APPEND and \Seen flag handling with admin account

[Hans-Peter Jansen]

Hello,

I'm on the way to migrate some mbox based imapd setups to Cyrus-IMAP,
running on SuSE 9.2 in version 2.2.8, but stumbled across a strange 
phemomenon regarding the \Seen flag handling, which boils down to:

When APPENDing mails as the cyrus admin, the \Seen flags magically 
disappears, unlike appending to the mailbox as its owner: they're 
preserved as expected.

I.e., if the following gets in (python imaplib debug log):

  31:40.87 < HGHM1 OK User logged in
  31:40.87 > HGHM2 APPEND user.xxx (\Seen \Flagged) "17-Dec-2002 21:24:09 +0000" {2864}
  31:40.88 < + go ahead
  31:40.88 write literal size 2864
  31:40.92 < HGHM2 OK [APPENDUID 1100205964 6221] Completed
  31:40.92 > HGHM3 APPEND user.xxx (\Seen) "18-Dec-2002 23:36:16 +0000" {4421}
  31:40.93 < + go ahead
  31:40.93 write literal size 4421
  31:40.93 < HGHM3 OK [APPENDUID 1100205964 6222] Completed
  31:40.94 > HGHM4 APPEND user.xxx (\Seen \Answered) "18-Dec-2002 23:36:23 +0000" {1747}
  31:40.94 < + go ahead
  31:40.94 write literal size 1747
  31:40.95 < HGHM4 OK [APPENDUID 1100205964 6223] Completed
  31:40.96 > HGHM5 APPEND user.xxx (\Seen) "19-Dec-2002 06:00:47 +0000" {18624}
  31:40.96 < + go ahead
  31:40.96 write literal size 18624
  31:40.97 < HGHM5 OK [APPENDUID 1100205964 6224] Completed
  31:40.97 > HGHM6 APPEND user.xxx (\Seen) "19-Dec-2002 11:48:11 +0000" {4377}
  31:40.97 < + go ahead
  31:40.97 write literal size 4377
  31:40.98 < HGHM6 OK [APPENDUID 1100205964 6225] Completed

this comes out:

['1 (FLAGS (\\Recent \\Flagged) INTERNALDATE "17-Dec-2002 22:24:09 +0100")']
['2 (FLAGS (\\Recent) INTERNALDATE "19-Dec-2002 00:36:16 +0100")']
['3 (FLAGS (\\Recent \\Answered) INTERNALDATE "19-Dec-2002 00:36:23 +0100")']
['4 (FLAGS (\\Recent) INTERNALDATE "19-Dec-2002 07:00:47 +0100")']
['5 (FLAGS (\\Recent) INTERNALDATE "19-Dec-2002 12:48:11 +0100")']

while this is expected:

['1 (FLAGS (\\Recent \\Flagged \\Seen) INTERNALDATE "17-Dec-2002 22:24:09 +0100")']
['2 (FLAGS (\\Recent) INTERNALDATE "19-Dec-2002 00:36:16 +0100")']
['3 (FLAGS (\\Recent \\Answered \\Seen) INTERNALDATE "19-Dec-2002 00:36:23 +0100")']
['4 (FLAGS (\\Recent \\Seen) INTERNALDATE "19-Dec-2002 07:00:47 +0100")']
['5 (FLAGS (\\Recent) INTERNALDATE "19-Dec-2002 12:48:11 +0100")']

Obviously, it would be a lot more convenient not bothering with 
user logins on that task; this result is barely satisfying :-(.

Any ideas, what's the rational behind this behavior and much more 
important, is there any chance to circumvent it (probably without 
patching, though one would be nice, too)?

bugzilla knows about some \Seen related problems, which seem to be 
fixed a long time ago. An attempt to create an account on bugzilla
failed by not providing the usual login mail (even on a second try..).

Pete

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