Thunderbird IMAP Notes
Thunderbird + IMAP + GMail
For a long time it's bothered me that messages I MOVE from a Gmail account to a locally hosted mail box never actually deleted from GMail.
This thread from 2017 has some clues - https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/d09VoC0ea-A - "Assuming that you are using the "move to trash" delete model and the default IMAP settings, the problem is that "delete immediately" bypasses the Trash folder, and just marks the messages as deleted, which just removes the label in Gmail. (This is just archive in the Inbox.) To delete them from the server, they need to be copied or moved to the [Gmail]/Trash folder. IOW, "delete immediately" prevents them from being deleted from the server." - Didn't help. Works fine for deletes. But Thunderbird MOVES don't seem to work the same.
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Somewhere between version 31 and 38 Thunderbird stopped supporting some variant of encryption. In my experience, there was no indication of the problem. I couldn't figure out what about:config options to allow it.
https://superuser.com/questions/930728/thunderbird-error-imap-server-com-server-does-not-support-rfc-5746-see-cve
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2013-10
Trying to track down some synchronization issues with Thunderbird + Gmail (with simultaneous iPhone + web access on other devices)
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Google's GMail has a limit of 15 IMAP connections per account - https://support.google.com/mail/answer/97150?hl=en
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Thunderbird # IMAP connections - "Tools -> Account Settings -> Server Settings -> Advanced -> IMAP -> Maximum number of server connections to cache"
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"Disable fetch by chunks" - When "fetch by chunks" is enabled, Thunderbird only fetches the number of bytes reported by the server. Sometimes Gmail's IMAP server reports the size wrong, and the messages get truncated. (Fetching by chunks is discouraged anyway, because it adds overhead and breaks some TCP/IP optimisations.)
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Gmail recommends turning OFF IMAP chunks - http://www.brainassassin.com/2010/08/20/thunderbird-imap-tweak-preferences/
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Thunderbird settings - http://kb.mozillazine.org/Advanced_IMAP_account_configuration
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Thunderbird connection logging - http://kb.mozillazine.org/Session_logging_for_mail/news
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I recently had to deal with Thunderbird email client using 100% of the CPU and 100's of megabytes of RAM every half hour or so.
After some trial and error, I discovered that it was related to the clean up of old messages in the Trash folder. The auto-cleanup job was trying to delete hundreds of messages at once (thanks to a joe-job), and it just wasn't working.
Deleteing a chunk at a time manually seems to have fixed it.
This is with an IMAP account.
tags: tbird, thunderbird, email, gmail, IMAP