[D'Espice]

I'm trying to give Mail.app a chance, I really am. Long story short: I have an IMAP server that I'm accessing, a couple of rules and am accessing said IMAP server from two computers (laptop and desktop), never at the same time though. Yet Mail keeps doing really weird stuff....

1. Folders, new Emails and the notification
   Every now and then Mail keeps displaying the incorrect amount of new mails in the folder list in the left panel - it's always twice the amount of actual emails received. Once I click on the folder the notification changes to the actual amount of emails received - what gives?
2. Emails twice, thrice and even more often
   Sometimes, like once or twice a week, when synchronizing with the server, Mail seems to be duplicating new mails - and it does it for every single new mail. Sometimes Mail only duplicates them once, sometimes I get each single message up to seven times. It's quite disturbing because that goes for every single mail - whether it matched a rule and has been moved to an IMAP subfolder, or whether it's a junk-mail or not - doesn't make a difference.
3. Does not delete junk-mail
   Something really weird has happened to me yesterday. I was going through my junk mail to make sure there are no false positives and after having deleted all the new ones I realized that around 5000 old junk mails were still saved in that junk folder even though I definitely deleted those weeks ago. I was able to open these mails, to delete them, etc. However once I tried to access my junk-folder via squirrelmail they were all gone - and didn't show up in Mail afterwards anymore. Was that a cache problem of some kind?
4. One draft, two drafts, three drafts, four drafts, ...
   When writing a new mail I notice how I get more and more new drafts each couple of minutes. There seems to be some kind of snapshot in the draft folder like every two to three minutes. That's not really that bad since the drafts should be gone after I have send the mail - sometimes they're not though. Not too often but every now and then one or two of these snapshots remain in the drafts folder.

I think that's about it for now. I'm really trying to give Mail.app a fair chance since I like both iCal and the Addressbook (and they both synchronize so well with my mobile phone) but given the current problems I'm really tempted to switch to Entourage and use Entourage's calendar and address book. Is there any help or is that just Apple's way of saying 'thanks for not buying .Mac'?

[JKT]

.Mac is an IMAP account, so that is very unlikely.

[D'Espice]

I know it's an IMAP account but still - there are subtle differences between let's say general IMAP and Apple's .Mac IMAP - and therefore Mail's optimization for .Mac's IMAP which is what I was probably going for. The question at hand is: Entourage is not showing any of these problems and actually works like a charm - is there any way for me to 'fix' Mail and continue using it (seriously, I really like it, yet I feel discouraged by the fact that there are (known) problems with IMAP that I haven't experienced with POP3 and Mail or IMAP and Entourage before)? Or is that a lost cause and do I have to live with the fact that Mail's implementation of IMAP is pure crap?

I've had several other problems with Mail and IMAP that I was able to fix (most of them related to IMAP-subfolders and rules) but currently I'm completely out of ideas.

[JLL]

#3 sounds like a cache problem, and I've never witnessed 2, 3 and 4.

[Big Mac]

Can you use the account with only one of the computers without a problem?

[besson3c]

You ought to figure out whether this is a client or server issue. The next time you see duplicates, check to see whether they also appear in Squirrelmail.

If this is a client issue, check to see whether this happens within another OS X account on the same computer.

I've used OS X Mail in the past with Courier IMAP and Cyrus from multiple computers and haven't had received problems 2 and 3. Problem number 4 seems to affect everybody.

I use Thunderbird now though, so I hope that these aren't simply new OS X Mail bugs that would nullify my suggestions here.

[D'Espice]

This is definitely no server issue. This is what happened few days ago: I wasn't home and I wasn't using my laptop so I used squirrelmail to check my mails. So far, so good. I had a couple of unread messages but no duplicates. Once I was home (like two hours later) I started my desktop and ran Mail to synchronize with my IMAP-server - and all of a sudden I had duplicates of most of my unread messages (messages that I know had no duplicates before). In other words: the duplicates appeared as soon as Mail started synchronizing with the server, there was not a single duplicate before.
This happens on both my desktop (10.4.8 Intel) and my Laptop (10.4.9 PPC G3). These problems occur rather randomly, there seems to be no pattern. Sometimes everything's fine for days, sometimes I get duplicates several times a day. Sometimes this happens on my laptop, sometimes on my desktop - totally random. All these problems emerge on both computers though, the desktop and the laptop.

