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I'm 99% sure there is a bug in SmarterMail that causes emails to become corrupted and unreadable... and quite frankly it's unacceptable in an enterprise level product.

I use the latest version of Thunderbird (v2.0) as my mail client and connect via IMAP to SmarterMail (v4.2.2698). I connect to other IMAP mail servers just fine and never have any problems with message just vanishing... only SmarterMail. It's even happened on different instances of SmarterMail on shared hosted accounts, on completely different networks.

I'm not exactly sure what the cause of the corruption is, but sometimes I'll discover multiple totally unrelated emails merged into one email!!? Other times I'll try to open a message that I've already read before, only to have the message just disappear. When that happens I'll try to log into webmail to view the message, but it just says [No From Address], [No Subject], This message no longer exists on this server. About the only thing entact is the date/time of the message.

It's completely unpredictable, and realllllly annoying. There needs to be some serious effort made to correct this problem, and soon. I've normally been a big supporter of SmarterTools products, but I can't run an online business successfully if I don't have a reliable email server. It's almost time to abandon ship, but I hope there is a better option and a solution to the problem. 

I have a similar problem with regular old qmail, but it's VERY rare, and would ONLY be in Outlook/Outlook Express. If I went to webmail, the email would be there as expected.  It's been a really long time since I've seen this issue, but I seem to recall I could occassionally reproduce it by trying to issue SMTP commands while outlook was downloading mail.  Sometimes outlook would download all my mail twice. 

While this *may* be a SmarterMail issue, and is almost assuredly something that SmarterTools could prevent via code fixes, it may also be a quirk with Thunderbird that's actually the cause.

bitjunky, have you actually had conversations with tech-support in which they confirmed it as a known issue?

Thanks for adding your comment, it may sound weird, but it's almost comforting knowing someone else has experience the same problem. I'm NOT crazy afterall!
 

sixside:

bitjunky, have you actually had conversations with tech-support in which they confirmed it as a known issue?

Thanks for adding your comment, it may sound weird, but it's almost comforting knowing someone else has experience the same problem. I'm NOT crazy afterall!
 

Tim mentioned that he thought it may be related to a Mac (Apple Mail) problem that they were working on, and thought that the IMAP IDLE support may fix the issue. He also offered to work with me once I installed v4.2 to try to diagnose the issue, but I haven't yet made the upgrade... The user this bug seems to affect most often is connectng via IMAP from a Mac using MS Entourage, but I have witnessed it once on one of my accounts that I connect to via POP. If you're running v4.2, try enabling the IDLE command support to see if the problem persists. Perhaps I will pay for an upgrade despite the possibility that it still isn't fixed because of Tim's offer to work with me - I just haven't yet had the time to yet. I also hesitated a bit because I want the TLS support which requires me to upgrade to the Enterprise version... I have been very happy with the feature set of the product, as well as the responsiveness of the ST folks who post to the forum - but then one of my user's mailstore gets wiped out and it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Since you are experiencing the same symptoms that I am, maybe you & me and ST can work together to figure this out. Because it's random (seems to be anyway), it's hard to duplicate - but maybe if we compare notes on client configurations & server setup we can narrow it down a bit to facilitate testing that will lead to a fix.

This is STILL an issue in the latest version ( 4.3.2760) I had about 20 emails in my inbox that have been forever lost. Completely unacceptable!

 [No Email]  [No Subject]

Until this issue is fixed I'm recommending people DO NOT use SmarterMail. Look elsewhere for your email server solutions.

this problem has been there since smartermai 3.x and there is no proper resolution :( except that you delete .cfg and re create. And it still continues.

 Apart from this haunting the rest is all ok. Been in touch with team since a year.. now  i am tired! Gratefully I never face any major proble in 4.x (except that i will see rare such mail here and there in some inbox)

 cheers

Well I've received maybe a dozen complaints about this exact issue (running latest version).  One client is extremely mad at me right now!

Would someone from SmarterTools PLEASE respond to this issue? 

-Joe

I have had less reports of this issue since I advised clients to turn off their email client's "junk mail protection" feature when using IMAP to connect. Users of MS Entourage (Mac) will note that they can associate "Special Folders" like 'Sent Items', 'Drafts', & 'Junk E-mail' to respective IMAP folders. I think that when setup this way, and with "Junk E-mail Protection" turned ON causes problems when Entourage gets an email that it considers junk, which it immediately moves to the Junk E-mail folder (which is then synced back to the IMAP folder). Perhaps Entourage moving the message(s) when it's still downloading other emails is confusing SmarterMail?? Anyway, I've instructed users to manage junk mail settings via webmail, and to turn off the filtering in MS Entourage. While it hasn't eliminated the occurrence of this mailbox corruption, it has improved the frequency of it in my environment.

 

The user that's extremely hot right now is using the latest Thunderbird via IMAP.  I think everyone that has complained about this has used IMAP.  I suspect there's a bug in SmarterMail's IMAP implementation somewhere. 

I see hundreds of the following error in the IMAP log.  I don't know enough about it to come to any conclusion.  IP address changed by me.

10:53:18 [21X.2XX.6X.1XX][36332470] Failed to fetch data item 'BODY.PEEK[HEADER.FIELDS (From To Cc Subject Date Message-ID Priority X-Priority References Newsgroups In-Reply-To Content-Type)]'.
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.GroupFileAccess.GroupFile.GetHeaderItem(UInt32 uid)
   at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.GroupFileAccess.MimeReader.get_MessageBoundary()
   at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.MailStore.ImapMessageWrapper.GetComplexPart(String partItem)
   at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.MailStore.ImapMessageWrapper.GetPart(String partItem)
   at TcpServerLib.IMAPSession.FetchDataItems(MessageID[] idList, String[] itemList, ArrayList& replyArr)

I see a lot of the following errors in the IMAP log as well:

13:52:06 [2XX.2XX.XX.XXX][52150945] Failed to fetch data item 'BODY.PEEK[1]'.
System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Non-negative number required.
Parameter name: count
   at System.IO.BinaryReader.ReadBytes(Int32 count)
   at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.GroupFileAccess.GroupFile.FeedMessagePart(MessageByteFeederDelegate partFeeder, Int32 startByte, Int32 readCount)
   at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.GroupFileAccess.MimeReader.FeedMessagePart(MessageByteFeederDelegate partFeeder, Int32 startByte, Int32 readCount)
   at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.MailStore.ImapMessageWrapper.ExtractSubSection(String partItem, BodySection bodySection)
   at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.MailStore.ImapMessageWrapper.GetComplexPart(String partItem)
   at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.MailStore.ImapMessageWrapper.GetPart(String partItem)
   at TcpServerLib.IMAPSession.FetchDataItems(MessageID[] idList, String[] itemList, ArrayList& repl

[61600183] command: 106 UID fetch 91795,99208 (UID RFC822.SIZE FLAGS BODY.PEEK[HEADER.FIELDS (From To Cc Subject Date Message-ID Priority X-Priority References Newsgroups In-Reply-To Content-Type)])
[61600183] Failed to fetch data item 'BODY.PEEK[HEADER.FIELDS (From To Cc Subject Date Message-ID Priority X-Priority References Newsgroups In-Reply-To Content-Type)]'.
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.GroupFileAccess.MimeReader.get_MessageBoundary()
   at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.MailStore.ImapMessageWrapper.GetComplexPart(String partItem)
   at SmarterTools.SmarterMail.MailStore.ImapMessageWrapper.GetPart(String partItem)
   at TcpServerLib.IMAPSession.FetchDataItems(MessageID[] idList, String[] itemList, ArrayList& replyArr)

We lost 3 critical business emails as well :(