# mail.app stuck talking to imap server



## Cow Loon (Nov 28, 2007)

Mail.app appears to be stuck in a loop talking to my imap server running on linux. In the activity window, it shows "Copying message" and "synchronizing with server". Then it presents a prompt saying the connection timed out and it tries again, a few times, then Mail.app crashes. If I start it again the same thing happens again.

This happened at the same time that I had a problem receiving an email repeatedly.

I have fetchmail running on linux to retrieve email from a pop account, which dovecot imap server then serves.

The other day someone sent me an email that fetchmail had problems with apparently, and kept retrieving the same message over and over. So I  logged into the pop account from telnet and deleted the message and that allowed fetchmail to go on to the next message. However, meanwhile I had been trying to delete the 75 are so copies of the message from mail.app.

So, I think it may be trying to move those messages to the Trash over and over again and failing for some reason.

Do you have any ideas about how I can get Mail.app to stop trying to copy the messages?


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## Kees Buijs (Nov 30, 2007)

Cow Loon said:


> Mail.app appears to be stuck in a loop talking to my imap server running on linux. In the activity window, it shows "Copying message" and "synchronizing with server". Then it presents a prompt saying the connection timed out and it tries again, a few times, then Mail.app crashes. If I start it again the same thing happens again.
> 
> This happened at the same time that I had a problem receiving an email repeatedly.
> 
> ...




You can try to access the fetchmail account with WEBMAIL and delete the message(s) with webmail. Afterwards mail should work again fine.

Also you can try to have mail not fetch the mail from the account before you  cleaned up the account.

Most likely the message is damaged and that will cause to fetch to fail. Also you can try to retreive only the headers from imap mails, not the contents. That is faster and does not copy the content to the local computer. Than you might be able to delete the mails without downloading them.


Good luck, Kees


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## Cow Loon (Nov 30, 2007)

I did delete the message from the pop account already (actually I say that in my very long post). That allowed fetchmail to get beyond that one email. And mail works fine from evolution in linux. It's only in Mail, where it started after trying to delete those messages.

While fetchmail was stuck in a loop, I was deleting the emails as they arrived, from Mail and it's been hanging ever since. I deleted the mail from the pop account in the middle of my email deleting spree.

I don't think the problem with fetchmail should relate to Mail having a problem after deleting messages though, right? fetchmail gets the mail from my ISP's pop account, then the imap server has access to it, then Mail gets it from the imap server. So, my deleting the email in Mail, doesn't do anything with fetchmail.


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## Kees Buijs (Dec 1, 2007)

If the mail is bad, mail will try to load the bad mail. The mail is still on the imap server (but not on the pop3 server). SO the mail causing the is gone for fetchmail, but not for imap (and mail app).


Good luck, Kees


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