As for the server: It's my own server running Gentoo Linux, courierpop/courierimap and postfix. There are a couple of users on this server and I asked them whether they're expriencing similar behavior or odd behavior in general, all of which responded that they had no trouble at all. None of them is a Mac-User though, they're all running Windows/Linux and either Outlook or Thunderbird.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by D'Espice 

This is definitely no server issue.

It is. I have been using Mail and IMAP (Strato) for years and I never had any of those problems. The only issue I have with Mail is that it doesn't display the correct number of unread e-mails in the badge in the Dock when its main window is closed.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by D'Espice 

This is definitely no server issue. This is what happened few days ago: I wasn't home and I wasn't using my laptop so I used squirrelmail to check my mails. So far, so good. I had a couple of unread messages but no duplicates. Once I was home (like two hours later) I started my desktop and ran Mail to synchronize with my IMAP-server - and all of a sudden I had duplicates of most of my unread messages (messages that I know had no duplicates before). In other words: the duplicates appeared as soon as Mail started synchronizing with the server, there was not a single duplicate before.
This happens on both my desktop (10.4.8 Intel) and my Laptop (10.4.9 PPC G3). These problems occur rather randomly, there seems to be no pattern. Sometimes everything's fine for days, sometimes I get duplicates several times a day. Sometimes this happens on my laptop, sometimes on my desktop - totally random. All these problems emerge on both computers though, the desktop and the laptop.

As for the server: It's my own server running Gentoo Linux, courierpop/courierimap and postfix. There are a couple of users on this server and I asked them whether they're expriencing similar behavior or odd behavior in general, all of which responded that they had no trouble at all. None of them is a Mac-User though, they're all running Windows/Linux and either Outlook or Thunderbird.

Can you duplicate this problem with another client? Have you tried rebuilding your mailbox with OS X Mail?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

It is. I have been using Mail and IMAP (Strato) for years and I never had any of those problems. The only issue I have with Mail is that it doesn't display the correct number of unread e-mails in the badge in the Dock when its main window is closed.

Just because you haven't had these issues doesn't necessarily point to it being a server problem.

[D'Espice]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

It is. I have been using Mail and IMAP (Strato) for years and I never had any of those problems. The only issue I have with Mail is that it doesn't display the correct number of unread e-mails in the badge in the Dock when its main window is closed.

It can't be. If it was then first of all squirrelmail would be showing the same behavior as Mail, second Entourage would be showing the same behavior as Mail and third, I wouldn't be the only one with that problem
A configuration-issue or some kind of incompatibility, that may be. But not a server problem

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Can you duplicate this problem with another client? Have you tried rebuilding your mailbox with OS X Mail?

So far I have only tried Entourage and it did not have any of these problems. And I know for sure that other users on my mail server do not have any of these problems either, all of them running Windows/Linux and Outlook/Thunderbird.
I tried rebuilding the mailbox already - deleted my account on both desktop and laptop, used Entourage for about two weeks, then decided to give Mail another try. To be honest, I did like Entourage a lot. It was fast, stable, and had no IMAP issues at all (at least I didn't notice any during these two weeks of daily use). What I did however miss was iCal's feature to send me a reminder by email - the Entourage calendar doesn't do that hence I almost missed an important meeting. Also, now that I have tricked iSync into recognizing my Benq-Siemens M81 it's been a pleasure to sync - all my notes, contacts and my calendar on my mobile phone is incredibly convenient, yet it's a no-go with Entourage.

[zro]

I've never had these problems over the years, either. Only trouble I've had with Mail and IMAP4 is it creating a "Sent Items" folder. But that's easily remedied.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Just because you haven't had these issues doesn't necessarily point to it being a server problem.

