145639 - Mozilla cannot access local sub-folders created by dtmail or NS4

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect)

Description

[Calvin Liu]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0rc2)
Gecko/20020510
BuildID:    20020501006

Mozilla for solaris can't manipulate local folders created by dtmail or netscape
4.x.

Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:
The issue against netscape 6.x and mozilla is with local mail folders. There are
really two issues with them.
First is most important.
	First issue:
Some background information to a base to work from. My local folders are in a
directory (Mail) off my home directory. Therefore the explicit path would be
/home/jfalva/Mail. For the Rest of this note Mail/ = /home/jfalva/Mail/ In there
I have mail folders which in turn have mail subfolders. These where over the
years created with either dtmail, netscape 4.x, and manually. Note these mail
folders all work correctly with dtmail and netscape 4.x. Netscape 6 on the other
hand will only show you all the folders and subfolders. But you can not access
any of the subfolders. You can access any folder in the Mail/ directory. But if
it is like this Mail/Coworkers/BobSmith Mail/Coworkers/JohnGreen you can not
open them. This next part is why THIS IS A P1!!! If you move a email from you
inbox or one of the mail folders you can access into one of these sublfolders
they will NOT BE MOVED, ONLY DELETED. This is a lose of data.
	Second issue:
Once the number of mail folders surpasses the amount that can be displayed on
one screen it stops working after the first access. Say you can only display 40
folders on your screen and you have 50. The first time you move an email into
one of those folders it will work just fine. But if you attempt to move another
email you will not be able to scroll down the list. You can only access those
first 40 folders. To access them again you need to close netscape and reopen it.
Then again it will work for one time.

		WORK arounds:
	First work around is ok if you don't have many folders to deal with, issue you'll
run into the scrolling issue mentioned as Second issue:  This work around is to
simply move all your subfolders down and flatten the tree.  Then ALL folders
will be in Mail/  folder.
	
	Second work around takes more work.  Since Netscape 6 ONLY works correctly with
subfolders it creates.  When netscape 6 makes a folder it creates a .msf file
for the folder.  So you'll have Coworkers (the folder) and Coworkers.msf (file
netscape 6 creates)  First move your folders down to Mail/ folder.  Like move
Mail/Coworker/JohnGreen to Mail/JohnGreen. You'll have to do this manually in
unix.  cd Mail/Coworkers. Then mv * Mail/  Then once you have moved all the
folders from Mail/Coworkers, delete it. Then recreate the Mail/Coworkers folder
with netscape 6.  Next drag the subfolders you move out of /Mail/Coworkers back
into it.

Comment 1

[Jim Crumley]

*** Bug 145659 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Calvin Liu]

Who can confirm this bug?

Suppose you're using solaris and dtmail. Following these steps to reproduce this
bug:
1. open dtmail, create a new folder by using [Mailbox]->[New Mailbox] menu
2. int the [Enter file name] textbox, input "a/b/c", then press [New Mailbox] button
3. copy a mail from your inbox(any mail is ok) to the new folder c. (that's
important, otherwise when you quit dtmail, the folder will be erased.)
4. close dtmail
5. open mozilla mail client, set [Local Folder] option in [Edit]->[Mail &
Newsgroups Account Settings] to the same folder as dtmail. by default, it's
$HOME/Mail.
6. quit all mozilla windows and restart it again.
7. looking at the a/b/c folder...
... you can't see the folder c and the mail inside, you can only see folder a/b.
but... you can move mails into a or b, which will cause the mail lose!

this bug related to 145639 (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145639).
i don't know which one blocks the other.

Comment 3

[R.K.Aa.]

Regarding comment 2:
This bug IS bug 145639. I think you meant to say it's related to bug 145633.

Comment 4

[Calvin Liu]

suppose 145633 is a meta bug that contains all the incompatible bugs such as
this one. i hope so.

Comment 5

[Ping Liao]

Regarding comment #2, yes, I can reproduce this bug by following the steps
Calvin stated.

Comment 6

[Jim Crumley]

confirming based on comments

Comment 7

[Daniel Wang]

> If you move a email from you inbox or one of the mail folders you can
> access into one of these sublfolders they will NOT BE MOVED, ONLY
> DELETED. This is a lose of data.

adding dataloss keyword & setting severity to critical for now.
Should we open a separate bug for this?

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Calvin and Ping addresses are now both invalid

Comment 9

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

We now no longer support NS 4.x, still a valid bug?

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #9)
> We now no longer support NS 4.x, still a valid bug?

I believe we support import but I'm not sure that's what this bug (or bug 145633) is about. 

Magnus?

Comment 11

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I don't know either, but I think we can mark this WFM given it's age and lack of available reporter to clarify things.

Comment 12

[David :Bienvenu]

I believe the issue is that SM/Thunderbird assumes that the corresponding directory for folderXX is folderXX.sbd, and we don't handle other situations, e.g., directories w/o .sbd in the name. I'm going to re-open, though we might resolve this as wontfix.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to David :Bienvenu from comment #12)
> I believe the issue is that SM/Thunderbird assumes that the corresponding
> directory for folderXX is folderXX.sbd, and we don't handle other
> situations, e.g., directories w/o .sbd in the name. I'm going to re-open,
> though we might resolve this as wontfix.

given the widening chasm of time from NS4, surely this isn't likely to be needed?

Solaris folks have an opinion?

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Emily, Ginn Chen, do you have an opinion?

Comment 15

[Ginn Chen]

no user complains and I don't think we can import anything from NS4 or dtmail now.

Comment 16

[emily chen]

The test case is not valid now on Solaris. I change the bug from WFM.