[Macpartners] AppleMail update

[Don Montabana]

Early this year, there were several reports of email being lost when
attempting to move large numbers (e.g., 1000) of messages in AppleMail from
one folder to another.  Since that time, Information Services and Technology
(IS&T) has worked closely with Apple and others to make sure the issue was
identified and fixed.

 

It was determined that all email clients had problems -- subtle transient
problems, difficult to reproduce or understand -- because of the encryption
protocol (SSL) for IMAP connections on servers.  AppleMail however was shown
to repeatedly lose mail.  The lost email appears to have been caused by an
unexpected interaction between AppleMail and IS&T's servers when handling
the encryption protocol (SSL) for IMAP connections which resulted in
tickling/exercising an IMAP protocol handling bug in the AppleMail client.
While waiting for the server to respond when moving messages from one folder
to another, the AppleMail client would time out. The AppleMail client
incorrectly assumed that the transfer was successful and would then delete
the original messages instead of checking (which is what it should have
done, and is what other IMAP clients do) whether the last operation had
succeeded or not.  To avoid future issues of this nature, IS&T changed the
security encryption protocol on the servers from sslwrap to stunnel.  IS&T
has replaced sslwrap with stunnel on the IMAP servers.  Problems previously
observed on all supported email clients are no longer reproducible and it is
expected all new users of Apple Mail will have trouble free operation.  

 

However, existing  AppleMail users with very large folders (more than 3500
messages) and complex email archives (more than 100 folders and 2 or 3 deep
nested sub-folders) should consider performing a rebuild (use the "Rebuild"
command under the "Mailbox" menu) on the large folders before moving more
than 3500 messages in a single command.

 

IS&T is also testing the Leopard version of AppleMail to verify that IMAP
was used with this version.

 

We continue to monitor all our email clients regularly and hope that if you
encounter any other issues or have further questions, you will contact the
helpdesk @ 3-1101 or by email at computing-help at mit.edu.

 

Don

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- 
Don Montabana
Director, Client Support Services
Information Services and Technology
Office: (617) 253-5654
 <mailto:donm at mit.edu> donm at mit.edu       

 <http://web.mit.edu/ist/org/css> http://web.mit.edu/ist/org/css

 

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