Domino IMAP for Windows Mail or When Millenials use Internet Protocols
Martin Leyrer August 16 2021 08:51:26
A colleague reached out with a problem, that one of his customers is using Windows Mail (no judging please) to fetch mails from Domino via IMAP4. And they see no mails in their Inbox. Intrigued by this tech puzzle on a Monday morning, I set out to recreate in my sandbox environment, and lo and behold, I had the same issue and even got an "0x8007274d" error:
So I tested with Mozilla Thunderbird and that worked like a charm. So I dug deeper and created some pcaps (because "pcap or it didn't happen").
Thunderbirds implementation to fetch mails in the inbox, it first selects the Inbox, then does an "UID fetch 1:*" (get all UIDs from message #1 onwards) and then downloads the individual mails.
IMAP 73 Request: 93 select "INBOX"
IMAP 365 Response: 93 OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed
IMAP 79 Request: 94 getquotaroot "INBOX"
IMAP 136 Response: 94 OK GETQUOTAROOT completed
IMAP 80 Request: 95 UID fetch 1:* (FLAGS)
IMAP 133 Response: 95 OK FETCH completed
IMAP 238 Request: 96 UID fetch 1:2 (UID RFC822.SIZE FLAGS BODY.PEEK[HEADER.FIELDS (From To Cc Bcc Subject Date Message-ID Priority X-Priority References Newsgroups In-Reply-To Content-Type Reply-To)])
IMAP/IMF/IMF 1015 subject: Testmail 001, from: Domino_Administrator/EXAMPLE%EXAMPLE@example.com, subject: Test 002, from: Domino_Administrator/EXAMPLE%EXAMPLE@example.com, (text/plain)
IMAP 102 Request: 97 UID fetch 1,2 (UID RFC822.SIZE BODY.PEEK[])
IMAP/IMF/IMF 2760 subject: Testmail 001, from: Domino_Administrator/EXAMPLE%EXAMPLE@example.com, subject: Test 002, from: Domino_Administrator/EXAMPLE%EXAMPLE@example.com, (text/plain)
Whereas at Microsoft apparently the Millenials never got beyond the "SEARCH" chapter in RFC 3501. They decided to rely on ldap's computational expensive "SEARCH" command. Which in itself might not be bad, but as Microsoft does not surface the servers response, the admin will be kept in the dark as to why Windows Mail does not fetch any mails. If you look at the pcap, Domino correctly reports "NO SEARCH Database is not full text indexed" which Windows Mail does not show anywhere.
IMAP 93 Request: A8 SEARCH UNDELETED SINCE 15-Aug-2021
IMAP 102 Response: A8 NO SEARCH Database is not full text indexed
So to fix this issue, create a full-text index on the mail database. Once that is completed, Windows Mail will "work":
IMAP 74 Request: A12 SELECT "Inbox"
IMAP 366 Response: A12 OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed
IMAP 94 Request: A13 SEARCH UNDELETED SINCE 19-May-2021
IMAP 93 Response: A13 OK SEARCH completed
IMAP 266 Request: A14 FETCH 1:2 (INTERNALDATE UID FLAGS RFC822.SIZE BODY.PEEK[HEADER.FIELDS (DATE FROM SUBJECT CONTENT-TYPE X-MS-TNEF-Correlator CONTENT-CLASS IMPORTANCE PRIORITY X-PRIORITY THREAD-TOPIC REPLY-TO)] BODYSTRUCTURE)
IMAP/IMF/IMF 1055 subject: Test 002, from: Domino_Administrator/EXAMPLE%EXAMPLE@example.com, subject: Testmail 001, from: Domino_Administrator/EXAMPLE%EXAMPLE@example.com, (text/plain)
IMAP 74 Request: A15 SELECT "Inbox"
IMAP 366 Response: A15 OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed
IMAP 94 Request: A16 SEARCH UNDELETED SINCE 19-May-2021
IMAP 93 Response: A16 OK SEARCH completed
IMAP 266 Request: A17 FETCH 1:2 (INTERNALDATE UID FLAGS RFC822.SIZE BODY.PEEK[HEADER.FIELDS (DATE FROM SUBJECT CONTENT-TYPE X-MS-TNEF-Correlator CONTENT-CLASS IMPORTANCE PRIORITY X-PRIORITY THREAD-TOPIC REPLY-TO)] BODYSTRUCTURE)
IMAP/IMF/IMF 1055 subject: Test 002, from: Domino_Administrator/EXAMPLE%EXAMPLE@example.com, subject: Testmail 001, from: Domino_Administrator/EXAMPLE%EXAMPLE@example.com, (text/plain)
Thank you, Microsoft.
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