Shared folder fiasco

[Tom Plancon]

Hi folks,

I'm running an email server for 40 users on cyrus-imad 2.6 on CentOS 6,
with postfix 2.2.6. Our email client is Thunderbird. I tried to set up a
shared mailbox using a howto found here:
http://wiki.linuxwall.info/doku.php/en:ressources:dossiers:cyrus:shared_mailbox.
Based on that info, I set altnamespace to yes in imapd.conf, and that
caused problems for the Tbird clients; it acted as though it had never
seen the user's mailboxes before and needed to reload all of the
existing email headers in all folders!  That was especially true for the
Sent folder which Tbird could not find for a while and kept throwing
errors, although it sent the email. Also the display of the users Inbox
changed in the Tbird folder listings to appear as a "subscribed" folder
rather than the user's INBOX.

After about 36 hours things settled down and is now behaving normally
for most users, however I have 2 users that cannot see the contents of
their INBOX. The email is there, and they are receiving normally, but
just not visible in Tbird. All other subfolders are there and the
contents visible.

I don't see anything unusual in maillog for the 2 users. I've tried
completely removing their Thunderbird installation then reinstalling,
inbox contents appears initially then disappears! Any thoughts as to
what's to do here are greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[ellie timoney]

Hi,

Post by Tom Plancon
cyrus-imad 2.6

Is this a typo? There is no cyrus-imapd 2.6. I'm going to carry on
assuming you meant "2.5", but please advise if otherwise.

Post by Tom Plancon
http://wiki.linuxwall.info/doku.php/en:ressources:dossiers:cyrus:shared_mailbox

That page says it's for 2.2, which is ancient (and long before my time,
so I can't comment on its accuracy). Documentation for 2.5 specifically
is available at https://www.cyrusimap.org/2.5/ (though I'm not certain
how complete it is)

Post by Tom Plancon
it acted as though it had never seen the user's mailboxes before and
needed to reload all of the existing email headers in all folders

Yep, changing the namespace will appear to clients as if the entire
world has changed (in a way, it has)

Post by Tom Plancon
After about 36 hours things settled down and is now behaving normally
for most users,

Cool, that's what I would expect to happen, once all the clients have
finished updating their state.

Post by Tom Plancon
however I have 2 users that cannot see the contents of their INBOX.
I don't see anything unusual in maillog for the 2 users

That's weird. I see that you've tried reinstalling Thunderbird, but I
don't know if that removes the profiles or not. It might be a problem
with the Thunderbird profile, and reinstalling might have used the same
one. In which case, removing and creating a new profile might do the
trick. Information about managing Thunderbird profiles is available
here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/using-multiple-profiles
Cheers,

ellie

Post by Tom Plancon
Hi folks,
I'm running an email server for 40 users on cyrus-imad 2.6 on CentOS
6, with postfix 2.2.6. Our email client is Thunderbird. I tried to set
http://wiki.linuxwall.info/doku.php/en:ressources:dossiers:cyrus:shared_mailbox.
Based on that info, I set altnamespace to yes in imapd.conf, and that
caused problems for the Tbird clients; it acted as though it had never
seen the user's mailboxes before and needed to reload all of the
existing email headers in all folders! That was especially true for
the Sent folder which Tbird could not find for a while and kept
throwing errors, although it sent the email. Also the display of the
users Inbox changed in the Tbird folder listings to appear as a
"subscribed" folder rather than the user's INBOX.> After about 36 hours things settled down and is now behaving normally
for most users, however I have 2 users that cannot see the contents of
their INBOX. The email is there, and they are receiving normally, but
just not visible in Tbird. All other subfolders are there and the
contents visible.> I don't see anything unusual in maillog for the 2 users. I've tried
completely removing their Thunderbird installation then reinstalling,
inbox contents appears initially then disappears! Any thoughts as to
what's to do here are greatly appreciated! Thanks!> --
*Thomas Plancon*
*CAD/IT MANAGER*
W: www.bkaarchitects.com[1]
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Cyrus Home Page: http://www.cyrusimap.org/
https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/info-cyrus

Links:

1. http://www.bkaarchs.com

[Tom Plancon]

ellie,

Thank you for the response.

Upon further investigation I am running cyrus-imapd 2.3. Don't know
where/how I saw 2.6!

It is a Thunderbird problem. I had removed Tbird and what I thought was
the profile info, but it appears Tbird stores profile data in two
locations on Win 10: C:/users/[name]/appdata/roaming/Thunderbird and
C:/users/[name]/appdata/low/Thunderbird. Removing both of those
directories and re-installing tbird then re-creating the user's account
cleaned everything up and the inbox started showing new incoming mail.

Thanks again for the hints! Everything is almost back to normal, but
still no functioning "shared" folder.

myEMAILsignature Thomas Plancon
CAD/IT MANAGER

E:  ***@bkaarchs.com
W: www.bkaarchitects.com <http://www.bkaarchs.com>

BKA/LOGO