IMAP4 IDLE does not work. imapd_index == NULL ?

[Bron Gondwana]

Sure, you have to select a mailbox if you want to IDLE on it.  If you have selected a mailbox, then imapd_index is that mailbox.

Bron.

On Tue, Feb 3, 2015, at 06:36 PM, Bernhard T wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've some very annoying bit of a problem with the cyrus imapd server and
> hope that someone here has a good grasp on it's internals and can tell
> me what's going on, confirm it's a bug, a matter lacking documentation
> or something else entirely. I'm currently out of ideas (and freedom to
> spend more time on this).
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> 
> Problem:
> The IMAP4 IDLE Command does not work as expected.
> I.e.
> - The cyrus imapd server advertised the IDLE CAPABILITY
> - after sending IDLE it responds with "idling"
> - when I send an e-mail to myself I see the e-mail arrive and being
> filed in /var/log/mail.log
> - but imapd does not ever notify me about the new e-mail. (rather my
> client times out and recheck after >10 minutes)
> 
> Version: Cyrus IMAP v2.4.16-Debian-2.4.16-4+deb7u2
> (which is the currently latest stable Debian Package)
> 
> I spent quite a few hours debugging this problem and learned the following:
> 
> 1. I tried disabling idled and rely on just imapd's polling setting.
> - I disabled idle in cyrus.conf
> - i deleted the stale/remaining socket file idlesocket:
> /var/run/cyrus/socket/idle
> - I set imapidlepoll: 30
> 
> Still nothing happened, imapd never did notify me about my incoming test
> messages.
> 
> 2. I re-enabled idled and set CYRUS_VERBOSE=1
> - verified that idled was working, socket was reachable, permissions ok
> 
> 
> On connection to the imapd and start of any IDLE session, mail.log would
> contain:
> 
> <logdate> mail cyrus/idled[1477]: imapd[1524]: IDLE_INIT '.'
> 
> 
> On receipt of a new e-mail, mail.log would contain:
> 
> <logdate> mail cyrus/idled[1477]: IDLE_NOTIFY 'user.xyz'
> <logdate> mail cyrus/idled[1477]: IDLE_NOTIFY 'user.uvw'
> 
> 
> After playing around with strace, I discovered that idled was being
> correctly notified about mailbox updates,
> but DID NOT send signals to the idling imapd instances.
> 
> 
> 3. I had a look at idled.c and imapd.c from the latest stable sources.
> 
> After glancing over the code, it seems obvious that idled will only
> notify those instances of imapd
> about a mailbox update that have registered themselves for that very
> mailbox.
> i.e. the logmessage
>   IDLE_INIT '.'
> should have read
>   IDLE_INIT 'user.xyz'
> 
> Since it did not, idled does not feel any imapd has registered for
> updates to that mailbox thus we do not the signals.
> 
> Why is that ?
> 
> It seems that imapd purposefully DOES NOT send its mailbox name to
> idled, if the test "if(imapd_index)" fails.
> 
> This is where I stopped browsing the code and tried to rebuild / recover
> the index in case it became corrupted by the recent debian distribution
> upgrade.
> I tried running squatter and recover -r user.xyz serveral times as well
> as restarted cyrus, but to no avail.
> 
> 
> 4. Looking to the Maillinglist for Help
> 
> .. any ideas or help is appreciated. :-)
> 
> config files attached.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Email had 2 attachments:
> + imapd.conf
>   13k (text/plain)
> + cyrus.conf
>   5k (text/plain)


-- 
  Bron Gondwana
  brong at fastmail.fm