If most people using Mail with IMAP haven't had these issues, it certainly seems more Sherlock Holmesy to look for what's different in this case. Mail? No. IMAP? No. E-mail server? Yes.

[D'Espice]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

If most people using Mail with IMAP haven't had these issues, it certainly seems more Sherlock Holmesy to look for what's different in this case. Mail? No. IMAP? No. E-mail server? Yes.

Care to explain why out of 29 users on my mail server - me being the only Mac-user, hence me being the only one using Mail.app - I am the only one who is facing these issues? Care to explain why 28 other users, most of which are running Windows and Outlook/Thunderbird, some of which are running Linux and Thunderbird/Evolution, have not experienced any problems with IMAP at all (yes, they're all using IMAP, onle one is using POP3)? Care to explain why Squirrelmail, an open-source webmail client running on my server, is not showing any of these issues? Care to explain why, during my two weeks heavy daily use of Entourage on both the desktop and the laptop I did NOT have these problems?

Doesn't quite make sense, does it? I considered it to be a server issue at first as well but after realizing that it was Mail.app-specific and I was the only one who had these issues it kinda hit me: it's either a bug in Mail, or some kind of incompatibility between Mail.app and my server... either way, it's a client issue

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

If most people using Mail with IMAP haven't had these issues, it certainly seems more Sherlock Holmesy to look for what's different in this case. Mail? No. IMAP? No. E-mail server? Yes.

I've never had these problems under Courier IMAP, I know no one else that has, his friends haven't had the problems in their clients, and most importantly of all he is not seeing this in Squirrelmail.

Definitely without question a client issue.

[besson3c]

D'Espice: Does OS X Mail exhibit these problems for you within another OS X account? You said yes, right?

Entourage has severe problems with large mailboxes and its mailbox format often seems to corrupt itself. You may be trading off for a new set of problems going to Entourage.

Easily the best behaved popular IMAP client out there is Thunderbird. With all of the extensions, Thunderbird is definitely the most capable and robust client, and it is very good about conforming to RFCs. This is what I use myself.

However, despite significant improvements in version 2, I don't like the way it handles signatures and attachments, so I kind of wish I could mix and match some aspects of OS X Mail with Thunderbird.

[D'Espice]

Not only within another OS X account but also on a completely different computer that has absolutely nothing in common with the laptop - one is a PowerBook G3/400 Pismo running OS X 10.4.9, the other is an Intel Mac running 10.4.8 (I know I know, 10.4.10 is the latest release... but I'm too lazy to update.... also, never change a running system ). I haven't tried different users on any of these two Macs but given that both are showing exactly the same symptoms I'm assuming that it's not a problem with my OS X account.

Thanks for your help so far and thanks for your Thunderbird suggestion. The problem with Thunderbird is though that - besides being painfully slow on my Pismo - it doesn't have a calendar. Mail has iCal, Entourage has its integrated calendar - Thunderbird has nothing (well ok, there's Sunbird but I don't know much about it). This means that I'd have to run iCal - and ultimately I'd have to run Mail too since I cannot configure iCal to use Thunderbird or Entourage instead of Mail to send out email-reminders. Unfortunately, so far I only found iCal/Mail to offer both the possibility of email reminders and, thanks to iSync, synchronization with my mobile phone (yes, I realize that I'm a rather complicated fella...)

[CatOne]

You're having a connectivity problem or a server problem.

I use Apple Mail all day, every day, as I have for the past 4 1/2 years. I have one IMAP account, and a .Mac account, and I have NONE of these issues on a regular basis. It is not fundamentally broken, period.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by D'Espice 

Not only within another OS X account but also on a completely different computer that has absolutely nothing in common with the laptop - one is a PowerBook G3/400 Pismo running OS X 10.4.9, the other is an Intel Mac running 10.4.8 (I know I know, 10.4.10 is the latest release... but I'm too lazy to update.... also, never change a running system ). I haven't tried different users on any of these two Macs but given that both are showing exactly the same symptoms I'm assuming that it's not a problem with my OS X account.

