BAD parse error: zero-length content

Question

Hi there!
Unfortunately I have a problem with JavaMail which I can not reproduce. Therefore, I don't have any 'debug' output of JavaMail. But maybe some of you have a clue for me. :)
This is the error stack (just a snippet) which I get from JavaMail:
javax.mail.MessagingException: A244 BAD parse error: zero-length content;
  nested exception is:
     com.sun.mail.iap.BadCommandException: A244 BAD parse error: zero-length content
     at com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPFolder.getMessagesByUID(IMAPFolder.java:1938)
     at org.zimbra.exchange.service.source.ExtendedEmailSyncSource.getMessagesByUID(ExtendedEmailSyncSource.java:1751)
     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
Caused by: com.sun.mail.iap.BadCommandException: A244 BAD parse error: zero-length content
     at com.sun.mail.iap.Protocol.handleResult(Protocol.java:343)
     at com.sun.mail.imap.protocol.IMAPProtocol.fetchSequenceNumbers(IMAPProtocol.java:1284)
     at com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPFolder.getMessagesByUID(IMAPFolder.java:1920)
     ... 13 moreAnd this is my getMessagesByUID method:
     private Message[] getMessagesByUID(long[] uids, IMAPFolder f)
               throws StoreClosedException {
          Message[] result = new Message[0];
          try {
               result = f.getMessagesByUID(uids);
          } catch (StoreClosedException e) {
               throw e;
          } catch (MessagingException e) {
               log.trace("The messages could not be fetched from the server.",     e);
          } catch (Exception e) {
               log.error("An unexpected error occurd. "
                              + e.getClass().getSimpleName(), e);
          return (result);
     }My problem is that I can not reproduce the error and so I don't know why the error is thrown. According to the JavaDoc it should return a 'null' entry for messages where it can not find the UID.
thanks for your help.

Answer 1

The error message is coming from your IMAP server. It seems to be complaining about the
message that JavaMail sent it. The getMessagesByUID method will send an IMAP FETCH
command. That command doesn't include any variable length content, so I don't know what
exactly the server could be complaining about.
Perhaps your server has a log file that might have more information?
Otherwise, you'll probably need to capture the debug output so that you can examine it later
the next time this problem occurs.