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[OCLUG-Tech] Followup on IMAP issue

Thanks to several on list, Don Kelly in particular, I was able to see that IMAP was not connecting at uOttawa (but was on gmail). I spent about an hour with a couple of the Telfer IT folk, and we could not get a connection, so phoned central CCS. I sent them some logs and later in the day, things started working.

However, in updating a couple of machines, I found that I got similar problems when setting up email. It appears that Thunderbird in particular, but also Evolution (and early Claws mail) seemed to get into difficulties connecting to uOttawa, and it took several tries to get the settings "in". It appears to be necessary to purge all processes that might be involved. Certainly changing account settings does not take effect until the email app is closed and restarted at the least. As indicated gmail doesn't seem to be affected. Once Tbird gets a bad connection, it seems to "remember" this and the trouble stays. There may be an interaction with the gmail account activity that affects things too.

While this is a rather particular issue (i.e., uOttawa for me), from the very many posts about similar matters on various of the forums, I suspect that better diagnostic tools and prescriptions for at least guiding a fix are in order. Since several of us will be talking about email backup in December, and it was the issues with IMAP that started that initiative.

If there are folk interested in trying to document and ameliorate such problems, please get in touch and I'll see what can be said and done for the Dec. meeting. I also plan to be at Nov 1 meeting, and hope some planning for Dec. can take place there. Email is one of the most heavily used and pervasive applications, so a good opportunity for OCLUG to shine.

Cheers, JN