Bug 244860

Hi, 
I have the same problem. It used to be once in a while (every some days), now it happens always.
In order to reveive mail I have to close Kontact/Kmail and start it again. Another way to get it back to work is to enter in my post box via webmail and delete a message or open the last message. Then maybe it works again.

It reports also quite often "Bad server response «.» or «"some number"»"

This happens since I installed 10.04. Before (9.04) I never had this problems.

Version of Kubuntu: Lucid 10.04
Kmail: Versión 1.13.2

same bug here on Kubuntu 10.04, same error message .

More over, the messages on the server are not properly taged and are often re-downloaded a lot of times. never had this before (9.10 9.04....), even with the same server configuration.

Created attachment 50899 [details]
the message kmail shows (in french)

Created attachment 50900 [details]
then the error number

The same happens here. Client software is KMail 1.13.5 (from KDE 4.4.5 on Frugalware Linux), server software is either an unknown something (with one of my POP3 mailboxes) or Courier 4.7.0-2 (on Frugalware Linux, my other POP3 mailbox). The first message is about the UIDL stuff, the second depends on the POP3 server: the unknown something reports that the invalid "." file cannot be read (or something like that, I'm using KMail in Hungarian), the Courier one reports that the invalid "1067" file cannot be read (whatever these means). Both the Frugalware boxes are using official Frugalware FPMs: the client uses the -current branch, the server uses the -stable one.

Is there any way to get rid of these annoyances?

I also have this problem. However, the symptoms were a bit different: first Kmail started downloading all the emails multiple times for no apparent reason, and only now, after about three weeks with this weird behavior have I seen the error message complaining about UIDL. 
But I think it is likely that the downloading of old mails was caused by this.
As all the users here I also configured Kmail to leave messages on the server (3 weeks). However this feature does not seem to work, as kmail regularly downloads emails that are older than three weeks (up to six weeks), which prompts me to suspect that something started going wrong about three weeks ago.
I recently changed this to a shorter period (one week; to reduce the number of mails that are downloaded each time), but to no avail.
I have to machines, both kubuntu 10.10 (kmail 1.13.5), but only one seems to exhibit this behavior (which is surprising because I synchronize the mail folders between them).

P/S to but a date on it, for me the bug must have appeared roughly mid-January 2011. I have maverick, maverick-security, maverick-updates, and maverick-backports, plus samrog131's ppa (http://ppa.launchpad.net/samrog131/ppa/ubuntu maverick main) enabled. Maybe that helps someone pin down where/when the bug was introduced.

I can confirm the multiple fetching of messages using pop3 in kmail version 1.13.5 (using QT 4.6.3 and KDE 4.4.5 in Debian Squeeze).

I have configured kmail to check my mail account for new messages with an interval of 2 minutes. This behavior (fetching all messages in my inbox and showing them as new, thus creating multiple copies of the messages in my local kmail inbox) does not occur on every check. It occurs with sporadic intervals of time.

Thus, kmail behaves correctly most of the time, but fails to recognize the messages as "old" sometimes.

I should add that I have NOT experienced the described UIDL error message.

Also, I should describe my situation a little clearer. When referring to the inbox in kmail I will use "local inbox", and when referring to the mail account inbox I will simply use "inbox". I have a lot of messages in my inbox which are marked as read; I will call these messages "old". 

I have noticed that if I have one or more new messages in my inbox, kmail is not guaranteed to recognize any message as new. On a mail check, the status bar of kmail can give the message "[time] Transmission for account xxx complete. No new messages.", even though I actually know that there are new messages, thanks to e.g. kopete and web browser access to my inbox.

Another thing I have noticed, when kmail finds some new messages in my inbox, is that (not necessarily, but most often, all) old messages are incorrectly recognized as new and downloaded to my local inbox. In all, except one, cases when I have noticed this behavior, all old messages in my inbox were (incorrectly) recognized as new and downloaded together with an actual new message. In the exceptional case, about one third of the old messages were (incorrectly) recognized as new and downloaded together with an actual new message.

I have *not* noticed that kmail incorrectly recognizes old messages as new if there are only old messages in my inbox. However, I cannot guarantee that this could not occur.

Has someone noticed that the above case can occur?

I cannot guarantee that the above is an exhaustive description of the erroneous behavior of kmail, but I hope it helps in pinpointing the root of the problem.

I'm pretty sure this behavior (recognizing old messages as new and downloading them again) also happens when there is no new message in the inbox.

With me, I'm not experiencing the multiple downloads of the same messages. I get an excruciatingly long delay whenever I start KMail. This can last up to 15 minutes. I have mine set to leave the messages on the server for 7 days. After the long pause, I get the UIDL error message. After that, KMail appears to work perfectly. On checking my server, I found that the old mail was not being deleted. I deleted all the stuff older than 7 days (thousands of msgs), but that didn't fix the problem. Starting up KMail after the delete still resulted in a long delay followed by the error message, and then followed by seeming normal behavior, but, checking the server after a couple of days showed that older than seven days mail was still there. I switched my settings on Thunderbird used on a different computer to delete the mail after seven days, and it starting doing so.

This bug was originally filed for kmail version 1.13.5 and I'm still using this version. Is anyone here not using 1.13.5 ? Or are there any reports of this bug appearing in more recent versions? (i.e. is it worth upgrading?)

(In reply to comment #12)
> This bug was originally filed for kmail version 1.13.5 and I'm still using this
> version. Is anyone here not using 1.13.5 ? Or are there any reports of this bug
> appearing in more recent versions? (i.e. is it worth upgrading?)

I am now working with version 1.13.7 and haven't seen the problem for quite a while. Looks like the problem has been solved (or maybe hidden).
Alois

(In reply to comment #13)
> (In reply to comment #12)
> > This bug was originally filed for kmail version 1.13.5 and I'm still using this
> > version. Is anyone here not using 1.13.5 ? Or are there any reports of this bug
> > appearing in more recent versions? (i.e. is it worth upgrading?)
> 
> I am now working with version 1.13.7 and haven't seen the problem for quite a
> while. Looks like the problem has been solved (or maybe hidden).
> Alois
Unfortunately, that's the version I'm running, and I still have the problem...

FWIW, the kdepimlibs version is more important than the KMail one for this issue

(In reply to comment #15)
> FWIW, the kdepimlibs version is more important than the KMail one for this
> issue

Here's mine:
kdepimlibs-4.6.2-1.fc14.x86_64
kdepimlibs-akonadi-4.6.2-1.fc14.x86_64

I have a couple of packages relating to kde-pim and akonadi.
libkdepim4 is v4.4.9, kdepimlibs5 (transitional package) and all the akonadi stuff libakonadi-* is v4.5.5.

Same problem here. There was the UIDL error for some weeks, but now it disappeared and kmail wants to download all my old messages from the mailserver. I'm using 
KDE 4.6.3
kmail 1.13.7 (package version is 4.4.11.1)
kdepimlibs 4.6.3
akonadi 1.5.3
on Arch Linux.

Generally reproducible (hangs for quite a long time, sometimes with UIDL message) for this version:

KMail 1.13.7
Kontact 4.4.11
KDE 4.6.5
on Gentoo x86_64

Thank you for taking the time to file a bug report.

KMail2 was released in 2011, and the entire code base went through significant changes. We are currently in the process of porting to Qt5 and KF5. It is unlikely that these bugs are still valid in KMail2.

We welcome you to try out KMail 2 with the KDE 4.14 release and give your feedback.