go over quota and be stuck with this conundrum.

[dkarp]

Nope, it's not a delete action. It's a move-to-Trash action, and in IMAP that creates a copy in Trash and then marks the original for later deletion. Yeah, it's insane, but that's how IMAP works.

If you configure Thunderbird to delete messages immediately rather than move-to-Trash, it should work properly.

[dwmtractor]

Nope, it's not a delete action. It's a move-to-Trash action, and in IMAP that creates a copy in Trash and then marks the original for later deletion. Yeah, it's insane, but that's how IMAP works.

If you configure Thunderbird to delete messages immediately rather than move-to-Trash, it should work properly.

Ok, then if that's how IMAP works (and I am not at all surprised to discover this sort of insanity !), then shouldn't the quota limitation logic be modified to give the user a bit of a "bye" when trying to clean house? Seriously, what good are quota restrictions if by the time the user knows they're in trouble, they have to call me to fix it?

I hate to point to Micro$oft as evidence of how to do things right, but a message "this message is too big for the trash, do you want to just delete it?" is not such a bad idea if the alternative is not letting you delete it and not letting you clean up your mailboxes. . .

Or maybe the quota logic should be revised to have one quota that is enforced for the size of the box, but with a 10% overage (still enforced) that is an exception for the trash folder alone. . .

SOMETHING that allows people to use their trash folder for an "oh, crap, I didn't mean to delete THAT" but still allows housecleaning. . .