[maemo-developers] modest/tinymail imap idle test available

[From: Paul Hartman]

On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 12:43 PM, David Fries <david at fries.net> wrote:
> I've put together a set of tinymail/modest patches to support imap
> idle mode.

THANK YOU! I was just googling about this over the weekend to see if
anyone ever took on the challenge.

I've just finished compiling in scratchbox VM and installing it to my
N900 and rebooting the phone. IDLE does work but it seems to have some
problems otherwise. Here I'll try to describe them below.

My setup: Latest updates+CSSU installed, 3 IMAP accounts (set to fetch
every 5 minutes) and one Mail for Exchange account (Exchange Server
2007) set to "Always On".

First, the good part: new mail notification to IMAP account on my
server appeared instantly. Great!

It makes a lot of repeated logins to the IMAP server. On my own mail
server I see that it makes 10 logins to the same account within first
10-15 seconds startup/new internet connection, then keeping several
connections active to the server after that. netstat on N900 shows
multiple connections to each of my IMAP accounts. I believe it only
kept 1 connection per server open using standard modest/tinymail.
Maybe it expected behavior.

It keeps notifying me of the same days-old (unread) mail over and over
again as new in my MfE account, when I actually have received no new
messages.

As you hinted: My wifi is very unstable. It disconnected while Modest
GUI was running... after reconnecting to internet, I can't access any
of my mailboxes. Only the local N900 folders (drafts, etc) show up,
server folders like Inbox are not listed. I had to killall modest to
get back into it.

Frequently, Modest crashes ("Internal error"). Of course it crashes a
lot anyway, but I mean more than usual. The crashes are not at an
exact interval. It worked 10 minutes without crash, then it crashed 4
times in less than 5 minutes while sitting idle on my desk.

I was reading a mail already when a new one arrived (I saw on the SMTP
server log monitor). N900 didn't notify this time. When I hit the
"back" button, my inbox was empty "(no messages)". After I closed
Modest (X button), it then immediately notified me of the new message.
Starting Modest GUI again showed my inbox contents properly (including
the new message).

At this point my N900 battery died. It won't charge via USB so I'll
have to wait until I'm home and can put in a new battery to continue
using it.

I don't know anything about debugging Maemo apps but if there's
anything I can try or any info I can provide to help, please let me
know. Thanks again!