Thanks for your help so far and thanks for your Thunderbird suggestion. The problem with Thunderbird is though that - besides being painfully slow on my Pismo - it doesn't have a calendar. Mail has iCal, Entourage has its integrated calendar - Thunderbird has nothing (well ok, there's Sunbird but I don't know much about it). This means that I'd have to run iCal - and ultimately I'd have to run Mail too since I cannot configure iCal to use Thunderbird or Entourage instead of Mail to send out email-reminders. Unfortunately, so far I only found iCal/Mail to offer both the possibility of email reminders and, thanks to iSync, synchronization with my mobile phone (yes, I realize that I'm a rather complicated fella...)

The email component of Thunderbird is Lightening. Sunbird is a standalone calendar like iCal.

I'm pretty sure neither supports auto emails though (at least Sunbird doesn't). There are some Applescripts to use different email programs with iCal other than Mail though:

ZappTek :: iCal e-mail Notifications

They don't work with Thunderbird, but I bet it wouldn't be too hard to script using your local Postfix MTA to send mail, rather than piggybacking off of an existing email app.

[D'Espice]

I know this might seem repetitive - but this cannot possibly be a server problem. There are another 28 users on the same mail server, all of them not using Mail.app, and none of them experiencing what I'm experiencing. By now I'm convinced that it's a Mail.app issue since I found other people with similar problems too - not only in this very thread by the way. It seems that these are known issues (especially #1 and #4 seem to be very common), yet nobody at Apple can hear the calling and finally fix these problems - I read that #1 started with 10.4.3 and has been bugging people ever since.
Again, it can't possibly be a server problem - it's simply impossible. Maybe Apple's .Mac IMAP server is a tad different from the default Courier IMAP server, and maybe Apple's Mail is optimizied for .Mac IMAP, and maybe there are other IMAP servers out there that happen to resemble .Mac IMAP... yet there is definitely some kind of incompatibility between Mail 2.1 and Courier IMAP 4.0.6-r2

besson3c:
Thanks again, I'll look into it. Although there seems to be some kind of mistake: I don't have a local postfix MTA. My server's current 'residency' is roughly 300 miles away from my place - at the Tiscali data center. I might still be able to use it somehow tho, I'll see what I can do. If not, the Entourage iCal notification feature will probably save the day! Thanks a million

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by CatOne 

You're having a connectivity problem or a server problem.

I use Apple Mail all day, every day, as I have for the past 4 1/2 years. I have one IMAP account, and a .Mac account, and I have NONE of these issues on a regular basis. It is not fundamentally broken, period.

You don't know that, there are several variables you aren't accounting for. This could very well be an OS X Mail bug.

All clients are supposed to support and abide by the IMAP RFCs (i.e. specs), but there could feasibly be something OS X Mail is doing that is only noticeable with certain versions of certain IMAP servers that is outside spec.

Generally speaking, servers do not change their behavior to accommodate certain clients, it is up to the client to conform.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by D'Espice 

I know this might seem repetitive - but this cannot possibly be a server problem. There are another 28 users on the same mail server, all of them not using Mail.app, and none of them experiencing what I'm experiencing. By now I'm convinced that it's a Mail.app issue since I found other people with similar problems too - not only in this very thread by the way. It seems that these are known issues (especially #1 and #4 seem to be very common), yet nobody at Apple can hear the calling and finally fix these problems - I read that #1 started with 10.4.3 and has been bugging people ever since.

Again, it can't possibly be a server problem - it's simply impossible. Maybe Apple's .Mac IMAP server is a tad different from the default Courier IMAP server, and maybe Apple's Mail is optimizied for .Mac IMAP, and maybe there are other IMAP servers out there that happen to resemble .Mac IMAP... yet there is definitely some kind of incompatibility between Mail 2.1 and Courier IMAP 4.0.6-r2

Apple is probably using Cyrus IMAP, not Courier. I could check on this if I knew the IMAP server name.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by D'Espice 

yet there is definitely some kind of incompatibility between Mail 2.1 and Courier IMAP 4.0.6-r2

FWIW, my server is running courier-imap 4.1.3, and I don't think any of my users have had this problem with OS X Mail.

