Re: sluggish IMAP updating?

[Greg Troxel <gdt@work.lexort.com>]

Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> writes:

>> The word from dovecot is that STATUS on a selected mailbox is SHOULD NOT
>> to start with, and MUST NOT to check for new mail.  See 6.3.10 of
>> RFC3501.
>>
>> http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/2007-May/023045.html
>>
>> Plus, doing lots of STATUS commands seems to be disfavored but I don't
>> understand IMAP well enough to understand.
>
> nnimap was written when RFC 2060 was current, and we haven't really
> updated it for RFC 3501.  I suspect the notes in 6.3.10 was added as a
> result of nnimap and other implementations behaviour, but the problem is
> that I don't know of a good way to implement this in Gnus without using
> STATUS (and, alas, I wouldn't have time to implement anything even if I
> had some ideas).  Note that I cannot see that RFC 3501 allows servers to
> respond with incorrect data in this situation, which dovecot appears to
> be doing.

The dovecot people talk about 'synchronizing the mailbox', and
apparently they are in an implementation bind because they aren't
allowed to clear recent flags.

I see your point, but the RFC says "MUST NOT" use STATUS on a selected
mailbox to check for new mail.

I think one is supposed to use SEARCH RECENT, but I really  just barely
understand imap.

> This will slow things down for other users...  Are you using the latest
> Dovecot version?  Maybe we can improve the manual.

Yes, I'm running 1.0.0.

> I don't have a strong opinion on what the default should be.  If others
> think it is safer to let it be t by default, by all means change it.

Someone else was having trouble with courier imap, so this seems not to
just be a dovecot issue.   I'd favor safety over efficiency.   for me
'g' takes a while and does 100 STATUS checks, so an unselect hardly
seems like a big deal.