Re: [fetchmail-devel] Re: [fetchmail-users] Incorrect header line and lost mails

[Frederic M. <fre...@wo...>]

Matthias Andree wrote:
> Does fetchmail -vvv reveal any more detail? For instance, it would show
> the UIDL lists, and some editing with cut, sort, a text editor and
> finally the "comm" command might show what's really going on.
>
>   
It wasn't long and here is the result. I reconstructed the three UID 
lists here below from the UID fetchmail fetches.

First run, 5 messages are waiting, the response to the UIDL command is 
as follow. All the UID are listed.

POP3< 1 3QWN3Z3.CNM34671D94
POP3< 2 5KS8NWT.CNM34671DAD
POP3< 3 GWBROT7.CNM34671DE2
POP3< 4 IZ3YMGF.CNM34671D48
POP3< 5 YDL1GPM.CNM34671DAD

Next run, 8 messages are on the server and fetchmail tries to find the 
first unseen UID starting from number 4 and goes back to number 2

POP3< +OK 2 3QWN3Z3.CNM34671D94
POP3< +OK 3 5KS8NWT.CNM34671DAD
POP3< +OK 4 D76QP56.CNM34671F2A
POP3< +OK 5 GWBROT7.CNM34671DE2
POP3< +OK 6 IZ3YMGF.CNM34671D48
POP3< +OK 7 VYMMFQG.CNM34671EFC
POP3< +OK 8 YDL1GPM.CNM34671DAD

Next run, 10 messages, fetchmail seeks the first unseen message from 
number 5

POP3< +OK 5 D76QP56.CNM34671F2A
POP3< +OK 6 GWBROT7.CNM34671DE2
POP3< +OK 7 IZ3YMGF.CNM34671D48
POP3< +OK 8 N09R1OZ.CNM34671FB1
POP3< +OK 9 VYMMFQG.CNM34671EFC
POP3< +OK 10 YDL1GPM.CNM34671DAD

As we can see, the UID numbers are not the same from one run to the 
other. Mercury returns a UID list sorted alphabetically on the UID string !

As a consequence, trying to find the last unseen message from a 
dichotomic search on such a UID list always fails.

It also explains why I thought some messages were downloaded more than 
one time. They weren't but I believed so because the same message 
numbers were downloaded several times. They were simply different UID. 
But on the other side, messages with a low UID (alphabetically) were 
clearly never downloaded.

The only option left is to read the whole UID list each time. Is it 
possible to configure fetchmail to do that ?

Frederic