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Does #1 mean that there are IMAP servers where my phone and my desktop and my laptop (etc.) can't all read my mail simultaneously? #7 makes me sad. Evolution s

by yrro 7y ago

Does #1 mean that there are IMAP servers where my phone and my desktop and my laptop (etc.) can't all read my mail simultaneously? #7 makes me sad. Evolution supports a 'virtual trash folder' perfectly, but since I also delete mails in other clients, my mailstore is polluted by a malingering selection of folders with names like Trash, Wastebasket, Deleted Items and so on. The same remark applies to a 'virtual junk folder' and malingering Spam, Junk folders. The 'All About Calendars' file is a wealth of interesting tidbits about time: https://www.washington.edu/imap/documentation/calendar.txt.html https://www.washington.edu/imap/documentation/calendar.txt.h...

dqv 7y ago
>Does #1 mean that there are IMAP servers where my phone and my desktop and my laptop (etc.) can't all read my mail simultaneously? I think they are talking about one particular client instance. In other words, you should have some data structure where you can look up a connection by mailbox and use that existing connection rather than opening a new one.
ts4z 7y ago
> Does #1 mean that there are IMAP servers where my phone and my desktop and my laptop (etc.) can't all read my mail simultaneously? [edited] I believe that's the case. The ancient and venerable UW implementation of the ancient, venerable, and awful Unix "mbox" format from the UW server has a lot of these sorts of problems. The UW server did not have this problem with some of the other formats. It suffered a lot from supporting a lot of different formats in borderline hostile conditions (i.e., users were assumed to have filesystem access to the server so no improvement to locking or caching was practical). None of the current commercial implementations suffer from this, but I suppose I can say that the lowest common denominator is still pretty low. I may be overstating this because what I'm describing would also outlaw message delivery, which I don't think is the case. I think one of the formats did have problems with trivial concurrent access but I was never a UW-imapd expert. I am sure that the mbox format has problems with EXPUNGE (removing messages flagged deleted) as well as many other issues. I guess it's also worth reiterating that STATUSing a SELECTed mailbox (one that's open in another connection) is a pretty big waste of server resources, as someone else noted.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
FroshKiller 7y ago
To malinger is to lie about being sick to get out of work. I think you just mean "lingering."
- yrro 7y ago
  Today I Learned, thanks!
sergiosgc 7y ago
> Does #1 mean that there are IMAP servers where my phone and my desktop and my laptop (etc.) can't all read my mail simultaneously? The short answer is that you can access from multiple device. The long answer is, it depends on the server datastore implementation. Namely, any server using mbox will probably lock the mbox file to the first connection, and hence allow one connection per mailbox (folder). Most large scale servers won't use mbox, though. The problem is described, in the original article, from writing an IMAP client perspective. You can't assume _all_ servers will allow multiple connections, even if most do.

by yrro 7y ago

dqv 7y ago

>Does #1 mean that there are IMAP servers where my phone and my desktop and my laptop (etc.) can't all read my mail simultaneously? I think they are talking about one particular client instance. In other words, you should have some data structure where you can look up a connection by mailbox and use that existing connection rather than opening a new one.

ts4z 7y ago

> Does #1 mean that there are IMAP servers where my phone and my desktop and my laptop (etc.) can't all read my mail simultaneously? [edited] I believe that's the case. The ancient and venerable UW implementation of the ancient, venerable, and awful Unix "mbox" format from the UW server has a lot of these sorts of problems. The UW server did not have this problem with some of the other formats. It suffered a lot from supporting a lot of different formats in borderline hostile conditions (i.e., users were assumed to have filesystem access to the server so no improvement to locking or caching was practical). None of the current commercial implementations suffer from this, but I suppose I can say that the lowest common denominator is still pretty low. I may be overstating this because what I'm describing would also outlaw message delivery, which I don't think is the case. I think one of the formats did have problems with trivial concurrent access but I was never a UW-imapd expert. I am sure that the mbox format has problems with EXPUNGE (removing messages flagged deleted) as well as many other issues. I guess it's also worth reiterating that STATUSing a SELECTed mailbox (one that's open in another connection) is a pretty big waste of server resources, as someone else noted.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

FroshKiller 7y ago

To malinger is to lie about being sick to get out of work. I think you just mean "lingering."

yrro 7y ago
Today I Learned, thanks!

sergiosgc 7y ago

> Does #1 mean that there are IMAP servers where my phone and my desktop and my laptop (etc.) can't all read my mail simultaneously? The short answer is that you can access from multiple device. The long answer is, it depends on the server datastore implementation. Namely, any server using mbox will probably lock the mbox file to the first connection, and hence allow one connection per mailbox (folder). Most large scale servers won't use mbox, though. The problem is described, in the original article, from writing an IMAP client perspective. You can't assume _all_ servers will allow multiple connections, even if most do.