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Ondra Žižka
Asked: 2012-07-11 14:47:16 +0800 CST

Evolution: Broken Outbox / Sending mail takes several minutes

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When I send a mail, it takes several minutes (~20) to finish this task. I can see a status bar item, percents increasing. I wouldn't mind much; the problem is that until it's done, I can't see the mail in the Sent folder and can't work with it.

This behavior started without any reconfiguration. Other users of the same mail server do not experience this trouble.

How can I fix this?

Versions: Ubuntu 11.04 Evolution 2.32.2

Update: I found out that the messages are actually staying in Outbox and not outgoing at all if one particular SMTP server is used. When I tried to "Flush" the Outbox, it shown "Sending...", but nothing changed nor was sent. When I try to "expunge" outbox, Evolution says: 

MBOX file corrupted, expected From: but didn't find.

and later

Summary and folder mismatch, even after a sync

Any idea how to fix this? Preferably without need to drop & set up everything anew.

And where does Evolution store it's .mbox files? ~/.evolution does not exist. ~/.gconf/apps/evolution/ only contains configuration.

evolution

3 Answers

  1. Answering the first part of the question (where can I see my message while it's being sent):

    While being sent, the message can be found in the "Outbox", which is located in the "local tree" of the mail accounts. Only when sent successfully (i.e. delivered to the configured SMTP server -- which does not necessarily mean it already reached the recipient), it gets stored within the "Sent" folder.

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  2. Ondra, it would have been better you'd opened a new question instead of completely changing the topic :)

    And where does Evolution store it's .mbox files?

    Not sure about the .mbox files as I don't use local storage. But usually, all of Evolutions data files are located in ~/.local/share/evolution, while configuration stuff went to ~/.config/evolution. The third place involved you already discovered (~/.gconf/apps/evolution). Gone the days where things have been easy with everything located in ~/.evolution -- that folder is not used anymore at all with current versions.

    How to fix this (trouble with certain SMTP server)?

    Logs are helpful. Try contacting the servers admin, maybe it's not at all the fault of Evolution -- or the server's logs provide useful information to isolate the problem). Until solved, try using a different SMTP server: either the admin has a secondary you could use, or some other admin permits you to "relay" via his server.

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  3. Best Answer

    Ok so I have figured out few things.

    1) The files are in MBOX format, but not named *.mbox.

    2) They are stored in .local/share/evolution/mail/local, at least in my case.

    3) Non-redundant data are stored in the files without suffix. The rest is generated and can be deleted manually and re-generated (.ibex, .index etc.)

    4) Exporting backup and restoring from it did not help. Seems that evolution just gzips the files as is.

    So what fixed it for me was:

    1. Close Evolution
    2. Delete /home/ondra/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/Outbox.* (NOT that without suffix)

    3. Launch Evolution

    4. Fix your SMTP if necessary to make all mails go.

    5. Flush Outbox to send pending messages and get them moved to IMAP server (deleted locally)
    6. Close Evolution
    7. Delete Oubox* - this time all Outbox files. All mails shown in Evolution at this time are probably broken and unrecoverable (easily). Outbox will be recreated.
    8. Delete folders.db - it will get recreated from the MBOX files
    9. Launch Evolution

    Tadaa!

    Sources:

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