besson3c:
Thanks again, I'll look into it. Although there seems to be some kind of mistake: I don't have a local postfix MTA. My server's current 'residency' is roughly 300 miles away from my place - at the Tiscali data center. I might still be able to use it somehow tho, I'll see what I can do

Each OS X install includes Postfix, which can be used to send mail straight from your machine. Jump down into the terminal and type:

mail -s "test subject" myemailaddress (return)
(enter some text for your message)
. (a dot on its own line ends the message)

This will send mail. If this doesn't work, download Postfix Enabler to enable Postfix on your machine, I can't remember what its default settings are in OS X and whether it works out of the box. Whatever work I did to mine I did a long time ago.

[D'Espice]

Neat, why didn't I know that!? Thanks, that's a very useful information - that'll definitely solve the iCal notification problem

PS: Is 4.1.3 the latest version or a development snapshot? According to Gentoo's emerge, 4.0.6 is the latest version:
* net-mail/courier-imap
Latest version available: 4.0.6-r2
Latest version installed: 4.0.6-r2
Size of files: 3,083 kB
Homepage: Courier Mail Server
Description: An IMAP daemon designed specifically for maildirs.
License: GPL-2

Edit: YEAH! Local postfix works out of the box... even the dummy sendmail package is installed
Thanks a lot for that... I can't believe I didn't know that

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by D'Espice 

Neat, why didn't I know that!? Thanks, that's a very useful information - that'll definitely solve the iCal notification problem

PS: Is courier 4.1.3 the latest version or a development snapshot? According to Gentoo's emerge, 4.0.6 is the latest version:
[php]* net-mail/courier-imap
Latest version available: 4.0.6-r2
Latest version installed: 4.0.6-r2
Size of files: 3,083 kB
Homepage: http://www.courier-mta.org/
Description: An IMAP daemon designed specifically for maildirs.
License: GPL-2[/php]

4.1.3 is stable. The Gentoo portage system is *extremely* conservative about masking packages. This generally means that somebody on the Gentoo team hasn't tested and certified the software yet, but this does not mean it won't work just fine for you, nor does it mean that it is unstable.

If the maintainers of the software are recommending a particular version (as is the case here with 4.1.3), it's generally safe to unmask a package in Gentoo's portage tree. Moreover, in this case, 4.1.3 is the latest version in FreeBSD ports and likely other package management systems, so this is also another indication that it is safe to install.

To unmask a package you can add an entry to /etc/package.keywords (I believe, I don't have access to a Gentoo machine right now), or simply traverse into the directory where the .ebuild files are for Courier-IMAP and do a:

emerge ./courier-imap.4.1.3.ebuild (whatever the file is called in there).


Never go by what the Gentoo team has unmasked as an indication of the best version to run, as they are often really far behind things. Version 4.0.6 (the release) came out 2005-09-23! Version 4.1.3 is 2007-04-22.

Updating could very well solve your problem for you. If it did, this *could* mean a bug in this old version that didn't affect other clients, or something that OS X Mail is doing that has problems with this particular version.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by D'Espice 

I know this might seem repetitive - but this cannot possibly be a server problem. There are another 28 users on the same mail server, all of them not using Mail.app, and none of them experiencing what I'm experiencing.

Just for clarification: That is not necessarily the case. If the server is sending "2+2=?" expecting "5" as the answer, and whatever the other people are using say it's 5, that doesn't mean Mail is wrong to answer 4.

[D'Espice]

No, Gentoo is not extremely conservative... if you want conservative, go take a look at Debian. Compared to Debian, Gentoo is a radical utopian neoliberal

But I'll look into 4.1.3, didn't realize 4.0.6 was that outdated. I know about unmasking packages and stuff, no problems there. I'll let you know whether or not updating to 4.1.3 fixed the problem, thanks again. This (and the local MTA thingy) has probably been the single most useful information I have ever gotten out of these forums... maybe this'll finally solve my Mail/IMAP issues

[D'Espice]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Just for clarification: That is not necessarily the case. If the server is sending "2+2=?" expecting "5" as the answer, and whatever the other people are using say it's 5, that doesn't mean Mail is wrong to answer 4.

