Re: is this a bug in gnus v5.13? Re: gnus INBOX housekeeping, kept (copies of) mail lying around

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Gijs Hillenius <gijs@hillenius.net> writes:

> On  7 Jan 2016, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
>
>> Gijs Hillenius <gijs@hillenius.net> writes:
>>
>>> [...] hope snipping this much is ok..
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> If my Gnus (5.13, part of Debian's Emacs) copies messages back into
>>>>> the INBOX, does fancy-split set the delete/expunge IMAP flag to
>>>>> these?
>>>>>
>>>>> Because, if it does not flag them for deletion, would that perhaps
>>>>> explain why the nightly Cyrus pruning does not do anything? Cyrus
>>>>> is set to remove from disk all messages that have been flagged for
>>>>> deletion for 3 days.
>>>>
>>>> No, no flags are set. From IMAP's point of view, splitting is simply
>>>> a MOVE operation. Sorry, I misspoke earlier when I said the messages
>>>> were *copied* back into the same group. They're actually MOVEd. That
>>>> means there's only ever one copy of the message, but it gets a new
>>>> UUID number each time.
>>>>
>>>> No new flags are set at all.
>>>
>>> So, these message come back int the INBOX, but are not shown anymore
>>> by Gnus. They are also not marked as deletable and that would explain
>>> why Cyrus does not remove them from disk, yes?
>>
>> Right. Once they are given the Seen flag, that flag sticks with them
>> even if they are moved around (including "moved" into the same group
>> they were already in). That Seen flag means Gnus won't show them to
>> you again.
>>
>> I think the distinction here is between message deletion, and adding
>> the "Deleted" flag. Deletion occurs as part of the move process (the
>> message is in one instant removed from one group and added to
>> another). If you're MOVEing to the same group, the message is deleted
>> from that group, then added back to that group. But it keeps its old
>> flags, and no other flags are put on it (there's nothing in the
>> splitting process that would add a Deleted flag), so Cyrus doesn't see
>> any reason why it should garbage-collect the message at the end of the
>> day.
>
> So, we're saying the same thing, correct?
>
> What I don't understand is - and apologies for being long-winded:
>
> The way I use Gnus: when I start it, or hit g, new messages in the INBOX
> are fancy-splitted, and moved to various IMAP folders. So I see several
> INBOX.subfolders with a new, unread messages. These copies, that are
> kept in the INBOX, as a user I don't know about these, I don't see them
> in any IMAP mail client. Is that why 'root' sees 8k messages in the
> INBOX when root happens to look at this users' INBOX folder?
>
> How can Cyrus tell these message can safely be trashed? I guess this is
> a question for a Cryus mailing list, where it not that this "keeping a
> copy" does not happen for mail that is split on the server by a Sieve
> script. So, perhaps this is a Gnus fancy-split bug?

Okay hang on, we're not quite talking about the same thing here. If
messages are split into _other_ groups, then everything should go fine
-- they should leave the INBOX altogether (what's your value for
nnimap-inbox on this server?) go to the new group, and Gnus should never
try to split them again.

The situation I was talking about was when messages _aren't_ matched by
any split methods, and they stay in the INBOX. In that case, they keep
getting removed and copied back into the INBOX.

If your messages are getting split into other groups, then things should
work as expected. Remind of the problem again?

Sorry about the confusion...

Eric