Re: imap and pop mailboxes don't need to be opened?!

[Sam Roberts]

Hi Alain,

Yes, I understand the *re-*opening when the open connection was lost,
and I think that makes sense.

But... right now it opens when it never was open.

If mailbox_open() doesn't succeed, then reopens should not occur.

The point is to finish an operation when the write notices
the connection has been closed. But since the mailbox has never
been opened, there can't be an operation to finish, so it
shouldn't try to open. It should return ERR_MBOX_NO_OPEN, or
something meaning the same thing.

Sam

Quoting Alain Magloire <address@hidden>, who wrote:
> > 
> > Bon soir,
> > 
> > They don't keep track of whether they've been opened sucessfully,
> > and for some operations they reopen if they've lost the connection.
> > 
> > I don't think the open should be optional, I am about to add some
> > state, so they know they have been opened.
> > 
> > Before doing this, does anybody have a reason this was a good thing?
> > 
> > Sam
> > 
> > Background:
> > 
> > On sieve exit, I was expunging the mailbox before closing it, I
> > wondered why I was getting prompted twice for my user name and
> > password.
> 
> Having a too long timeout, will make receiving mail impossible,
> since holding the mailbox lock is a requirement. So many
> POP servers violate the RFC by having a very short timeout(I've
> seen servers with timeout in term of seconds).
> 
> Note:
>       The RFC says that timeout for POP3 is at least 10 minutes.
> 
> So when the timeout occurs, you do not know, only the first
> write() will notice it.  The pop3 code tries to handle this gracefully
> by reopening again and finish the operation, of course if the open fail
> then it is a final failure.
> 

-- 
Sam Roberts <address@hidden> (Vivez sans temps mort!)