Email out of sync

[ZipperZapper]

I use my Directadmin-server as a mail server too with the default software provided, so Dovecot and Exim. But I'm having some irritating problems and wanted to know if other people experience it as well or know where I have to look to fix it.

In general it's working quite well, but my email regularly ends up out of sync. My accounts are synched over imap on my Windows computer and my Android phone. After a few weeks, the mail ends up out of sync. Mails deleted on the PC are visible in the inbox on the phone, or the other way around. The same applies for mails moved to other folders, they end up still being in the inbox on the other device. Another problem is mail read and deleted on the PC, still arrives as unread on the phone sometimes one hour later.

I'm able to force everyting in sync again by deleting all the dovecot-indexes as explained in this old comment.

I could write a cronjob to delete these indexes every few days to keep the problem under control, but that's just a dirty hack and not a fix for the problem underneath.

Is there somebody whos experiencing the same thing, or probably knows which settings can produce these problems? I have no clue where to look or how to Google the problem.

 

[Erulezz]

What email software are you using? Also which Exim & Dovecot versions are you running? Is this something that happened recently?

Maybe the cached indexes in your email software are bugged and aren't syncing. Did you also try to completely remove the e-mail account?

 

[ZipperZapper]

Maybe you're right.
The problem with double mails and deleted mails still being visible mostly happens on Gmail for Android, only very occasionally on the desktop. You think that's something that should be fixed on the app-side or serverside? Before I found out you could delete dovecot indexes on the server I just used to wipe all Gmail data and login again, but it starts going out of sync after a few days allready.

Dovecot 2.3.1
Exim 4.90.1

 

[dave097]

Maybe you're right.
The problem with double mails and deleted mails still being visible mostly happens on Gmail for Android, only very occasionally on the desktop. You think that's something that should be fixed on the app-side or serverside? Before I found out you could delete dovecot indexes on the server I just used to wipe all Gmail data and login again, but it starts going out of sync after a few days allready.

Dovecot 2.3.1
Exim 4.90.1

Can you test it with Dovecot 2.2.35? I think it's a problem with Dovecot 2.3.*
We had several problems with Dovecot 2.3.* and that was solved with Dovecot 2.2.35. Customers saw the e-mail in Roundcube but were not retrieved via Outlook or Apple mail (Type POP3)
We saw no problems in the logs and therefore had no idea where to look for it. With Dovecot 2.2.35 the problem was solved immediately and the e-mail was retrieved.

 

[ZipperZapper]

As I do not know if that will fix it or possibly starts other programs, I just went with a nightly cronjob deleting the dovecot files. It's dirty, but it works. No problems anymore.