indows binary fails to persist messages even with persistence enabled

[Mq-b]

I am experiencing an issue with the official Windows binaries of Mosquitto: the broker does not persist messages or client sessions, even though persistence is enabled in the configuration file and the broker is run with administrator privileges.

Environment:

• Linux: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Mosquitto installed via apt

  • Persistence works perfectly
  • Offline subscribers receive messages after reconnecting

• Windows: Windows 11, Mosquitto official binaries from mosquitto.org

  • Persistence does not work
  • Offline subscribers do not receive messages after reconnecting

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Configure persistence in Windows mosquitto.conf:

persistence true
persistence_location D:\\mosquitto\\data\\
persistence_file mosquitto.db
log_dest file D:\\mosquitto\\log\\mosquitto.log
listener 1883 0.0.0.0
allow_anonymous true
log_dest stdout

2. Ensure directories exist (D:\mosquitto\data\, D:\mosquitto\log\) and have full write permissions.
3. Run broker as administrator:

mosquitto.exe -c D:\\mosquitto\\mosquitto.conf

4. Disconnect subscriber, publish a message while subscriber is offline:

mosquitto_pub.exe -t "test/topic" -m "hello world2" -q 2

5. Reconnect subscriber — no messages are received.

Expected Behavior:

• Messages published while a subscriber is offline should be persisted and delivered after reconnect.

Actual Behavior:

• Messages are not persisted.
• Behavior differs from Linux version with the same client setup and configuration.

Notes:

• I have verified that my client supports persistent sessions and uses fixed client IDs.
• I have tried running the broker as administrator, changing directories, and using various valid configurations.
• The problem seems specific to the official Windows binary; Linux version works as expected.

Request:

Could you please check if there is an issue with persistence in the Windows binary, or provide guidance on how to enable offline message persistence on Windows?

[NorbertHeusser]

It is always helpful to specify the version of the Mosquitto broker you are using. The broker should issues a startup message with the version to the log file. Additionally the log file would be helpful. Every creation of the persistence state on disk should issue a INFO level message in the log file. Any any error during writing the state should issue an ERROR level message in the log file.