[Users] Crashes reset the read status and tags of recent mails

[Andrej Kacian]

On Sat, 25 May 2019 18:57:47 +0200
Paul Steyn wrote:

> Every time this happens, I find that once I start Claws Mail again, a
> number of recent mails that have been read get marked as new. This last
> time it was a few days worth of emails, and not only did they get
> marked as new, but they lost their tags. This is quite an
> inconvenience when it does happen.
> 
> I've checked, and "Preferences > Other > Miscellaneous > Metadata
> handling" is set to "Safer", which is advertised as avoiding data loss
> after crashes, but clearly doesn't.
> 
> [cut]
> 
> Does anybody have any ideas on this? Is there more info I can provide?
> Are there other settings to try?

Hi, that is probaby because Claws Mail only saves the opened folder's
message cache (including tags or message flags like new, unread, etc.)
to disk on program exit, or when you switch to another folder.

The "Metadata handling" setting has no effect here. This preference was
added during the Great Fsync Scare of 2009[1], and is about what
happens when the cache actually *is* being written.

What we could do is write the cache much more often, such as every time
user marks a message as read. Perhaps it could be controlled by a
checkbox in preferences, for those who want to limit their disk I/O,
and are certain that their system and Claws Mail are both stable, and
that their desktop environment shuts applications down cleanly on log
out.


1. https://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/03/15/dont-fear-the-fsync/

Regards,
-- 
Andrej
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