[Kroupware] Fwd: [Bug 57826] New: All folders are deleted on IMAP server

[HolgerSchröder]

hi,

after some thinking about this problem, i got these ideas:
(please correct me if i´m wrong...)

the difference between an imap folder on the local disk in "old" imap mode and 
disconnected imap mode is, that in the old case the mails which are locally 
stored are not on the server any more. the "special" subfolders calendar, 
contacts, notes and tasks are only normal folders for kmail from 3.1, so no 
problem here.

so when i start kmail from the kroupware branch, it should not delete all my 
local mails without asking, but first scan how many and which mails would be 
deleted locally when continuing in the actual disconnected mode.
then the user should get a dialog box which says something like " you seem to 
try to change this folder from traditional imap mode to disconnected imap 
mode. Do you wish to upload the local mails to the imap server or do you want 
to delete all mails in this local folder ?" and which has three buttons:
"upload mails to server and keep them locally" (the default),
"delete all local mails",
"cancel".
when the user presses the "delete all local mails"-button, there should be a 
second warning-dialogbox saying something like "you are about to delete all 
your local mails in this folder, they will not be recoverable. Are you sure 
?".

so we could savely sync "old style" imap accounts in two ways: put local mails 
back to the server (no data "loss"), or delete mails locally (the actual 
kroupware branch way).

by enabling kde 3.1 users to decide if they want to use this cool new 
disconnected imap feature by simply clicking "yes, i want to stuff my data 
back to the server", when they will update to kde 3.2, will be quite an 
impressive feature.

i understand, that the kroupware people have implemented disconnected imap as 
part of their contract, but this feature is not limited to kroupware servers. 
if i understand it correctly, it is a clinet side thing, so it should work 
with any imap server.

there is still one more problem to take into account though: mail quota on the 
server. in case we cannot upload all local mails to the server, we should 
stop uploading and display a messagebox saying that the mail space on the 
server is not big enough to store the mails, so the user should stay with the 
old style, or he should move mail out of this local imap folder, so that the 
mails left here would fit into the server quota.


this should really be done right, as it would place a bad light on kmail, if 
users could loose data by accidently getting a setting wrong. when i played 
around with the kroupware branch of kmail for the first time i of course made 
a backup of my mails on the server, so i didn´t loose any data, but it wasn´t 
clear to me when i would loose the mails in my imap folder on the server. 
from the point when i first got it set up, it was running fine, but i had to 
restore the data from backup two times, before i figured it out...

i think we should even have a local folder named 
<imapfoldername>-BACKUP-<number>, into which all mails, which would otherwise 
be deleted in such a sync process should be moved. this would not even need 
much more disk space, as these files would simply be moved from one subdir 
under the mail dir to another subdir. then people can remove that folder, 
when they are sure the transition was successful and what happened was what 
they wanted. i don´t expect people to switch back and forth between different 
versions of kmail very often, this is the least level of protection against 
data loss, which we should provide. 

zack, can you place this on your todo-list, either to check if somebody will 
have done this in a month or so, or to do it by yourself ? i think this would 
even be paid worktime, as we are thinking about using this at automatix ;-)

if i have overlooked any reasons to not go this way, please tell me...

thanks, Holger

On Saturday 03 May 2003 23:33, Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> On Saturday 03 May 2003 21:39, Stephan Buys wrote:
> > Hi Ingo and Paul,
> >
> > Please note the following on the kolab-kde-client-howto webpage
> > (http://www.kroupware.org/howto-kolab-kde-client.html)
> >
> > Warning: Remove all of your "traditional" IMAP accounts before trying
> > KMail/Kroupware or use a new $KDEHOME or even better: user.
> > KMail/kroupware will mangle your traditional IMAP folders!
>
> This is unacceptable and has to be fixed before KDE 3.2 is released.
> KMail/Kroupware must ignore traditional IMAP folders if it can't deal
> with them.
>
> > It is definitely _not_ recommended to mingle the old and the new
> > clients, date loss/corruption is a known fact. Perhaps some extra
> > warnings/detection code is required.
>
> Obviously.
>
> Regards,
> Ingo