Thunderbird and server-side searches

[Peter Pfannenschmid]

Hello!

I am running cyrus imapd 2.2 on debian etch, Thunderbird 2 and
Thunderbird 3 are used as MUAs. This is configured properly and works
very well since years now, but there is the following problem:

The search never has worked as expected. Specifically, if I call
Thunderbird's search dialogue (not some search box, but the dedicated
search window which you get by ctrl-shift-f), there is the option to run
the search locally or server-side.

Local search works, but is limited because TB only can search what is
downloaded already to the local mailbox index on the local harddisk (for
example, subjects, senders and so on). But now there is the need to
search the message bodies.

So, on the server, I have activated squatter and looked into the log
files to ensure that squatter was working correctly (which was the
case). But if I use the server-side search in Thunderbird (by checking
"Run search on server" in TB3's didicated search window), it returns no
or a random selection of messages. Messages which I know to contain a
certain keyword are not returned by the search; in the best case, a part
of these messages is returned. This is regardless if I search for
subject contents or body contents.

I cannot figure out if the error is at the client side or the server
side. Could some please shed some light on this? For example, I could
imagine if there is a special requirement on the encoding of the search
commands which are transferred from the client to the server...

Thanks a lot for any help,

Peter