I am in Delta Chat group of six people, we all use standard email accounts for Delta Chat.
We communicate through this chat very frequently.
I access that chat through my different devices where I have Delta Chat installed.
The problem is that sometimes one of my devices does not get all the messages one person sends on the group chat and there is no way to know it unless I compare it with other device. It is just as zhe never sent it.
I still have not found the reason why.
I discovered it by chance and now I get stressed thinking that could be happening in more cases without noticing it.
Disturbingly worrying.
What could be the possible reasons?
How should I troubleshoot it?
Please let me know if you need any further data.
No. We use different email providers.
We use different versions of Delta Chat. They all quite recent.
I will tell you in a while the exact version of the client which is not showing messages from one participant.
What could be the reason for one Delta Chat of mine not showing the messages of one participant in a group chat when I can see those messages on my other devices’ Delta Chat?
One reason can be that one of the devices deletes messages or moves them to a place where another device does not read them. In particular, make sure the setting “Only Fetch from DeltaChat Folder” is off on all devices, “Move automatically to DeltaChat Folder” is the same on all devices, “Delete Messages from Server” is the same on all devices and is sufficiently large to give all devices a chance to download the message.
But now I can be more accurate with what it’s happening:
Messages (either one-to-one or in a group) from one specific user (who uses Delta Chat Desktop 1.46.1) are not being received (or shown) by one of my devices with Delta Chat (a Debian desktop). I can only notice this problem if I compare it with my other devices where I use Delta Chat too, in which I see hirs messages without a problem.
On my problematic Debian Desktop I uninstalled Delta Chat (2.9.0), deleting its configuration data too. Then I installed version 2.11.0. That allowed me to see all past messages from that user. That is why I thought the problem was solved.
But now zhe is writing new messages and the problem persists: I do not see them on my Debian Desktop but I do see them on my other devices.
I do not know whether on my Debian’s Delta Chat I am missing messages from more people. As far as I am aware it works ok and I have only missed messages from that user.
What could be happening?
Yes. It is like that on all my devices.
Yes, it is set to Never in all my devices. But what does need to be large? I do not understand.
Chatmail servers delete really old messages. Some Chatmail servers store for longer than others; the TOC will tell you how long. Unless you rarely open Deltachat on your desktop, like once a month or so, this is probably not the problem. If the server were dropping old messages before you downloaded them, you’d lose some of everyone’s messages, not all of one person’s.
Do check your in-client blocklist, but that really ought to affect all devices.
I think in this case the servers are non-chatmail. This is what “standard email accounts” means in the OP. With chatmail the options for “Delete Messages from Server” would be either “at once” or “automatic”.
Which versions of Delta Chat do your other devices run?
Maybe it is a bug introduced in the newer versions of Delta Chat?
One way to debug it is to look into the logs on Delta Chat desktop that did not receive a message right after receiving a message on the other device when you have both devices around. Maybe the message is processed and there is some error that is logged and results in the message being discarded.
I have checked the logs at the problematic Delta Chat device.
I only have one day logs because yesterday, trying to fix the problem, I completely uninstalled Delta Chat and installed a newer version.
Fortunately, the sender whose messages do not arrive (from now on we’ll call hir Taylor) yesterday sent me 4 messages, so if the logs can register what it’s happening, it should be there.
But unfortunately I guess there is chance there is no log to be registered because perhaps Delta Chat does not see it has some messages to be downloaded, I do not know.
Anyway, I did not find much in the logs (maybe because I do not understand many things).
The only log that drew my attention was this one:
2025-09-02T13:13:39.372Z core/event WARNING "" 2 "src/imap.rs:976: Cannot move messages, fallback to COPY/DELETE 4404 to DeltaChat: no response: code: None, info: Some(\"[EXPUNGEISSUED] Some of the requested messages no longer exist (0.003 + 0.000 + 0.002 secs).\")"
Can anyone please translate what it means? I would be grateful if someone could please explain the meaning of each little part of that log.
I would like to note that, despite everything I said in the first posts is correct, it could be misleading because the problem is not only that my Debian’s Delta Chat does not show messages from Taylor in a specific group,
the problem is my Debian’s Delta Chat does not show messages from Taylor of any kind, neither group nor individual chat, while I can see them all at my other devices’ Delta Chat.
Which, despite how weird the case is, at least it makes more sense if we think how email works.
I have two Delta Chat profiles, both with classic email accounts, and both profiles are configured in every device where I have Delta Chat. I communicate with Taylor through both profiles. In my Debian’s Delta chat I cannot see any message from hir, no matter if it is sent to one of my accounts or the other one. While I can see all hir messages sent to any of my two accounts when I check at my other devices : |
Perhaps it is related to some conflict between Delta Chat version 1 and 2, as my Debian’s Delta Chat is the only one that is version 2. My other devices and Taylor’s are all version 1.
But it only happens with Taylor’s messages. As far as I know messages from anyone else and from any Delta Chat version are seen correctly everywhere.
Thank you for all your work on this. That log entry does look useful. I will defer to others on the interpretation, though!
link2xt is right, I’d forgotten that detail from your post.
There is actually another DC client that experimentally runs on Mobile Debian (I run it, it is pretty good). I’d imagine installing two clients simultaneously on one system would not work well, but if you have a spare system you could try.