how does gnus delete attachments IMAP

how does gnus delete attachments IMAP

[Gijs Hillenius]

I have this email that has four large files attached to it. Using Gnus,
I deleted all of them - showing me this:

[4. Deleted attachment (466580 bytes) --- text/plain]...

[5. Deleted attachment (11297946 bytes) --- text/plain]...

[6. Deleted attachment (9428994 bytes) --- text/plain]...

[7. Deleted attachment (443779 bytes) --- text/plain]...

Oddly enough, on the IMAP server, the files are still there, in the
email message. When I look at the specific message, I see, for
example, this:

--=-=-=
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Disposition: attachment
Content-Description: Deleted attachment (466580 bytes)

,----
| The following attachment has been deleted:
|
| Type:           application/pdf
| Filename:       00 - Foom bla-bla.pdf
| Size (encoded): 466580 bytes
| Description:    00 - Foom bla-bla.pdf
`----

--=-=-=
Content-Type: application/pdf;


But it has not actually been deleted.

What did I miss?

Re: how does gnus delete attachments IMAP

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Gijs Hillenius <gijs@hillenius.net> writes:

> I have this email that has four large files attached to it. Using Gnus,
> I deleted all of them - showing me this:
>
> [4. Deleted attachment (466580 bytes) --- text/plain]...
>
> [5. Deleted attachment (11297946 bytes) --- text/plain]...
>
> [6. Deleted attachment (9428994 bytes) --- text/plain]...
>
> [7. Deleted attachment (443779 bytes) --- text/plain]...
>
> Oddly enough, on the IMAP server, the files are still there, in the
> email message. When I look at the specific message, I see, for
> example, this:
>
> --=-=-=
> Content-Type: text/plain
> Content-Disposition: attachment
> Content-Description: Deleted attachment (466580 bytes)
>
> ,----
> | The following attachment has been deleted:
> |
> | Type:           application/pdf
> | Filename:       00 - Foom bla-bla.pdf
> | Size (encoded): 466580 bytes
> | Description:    00 - Foom bla-bla.pdf
> `----
>
> --=-=-=
> Content-Type: application/pdf;
>
>
> But it has not actually been deleted.
>
> What did I miss?

Just a guess, but I would expect that you would have to resend the
edited message (with the parts deleted) to see the changes on the
server? Or you could try with a local version (say, a draft) and inspect
that the changes happened locally upon saving the modified draft.

HTH!

Maxim

Re: how does gnus delete attachments IMAP

[Dan Christensen]

On Sep 20, 2017, Gijs Hillenius <gijs@hillenius.net> wrote:

> I have this email that has four large files attached to it. Using Gnus,
> I deleted all of them

[...]

> Oddly enough, on the IMAP server, the files are still there, in the
> email message.

[...]

> What did I miss?

With IMAP, messages cannot be edited.  To work around this, Gnus will
typically create a new message without the attachments.  How Gnus treats
the original seems inconsistent to me.  Sometimes it is deleted, but
sometimes it sticks around, in which case I mark it as expirable, so it
will get deleted later.

Dan