Mail on El Capitan

Thank you.

I did it both... but it doesn't download the email after the first download of all the messages... Sigh

Well, I contacted Apple & the main suggestion was to delete my account & reinstate it. It's now staying up. Let's see if that lasts!

It did not work for me. Well... it worked just at the very beginning, then it stopped downloading the messages... :-(

TThis worked for a while but loot hogs keep coming back. still have issue with unread number not jiving with mailbox

Excelent! Tks!!

This works, but the log will continue to generate, does that means, we have to constantly delete the files to ensure the problem doesn't comes back.

Thanks !

I was having the same issue, and deleted the log files as suggested by Miguel and it worked for me. Mail memory issue is gone. Wonder if this fixes the issue or is just a band aid to a fix needed to be implemented by Apple.

Same thing is happening to me. I deleted the log and after few days it's back again...

You can delete it all you want, but it'll come back and grow and grow and grow. This is mine, it grows at about 12 mb per minute https://youtu.be/P0ZhjFBvoBE

Ok, so this is a persistent problem. Seems that with an issue with Mail accessing pop accounts, my logs are growing and I get through 1/3 the day before my mail stops syncing IMAP Inbox, and simultaneously becomes very slow. I delete the logs again, and that solves the problem temporarily, and my IMAP accounts return to normal. Pop accounts fail with "user/Password incorrect", and of course it is correct. Eventually the Pop accounts come back online.

This is a bit of a nightmare. I upgraded from Mavericks 10.9 because of all the issues I had on 1 MBP I upgraded to 10.10 Yosemite, so I never got all 2 of my MBP's and MacMini updated to 10.10, and updated all 3 to 10.11. Now all 3 have mail problems. 😟

Migel,

Thanks so much for this interim fix. I had cleared my logs last night at 21:00EST, and checked by 09:00 EST and was up to 1.4GB already. When I looked for "anomalies", I could not find anything wrong. THe latest file was an IMAP transaction file, and when looking at the file, it hit me in the face.....

The "NORMAL LOGGING LEVEL" is set to "DEBUG", not "INFO" or "ERROR". Checking back on another MACBOOKPro (late 2011) I have not upgraded yet and is still on 10.10 Yosemite, the mail transaction logs are NOT <Debug>, but <Error>, and <Info>. The <Info> check of an IMAP account is a single line noting the time the account Inbox was automatically checked for new mail. One LINE. I just snipped a few lines from a check of the same IMAP account on this MacbookPro (Late 2011) running 10.11.1 Elcapitan. In <<Debug> mode the same check had 64 lines of detail!!

That will make the logs grow.

Hypothesis: THe Mac Mail Binary logging is set to "DEBUG" level and not the normal "Info" level which includes INFO, ERROR, Kernel, etc...

I hop this is not a "Compile time" setting, and somewhere the Logging level of Mail is set. I didn't find it in preferences, nor any .plist file, but

I am a Unix/Linux guy, and not as good at Mac OS X. (I use Macs in my work, because "They just work".

Any thoughts??

Thanks!!

Nov 6 11:51:09 Mail[4891] <Debug>: <0x7fbaa753a230:[Selected mailbox=Inbox - iCloud]> Read: * FETCH 145(FLAGS () UID 58251)

Nov 6 11:51:09 Mail[4891] <Debug>: <0x7fbaa753a230:[Selected mailbox=Inbox - iCloud]> Read: * FETCH 146(FLAGS () UID 58257)

Nov 6 11:51:09 Mail[4891] <Debug>: <0x7fbaa753a230:[Selected mailbox=Inbox - iCloud]> Read: * FETCH 147(FLAGS (\Flagged \Seen) UID 58264)

Nov 6 11:51:09 Mail[4891] <Debug>: <0x7fbaa753a230:[Selected mailbox=Inbox - iCloud]> Read: * FETCH 148(FLAGS (\Flagged \Seen) UID 58265)

Nov 6 11:51:09 Mail[4891] <Debug>: <0x7fbaa753a230:[Selected mailbox=Inbox - iCloud]> Read: * FETCH 149(FLAGS () UID 58266)

defilm,

like you I am (was) a Unix guy but not much Mac specific experience. However, I managed to disable syslogd using the command:

launchctl disable syslogd

in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons directory.

But that didn't stop Mail writing it's DEBUG log files so it looks likely that the option is compiled into the program. The Mail binary in /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS may take some command line parameters but who knows what they might be.

Bad Apple for releasing code in debug mode!

Another thought on this...there is another account on the same machine which can log in and use mail without a problem. That would point to an environmental difference. There is one particular mail account which produces odd behaviour on my account - a constantly increase number of messages being downloaded:

I have seen it go into the 100s of thousands and there aren't that many messages on the server. That could be some kind of mail account configuration or a bug in mail or protocol incompatibility with the server (or something).

The upshot is, I think, all that activity produces the huge log file (exacerbated by debug mode), which in turn produces the log file zipping problem. Potentially two "bugs" interacting.

Just a theory though.

I have the same problem on 2 El Cap Macs. Checked the log files and none were over 2 meg, yet still deleted all. This is not a log file problem especially since one of the macs is a brand new 2 week old iMac 32G memory I7 top of the line iMac. Never had an issue with Mac Mail with memory problems in the past, only since El Capitan came out. Understand from tech support that they updated mail, in a recent patch, but it still hasn't fixed the memory issue.

Apple, please fix your Mac Mail... this is getting to be a pain.

I have finally solved my issues with El Capitan Mail app and (in my case) Exchange Servers.

This is what I have discovered;

The problem:

Mail app at El Capitan create massive debug logs at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail/

The debug log it's not running all the time, only sometimes start a crazy loop, that you can't stop anyway, it's doesn't matter if you close the app, because it will continue next time you open Mail.

When the issue it's happening the Mail app processor use it's over 100% and the file XXX_IMAPSyncActivity.log starts to grow up to the infinite.

When the file it's too big, Mail tries to archive and zip the file, and this eats all your ram memory.

At this time you computer it's completely lost, and your only option it's to force kill Mail app or a hard reset.

If you open Mail again the process will remain at the last point and you will lose your computer again.

At this time you can remove all log and zip files at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail/ restarting the process from the beginning.

It doesn't matter if you activate, deactivate, delete, reconfigure, rebuild or whatever you want to do with the conflictive account.

it doesn't matter if you do a clean install of El Capitan and start from zero.

Soon or later the log will eat all your resources, your processor, your disk and your ram and you will lost your computer control again.

My solution:

Probably you need to uncheck first:

Mail --> preferences --> accounts --> Mailbox Behaviors --> Move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox

And after that, disable:

Mail --> preferences --> accounts --> Advanced --> Compact mailboxes automatically

I have seen that when Mail tries to compact the mailbox with Exchange Servers the process doesn't work as expected and loops an indefinitely error.

The debug and log of this error it's what in my case created all my problems with Mail.

Disabling the automatic compact mailbox for my exchange account I have had no more issues with the Mail app at El Capitan.

I hope this help others with the same problem, and Apple programmers to definitelly solve the problem in a next update.