pop3d vs. Microsoft Outlook [Express]

[Miller, Greg]

We have had the exact same problem. It occurred when we migrated some users
from UW to Cyrus. Only affected those who use POP and "leave message on
server."

We have encouraged those with the problem to euth use an IMAP client, our
IMAP based webmail (based on SquirrelMail), or to stop using the "leave
message on server" option. The POP RFC doesn't speak fondly of that feature
anyway. He may even use the word "broken" t describe it I believe.

-- 
Greg Miller, RHCE, CCNA, MCSE
Senior Network Specialist
University of Richmond
gmiller at richmond.edu
(804) 289-8546


-----Original Message-----
From: Pascal Gienger [mailto:Pascal.Gienger at uni-konstanz.de] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 5:58 AM
To: info-cyrus at lists.andrew.cmu.edu
Subject: pop3d vs. Microsoft Outlook [Express]


The Microsoft Mail Products seem to have a problem with the generated UIDLs 
of the Cyrus pop3d.

Cyrus pop3d uses UIDLs with a pattern of "UnixTimestamp.InternalNumber", so
the "UIDL" command results in something like this:

[...]
966 1049815830.12154
967 1049815830.12155
968 1049815830.12156

Apparently Outlook and OE have problems with this as they begin getting 
mail as "new" even if they already have downloaded it ("Leave mail on 
server").

I activated the telemetry log for a user using Outlook but this shows that 
Cyrus does things 100% correct. But Outlook and Outlook Express seem to 
randomly download mail.

It seems that Outlook only uses a fixed number of chars to hold the UIDL, 
the rest is dicarded. The problem arose when when message-numbers reached 
1000. So it seems that Outlook uses 14 or 15 chars. So then for Outlook all 
messages have the same UIDL, resulting in this behaviour.

Our previous mail system ("Sun iPlanet") used UIDLS as 18328-100938292. So 
the problem did not arise.

Had anybody the same problem?
We are encouring users to use IMAP4 if they wish to leave mail on the 
server. Besides this, we did not find a solution. And Microsoft does not 
reply to an error report.

Pascal