Re: X-UID in mutt
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On Wednesday, August 30 at 06:09 AM, quoth Chen Dennis:
> I've been looking into X-UID information in mutt for a while. It is
> told by google that X-UID is added to email messages AFTER they
> arrive in your mailbox. It is true for the history emails but not
> for some new emails (arrived less than 1 day).
X-UID is a header that is added to messages by some IMAP or POP
servers. UID stands for Unique IDentifier, and is a concept used in
both the POP and IMAP protocols. I don't know exactly which servers
modify the email message to add that. I'm going to guess it's more
likely on servers that use mbox backends, and probably more likely on
an IMAP server.
The reason a server might add it is the same reason a server might add
the X-Status header: to save information about the mail that it will
need later. Since IMAP guarantees that UIDs don't change between
connections, while POP servers don't generally make such claims, I'm
going to guess it's more likely to be an IMAP server that adds the
X-UID headers.
> I'm wondering how long the X-UID will be added to email
> messages after they arrived. I've tested sending email from
> different accounts to see how it changed, sometimes X-UID
> is appended before I open the new email, and sometimes
> X-UID is not added even after one day.
I'm guessing that the way your setup works is that you're running mutt
to read the mail locally, while at the same time you have an IMAP
server set up that can also read the email. When you access the email
directly (i.e. not with IMAP), you aren't asking the IMAP server for a
UID, so it isn't generating unique identifiers and saving them in the
emails. But when you use an IMAP client, to check the email---even if
you don't actually read the email---then the IMAP server adds the
X-UID tag to it.
This is just a wild guess, though. It may be something entirely
different.
~Kyle
- --
A lot of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of
view.
-- Obi Wan Kenobi
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