stuck ipad/iphone + move folder and contents to another user?

[glenndm]

Hello,

I have an issue with one user, his ipad&iphone and a very large folder.

The user groups all messages pertaining to a project in a dedicated 'project'folder
once the project finished, that folder is moved to an archive folder (within the user inbox)

This has been done so for years, resulting into a large archive folder with many subfolders.
Even though only a month is synced, the folder structure is synced in full (I think)

Recently the mail on his synced ipad/iphone has been locking up and/or crashing.
The iphone just displayed the same problem, rendering mail access on the devices unusable.

Storage on both devices cannot be an issue, free space in abundance, the mail storage but a reasonable 120 MB

Given the time it takes to clear the ipad account, I suspect that the archive folder could be the root of the problem.
The account clearing/deletion seems also to crash ( I waited for ages).
The only way I found to get things moving again:
1.delete (offload) the mail app
2.redownload the app
3.wait till it sees the accounts again (without opening mail, nor recreating accounts<this fails)
4. delete and recreate the accounts.

If syncing had started before 4., the ipad mail app would become unresponsive once again.

The ipad mail seem to be working again, i temporarily reduced sync time to 2 weeks (hoping to buy some time, mail storage now at 15Mb)
I would like to move that archive folder to a secondary account -I cannot exclude it from syncing within the same account.
This way it (the data nor the folder structure) does not get synced anymore.

Next hurdle: How to move the folder to another account

-the webclient does not (seem to) allow it.
-a commandline approach is not feasible as the user will need to move folders himself.

During my searches, I came also across mentions of a malformed or blank message in the mailbox, that would cause this behaviour.
I have no inkling where to look for evidence on this. Not that I know where to look for zimbra log/admin messages for the thing above.

If somebody has similar experiences (I commiserate) or insights, please let me know.
(also any tricks on the ipad please, I hate being shut out)
best regards
glenndm

[7224jobe]

Hi, you might create a new secondary account, share mail folders from that account to the primary account (the one that has iPad syncing problems) and then let the user copy the emails from his primary account to the secondary, then delete the original emails on the primary account.

[glenndm]

Hi, you might create a new secondary account, share mail folders from that account to the primary account (the one that has iPad syncing problems) and then let the user copy the emails from his primary account to the secondary, then delete the original emails on the primary account.

Thanks for your reply,
I mentioned such secondary account, so we came to the same solution/work-around

The ipad mail seem to be working again, i temporarily reduced sync time to 2 weeks (hoping to buy some time, mail storage now at 15Mb)
I would like to move that archive folder to a secondary account -I cannot exclude it from syncing within the same account.
This way it (the data nor the folder structure) does not get synced anymore.

The execution, however, I've been struggling with all morning.
For future (me) reference and others, this is what I settled on:
1. create an archive account
here will reside eventually all archived folders, subfolders and messages
2. create a temporary transfer account
this is needed to circumvent issues with thunderbird IMAP
if the main account is used in IMAP, I have not found a way to only download the archive folder.
thunderbird insist on getting the whole mailbox, where I then could (but i don't want to ) specify every individual subfolder to sync
given the massive size of the mailbox, handling the whole mailbox exceeds my patience.
3. share the archive folder in the main user account with the transfer account
the transfer is empty but for the (shared) archive folder
this allows, in thunderbird, to sync the whole account without further granularity( server settings/advanced/deselect show only subscribed folders)
4. Thunderbird
Add transfer and archive account as IMAP
the transfer imap account shows all folders and subfolders of the archive folder
( * I'm at this point, waiting for sync completion)
5. Thunderbird allows for folder copying between accounts. transfer -> archive

6. Once the copy is done
- delete the archive folders in the main account
- delete the transfer account
- share the archive account back to the main account.

and that should be it , in theory, -- for a while....
...minus the part where the user could do this himself in the future

-------
in practice, a rough estimate reveals about 7000 (sub)folders with unknown numbers of messages
no wonder ipad is choking as is thunderbird now also.
fingers crossed, thunderbird keeps churning on..

perhaps I should spend more time with the commandline instead of falling for the "easy" promise offered by GUIs

[L. Mark Stone]

We have customers with 30-40k folders.

If the Mail app on the iPad is doing IMAP, from a previous support case I learned that (at the time) Mail asks for the complete folder tree refresh before it will start to sync mail.

If you have an older iPad, or a slow Internet connection, this can cause the syncs to never complete.

ActiveSync is another issue; it doesn’t scale well so for large mailboxes you need to start syncing only two weeks of mail, and then gradually extend how far back to sync.

Of late, several customers have said they need access to all of their email all the time while on the road, and that they want it on their phones. Laptops and even tablets are too bulky.

I suggested just using a web browser on the phone, and t date they are all reporting that this works well, even with 2FA turned on.

Hope that helps,
Mark

[glenndm]

Hi Mark,
Thanks for your input.

Good to hear Zimbra can deal with that huge number of folders/data.

The IMAP/Gui route has also broken my patience.
IMAP indeed seems to trigger (multiple?) folder refreshes before syncing actual messages.
Furthermore, the sync seemed to stop after about 20%
The archive size is, I think, about 80Gb

It is very possible ActiveSync is overextended. (IMAP is normally not in use - only for this operation)
Your suggestion of using the webclient even on iphone might be the way forward.
However, in my case, the archive is only used via desktop, so Activesync will do for now.

I looked into the corresponding commandline and, allowing for some further issues, this seems to work much better.

The export command I got (also thanks to perplexity ai search engine)

Code: Select all

 zmmailbox -z -m user@domain.com gru '//?fmt=tgz&query=under:"/Inbox/k     Archive/zzz done/zzzz done 2014"' > /tmp/arc2014.src.tgz

import should be

Code: Select all

zmmailbox -z -m user_archive@domain.com postRestURL '/Inbox' /tmp/arc2014.src.tgz

the export command worked. (I did year by year so I could see more rapidly if it worked)
The import command failed (perhaps a typo - to be revisited later).
The webclient import luckily succeeded.

So, for now, this concludes my troubles for today.
Thanks for your help, Mark and 7224jobe.
Happy newyear
glenndm

[glenndm]

So, for now, this concludes my troubles for today.

for completeness and for those managing a small server with huge account & diskspace constraints...
Should you do: export archive from old account; import archive into new account; verify; delete archive from old account.
and all this on the same disk
you'll need at least free space worth 3 times the size of the archive:
+1 the archive in old account
+1 the export file
+1 the archive in the new account
+1 the redolog archive (/opt/zimbra/redolog/archive)
Which I discovered when 400gb free space vanished, and the server ground to a snail pace..

solution: split the transfer in smaller parts, temporarily turn on zimbraRedoLogDeleteOnRollover, make sure you have enough space and then some

what will tomorrow bring ?

[jamieoliver]

Hi glenndm,
You can set up both the main and a secondary archive account in Thunderbird, then copy the archive folder to the secondary account and delete it from the main one to stop it from syncing to mobile devices

[TomBrooks]

ActiveSync may be overstretched doodle jump (IMAP is typically not utilized - only for this task)