If you wanna be a rebel then yes, 4 might be correct. If you're simply interested in a working system then 5 would probably be the better answer. After all, if 99% say that 2+2=5 and 1% says 2+2=4 - who do you think is going to win this argument
I see your point though. It's like Internet Explorer - everybody knows its render engine is crap yet still it has a 90%+ market share and therefore is the defacto standard. Got your point but we've already established that it's most probably not a server problem but some kind of incompatibility between Mail and courier-imap 4.0.6-r2

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Just for clarification: That is not necessarily the case. If the server is sending "2+2=?" expecting "5" as the answer, and whatever the other people are using say it's 5, that doesn't mean Mail is wrong to answer 4.

True... The RFCs are what ought to be considered the correct targets for everybody, but with things like HTML and Javascript there are browser specific quirks (including Mozilla ones) that we all have to sort of work around, as I'm sure you're aware of...

[D'Espice]

After three days Mail just did it again... fortunately, only two duplicates this time

[besson3c]

D'Espice, I didn't know that the messages you have been getting had different timestamps on them.

Look at the full headers of these messages and let me know if the message IDs match. The message ID should look something like this:

BA2C37E8C8

If they do not match, these are actually individual emails according to your mail server, and if you were to grep the message ID in /var/log/maillog, you would see transaction logs for each delivery session. Paste that in here, if you could please (you can mask out your IP address if you want).

Is your server doing Greylisting of mail? If so, what Greylisting implementation is it using?

[D'Espice]

Every mail exists thrice, with identical timestamps that is. The message IDs match, I just checked three duplicates - the header is 100% identical - from Message ID to userID to LMTP id to timestamp - they all match.

And no, I do not do any greylisting. Either way, here's the mail.log:

dasboot2 mj # cat /var/log/mail.log | grep F37FC14B85F
Jun 29 03:39:36 dasboot2 postfix/pickup[17940]: F37FC14B85F: uid=0 from=<root>
Jun 29 03:39:36 dasboot2 postfix/cleanup[21024]: F37FC14B85F: message-id=<[email protected] >
Jun 29 03:39:36 dasboot2 postfix/qmgr[15454]: F37FC14B85F: from=<[email protected]>, size=1508, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Jun 29 03:39:41 dasboot2 postfix/cleanup[21035]: 24B4014B9F7: message-id=<[email protected] >
Jun 29 03:39:41 dasboot2 postfix/lmtp[21026]: F37FC14B85F: to=<[email protected]>, orig_to=<admin>, relay=127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1]:10024, delay=156, delays=151/0.01/0/5.2, dsn=2.6.0, status=sent (250 2.6.0 Ok, id=17411-06, from MTA([127.0.0.1]:10025): 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 24B4014B9F7)
Jun 29 03:39:41 dasboot2 amavis[17411]: (17411-06) Passed CLEAN, <[email protected]> -> <[email protected]>, Message-ID: <[email protected]> , mail_id: cNFT4YxpXY5y, Hits: -0.584, queued_as: 24B4014B9F7, 5179 ms
Jun 29 03:39:41 dasboot2 postfix/qmgr[15454]: F37FC14B85F: removed
dasboot2 mj #

As you can see as far as the server's concerned, that mail only exists once. Yet according to Mail I have received this mail thrice, with matching timestamps, message ids, etc.

[zro]

Are you applying any rules to messages for that account?

[D'Espice]

Yes, a couple actually. But this duplication of messages does not only happen with messages that matched the rules, but also mails that didn't match any rule. I will probably install sieve on my server to replace the client-based rules - that'd be easier than always changing the rules twice, on the laptop and the desktop. Yet I don't think this is part of the problem since this also happens to messages that don't match any rules. And after each rule there's a full stop anyway, hence applying more than one rule to any given message is impossible (if that's what you were aiming for )

Wouldn't make any sense anyway since it's completely random - yet if it happens, it happens to all unread messages no matter whether or not they matched a rule.

