#501 new
J Clark

IMAP problem for "Gmail" account

Reported by J Clark | November 23rd, 2013 @ 10:54 PM

This error message has appeared twice for me today:

MailMate encountered the following error: “An EXISTS response decreased the number of messages. This should never happen.”. Mailbox: “[Gmail]/All Mail”.

I was then given the option to retry, go offline, or something else.

It appeared when I unlocked the laptop after several hours away in both cases. The last operation I did (I think) was a search over the All Messages folder, triggered by alt-cmd-F.

I'll add more info on this if it reappears.

Comments and changes to this ticket

  • benny

    benny November 24th, 2013 @ 08:27 AM

    I assume “Retry” does not fail (otherwise it could be used for additional information). It sounds like a server bug, but the only way to be sure is to get a connection log. If it happens often then you can run MailMate with the Activity Viewer (⌥⌘0) open. After the error, you can then locate the related connection and copy/paste (relevant part of) the log to this ticket.

    Thanks in advance.

  • Charles Parker

    Charles Parker April 10th, 2018 @ 08:05 PM

    I am having this problem. Retry fails in my case. When I looked at the activity monitor, I got what is below. There were lots of fetch requests above this...

    20:03:02 S: * 30865 FETCH (UID 200422 FLAGS (\Seen))
    20:03:03 S: K9 OK FETCH completed.
    20:03:03 Deleting messages
    20:03:03 C: K10 UID STORE 39085:39364 +FLAGS.SILENT (\Deleted)
    20:03:03 S: K10 OK STORE completed.
    20:03:03 C: K11 UID EXPUNGE 39085:39364
    20:03:07 S: * 30765 EXISTS
    20:03:07 Error: An EXISTS response decreased the number of messages. This should never happen.
    20:03:07 Error code: 1
    20:03:07 Failed action (1010). Reset observed read/write timeouts: 8/8

    20:03:07 Handling reply
    20:03:23 Terminating non-running connection...

  • benny

    benny April 10th, 2018 @ 08:42 PM

    @Charles: Seems like it is a server bug. What server is this?

    Also, try generating logs for me like this:

    • Open the Activity Viewer (⌥⌘0).
    • Relaunch MailMate.
    • Wait until you have seen the error at least once.
    • Use “Help ▸ Send Server Logs”.

    Then I'll see what I can find.

  • Charles Parker

    Charles Parker April 11th, 2018 @ 02:47 PM

    This probably is server side. I left my mail client open at work (Outlook for Mac 2016), so two programs were accessing the mail at the same time. I closed it and that seems to have fixed the problem. If it re-appears, I'll post logs.

    Please let me know if you want me to check whether it re-appears (by opening Outlook 2016) in order to get logs.

  • benny

    benny April 21st, 2018 @ 10:26 AM

    • State changed from “new” to “cantreproduce”

    @Charles: In theory, it definitely shouldn't be a problem to use multiple email clients with IMAP (it was explicitly designed for this purpose), but some servers are badly implemented. If it's reproducible then I'll be willing to look into a workaround or somehow handling it better.

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