Re: Error severity and "unexpected BYE response"

[Oswald B. <osw...@gm...>]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 07:09:20PM -0800, Greg Hurrell wrote:
> I have a Gmail sync that is currently failing with this `mbsync -V` debug output:
> 
>   Synchronizing...
>   >>> 27 APPEND "[Gmail]/All Mail" {153284}
>   + go ahead
>   (1 in progress) >>> 28 APPEND "[Gmail]/All Mail" (\Seen) {6304}
>   * BYE Invalid character in literal
>   IMAP error: unexpected BYE response: Invalid character in literal
> 
> After printing this error, the rest of the sync proceeds and appears
> to complete just fine, but at the end of the run `mbsync` exits with
> an error code of 1. I don't have any insight into what parts of the
> sync effectively got skipped as a result of this unexpected BYE.
> 
the server drops the connection after the BYE response, with the effect
that the rest of the Channel is not synced. as uploading happens at the
end, the only effect is that your locally generated messages (usually
your sent messages) aren't propagated, assuming that there is indeed
only one mailbox in this channel.

> Additionally, any tips for how I could find out what this troubling
> message with UID 6304 is and permanently eradicate it?
> 
what makes you think that the number has anything to do with uids? and
why do you think something sent to the server would be a client-side
uid?
in fact, you didn't even get the right message, as the error refers to
the command continuation request above it. you can verify that by
setting PipelineDepth 1.
don't try to second-guess the debug output for a protocol you clearly
didn't learn anything about, and even more, don't act upon these guesses
(how many messages did you delete?).

you're looking for a message you recently sent, which is about 150k in
size. it probably contains badly encoded binary data, maybe a null
character. in that case, your MUA (or whatever created the message)
would be broken.