After being moved, messages remain in both folders on the server

[Eric Luyten]

On Fri, March 30, 2012 12:26 pm, Adam  Tauno Williams wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-03-29 at 12:12 -0400, Mikhail T. wrote:
>
>> I just noticed, that, when I move a message from INBOX to a folder in
>> Thunderbird (via IMAP), the file on the server sometimes remains in
>> both directories: /var/spool/imap/user/mi/message.
>> and /var/spool/imap/user/mi/folder/message.
>> The copies are a hardlink, so little space is wasted, but I'm
>> concerned about the toplevel (INBOX) directory having too many entries... I
>> thought, this is related to the folder (not) being immediately "compacted",
>> but even when I explicitly request a compacting (in Thunderbird), the
>> strangeness remains. Right now out of the 35170 messages in my INBOX, 1219
>> are hardlinked to other folders... Is this normal? I'm using Cyrus imapd
>> 2.4.11 on FreeBSD. Please,
>> advise. Thanks!
>
> If Delayed Expunge is enabled, then it is normal.  Delayed expunge makes
> restore of lost messages easier, is a handy means of 'data retention', and
> helps to avoid I/O-explosions.  If Delayed Expunge isn't enabled - then this
> seems odd.

Adam,
Mikhail,

We do not have delayed expunge enabled on our 2.3.16 server and occasionally
come across multiple-linked message files.
I haven't been able to trace this back to one or another IMAP client, though.

Regards,
Eric Luyten, COmputing Centre VUB/ULB.