[Fetchmail-users] Trouble with --expunge option

[Norman R. <nr...@cs...>]

I'm using fetchmail with IMAP, and it appears to be slamming my server
pretty hard.  The issue shows when there are hundreds of messages
waiting on the server; fetchmail appears to send an EXPUNGE after each
message, and those are slow.

In my configuration, I've set `expunge` to 500, but fetchmail still
seems to be sending EXPUNGE after every message, and I've noticed no
improvement in speed.

I'm not sure if I misunderstand the use of the `expunge` parameter or
if I'm overlooking something else.

As per the FAQ,

 1. My operating system is Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)

 2. Fetchmail is installed from the Debian stable package repository.
    Partial info:
    
        Package: fetchmail
        Status: install ok installed
        Priority: optional
        Section: mail
        Installed-Size: 789
        Maintainer: Laszlo Boszormenyi (GCS) <gc...@de...>
        Architecture: amd64
        Version: 6.4.37-1

 3. I'm not sure how to tell what IMAP server I am talking to, but I
    got this info from telnet:
    
        $ telnet imap.eecs.tufts.edu 143
        Trying 130.64.23.48...
        Connected to imap.eecs.tufts.edu.
        Escape character is '^]'.
        * OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE IDLE STARTTLS LOGINDISABLED] Dovecot ready.

 4. I used these command lines:
 
        env LC_ALL=C fetchmail -V > version.out
        env LC_ALL=C fetchmail -v -L verbose.log
        env LC_ALL=C fetchmail -vvv -L vvv.log
        env LC_ALL=C fetchmail --nodetach -vvv --nosyslog > vvv.1

 5. Outputs are attached.

Any help would be appreciated.


Norman Ramsey