[besson3c]

D'Espice, ignore my earlier piece of advice about looking at headers and message IDs, clearly there are several duplicates with identical timestamps.

I'm thinking the problem is with your Postfix virtual maps.

Jun 29 03:39:41 dasboot2 postfix/lmtp[21026]: F37FC14B85F: to=<[email protected]>, orig_to=<admin>, relay=127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1]:10024, delay=156, delays=151/0.01/0/5.2, dsn=2.6.0, status=sent (250 2.6.0 Ok, id=17411-06, from MTA([127.0.0.1]:10025): 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 24B4014B9F7)
Jun 29 03:39:41 dasboot2 amavis[17411]: (17411-06) Passed CLEAN, <[email protected]> -> <[email protected]>, Message-ID: <[email protected]> , mail_id: cNFT4YxpXY5y, Hits: -0.584, queued_as: 24B4014B9F7, 5179 ms

This message was originally sent to simply "admin". With no suffix this expanded to "[email protected]". This seems to expand to root, which then expands to admin, oddly.

At any case, I don't understand why this expansion seems to be happening twice. Ideally, your mail log would look like the following:

Jun 29 03:39:41 dasboot2 postfix/lmtp[21026]: F37FC14B85F: to=<admin@yourmachinename>, orig_to=<admin@youremail>, relay=127.0.0.1[127.0.0.1]:10024, delay=156, delays=151/0.01/0/5.2, dsn=2.6.0, status=sent (250 2.6.0 Ok, id=17411-06, from MTA([127.0.0.1]:10025): 250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 24B4014B9F7)
Jun 29 03:39:41 dasboot2 amavis[17411]: (17411-06) Passed CLEAN, <admin@youremail> -> <admin@yourmachinename>, Message-ID: <[email protected]> , mail_id: cNFT4YxpXY5y, Hits: -0.584, queued_as: 24B4014B9F7, 5179 ms

The way your mail flow is configured is problematic. I would start correcting this by having "admin@youremail" emailed rather than simply "admin", and would check your virtual maps and /etc/aliases to see how mail to this username is being directed.

[D'Espice]

That just happened to be a message that had a local delivery - I think the vB configuration is sending out warnings to admin, which then again is an alias and forwards that mail to four admins. This expansion is happening twice since the v-alias admin is configured to both, forward that email to four separate accounts plus additionaly leave a message with root.
There are other messages, sent directly to me and not via that alias and these are being duplicated as well:

dasboot2 mj # cat /var/log/mail.log | grep BFBE081A79
Jun 29 14:57:04 dasboot2 postfix/cleanup[9642]: 22E3114B93F: message-id=<[email protected]>
Jun 29 14:57:08 dasboot2 postfix/cleanup[9655]: BA03A14C38D: message-id=<[email protected]>
Jun 29 14:57:08 dasboot2 amavis[8773]: (08773-04) Passed BAD-HEADER, [129.187.254.102] [141.84.120.163] <[email protected]> -> <[email protected]>, Message-ID: <[email protected]>, mail_id: bZR8fCTOpgRE, Hits: -1.019, queued_as: BA03A14C38D, 4617 ms

Btw, we're not using /etc/aliases and local users for authentification, we've set up mysql-auth. The virtual users, aliases, etc. are fine, I'll look into the configuration tho. However if it'd be a configuration issue don't you think that other users would be experiencing the same problems as well?

[D'Espice]

Ok that's it, I give up. I updated my server to 4.1.3 last night and today I had every mail at least twice. In one case, I had an IMAP folder containing 110 unread messages (according to Mail) - yet it was only a single message duplicated 109 times....

I give up, this is just too troublesome. Thanks a lot for your help besson3c, I really appreciate it. I guess you can understand why it's just not worth it anymore... I'll go with Entourage, at least that way I know that it's gonna work and I'll somehow manage Addressbook - Entourage synchronization

[besson3c]

D'Espice:

it may be too late, but have you checked out the following article?

Mac OS X 10.2.8 or Earlier: Mail - Message Duplicates Itself in the In Mailbox

[CatOne]

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