Thunderbird vs Exchange IMAP

Allan — Tue, 25 May 2010 00:49:33 +0000

I was having issues with attachments only being partially downloaded in Thunderbird from an IMAP account on a MS Exchange server (2003 I think). Turns out I ran into a very old Thunderbird bug (filed 2001-07-24). MS Exchange by default does not return the actual size to the IMAP4 command “FETCH RFC822.SIZE”. This is deliberate as it provides a nice perfomance advantage.

So… like a good Linux user I should once again blame Microsoft software for being broken? Not this time. It turns out section 3.4.5 of RFC 2683 (IMAP4 Implementation Recommendations) says that the RCF822.SIZE value should only used for things like providing estimates to the user and not for allocating buffers and the like. Bad Thunderbird!

The work around is to go to Preferences > Advanced > Config Editor… and set mail.server.default.fetch_by_chunks to FALSE. Old emails will need to be redownloaded to fix the attachments.

Posting (with) Drivel

Allan — Sun, 24 May 2009 13:38:08 +0000

It does not take long to realize that posting from within WordPress is not the most efficient process. For me, two posts was enough… So, the hunt was on to find a desktop application to post with.

Gnome Blog is in the Arch repos, but is a bit basic. The main feature missing for my purposes was the ability to add a category to posts.

A search in the AUR found Drivel. It has several useful features, including the ability to add a category to posts (however, only one per post and not tags), being able to edit recent posts and integrated spell-checking. Even better, its development is now being continued after a several year break.

Allan McRae » Software

Thunderbird vs Exchange IMAP

Posting (with) Drivel