If you're having issues with your email (there seems to be a fair few people with them according to this bug report, read on...

(I think we all need to provide as much context as possible to help resolving these issues; despite being rather tech-minded, my initial encounter with them made me want to return the device straight away - I couldn't understand why the N900 was utterly unable to retrieve my IMAP email securely when my 2 years old 1st gen iPod touch has no issue whatsoever).

There are some decent instructions on how to do debug issues with "Modest" (the N900's standard email app) here.

First thing to note, in case you're doing this via a remote terminal (ie: logged on as root, as it's certainly easier than on the N900's tiny keyboard) is that you probably need to become 'user' first, this is easily accomplished:

Next question: it seems like when I sign on to the device, modest is always running, even after a fresh reboot and even if I don't have its UI up:

I imagine this is to do background retrievals and that these two processes belong together; a bit of digging in /proc suggests that they're not simply children of one another?

This would imply that if I start another instance for debug purposes per aforementioned instructions, two instances (ie 4 processes) will be running and indeed another 'ps' confirms this. Surely, this would only exacerbate any issues and make debugging harder?

Furthermore, it doesn't seem to be possible to kill any of these processes (either by closing down the UI or by using the 'kill' command). Using kill respawns the process immediately.

So my questions to the guys in the know is: what's the best way to run those debug sessions, so that the value of the information collected can be maximized...

Finally, for who access their emails via secure IMAP, i would be grateful if you could state how well it works for you and if you're using TLS rather than SSL.

Many thanks in advance to all Maemo Gurus

Christian

If you are having problems over wireless, but not 3g check that you router supports psm. Disconnects might cause hickups with IMAP servers that think you are connected.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Wifi_power_saving_mode

imap over TLS is really slow for me and it seems modest have some problem with begin closed in the middle of email retrieval

Thanks mikec, sounds like another very plausible suggestion of yours! My router is indeed quite old (a Draytek Vigor 2600VG). However it's somewhat counter intuitive that this doesn't cause any issues with secure IMAP on my iPod Touch nor with ssh sessions I run into my N900. Oh well, the router is well overdue an upgrade; I'll report again once that's done.

I'm also wondering if this might be caused by connecting over TLS rather than SSL? If anyone knows how to change this w/o having to re-setup mailboxes from scratch, I would love hearing from you

Also any suggestion re "modest" debugging best practices?

1. Is it better to kill running modest instances when trying to debug one?
2. If so, how is this achieved?

Cheers,
Christian

Hi,
Open the mail app, press "Email", in the pop up menu choose "edit account" and select the acount you would like to change its settings.

HIH

Hi Saturn, thanks for the suggestion.

However, whenever I do this, crucial portions of the settings are disabled, eg: user name, IMAP4 server name and secure authentication settings. From my experience, the only way to change any of these details is to delete and re-create the account from scratch - hardly a time saving feature if I may say...