201593 - subfolders don't appear after expanding parent folder under IMAP

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect)

Description

[minh]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

I have an IMAP account which is heavily folder structured. By this I mean that
it contains lots of sub folders under lots of levels. Normally, when the mail
client starts up it shows a collapsed view the main folder. What I normally have
to do to view the subfolders I want to see is to expand, collapse, expand the
parent folder (or the parent of the parent folder). Apparently, this triggers
some sort of look for folders event.

Basically tweaking around with expand and collapse icons here and there seem to
get what i need. When it works, I can see the folders being populated on the
screen. The bug is when it stops when i know there are alot moreHowever, it
seems to show a certain number of folders and then stops. 

In one case(repeatable), it populates a subfolder with 5 mailfolders(folders
containing mail) when there are actually 30+ mailfolders.

But the case seems to be more related to the amount of folders instead of the
actual level. Initially, I had 300+ folders with 4 levels and things seemed to
be fine (although it was really tiresome having to collapse, and re-expand the
folders everytime i restarted the mail client) but now that i have atleast 1000+
subfolders with 4 levels. 

I've created a small java mail client and I can see them, but not in the mozilla
mail client.

Also, all these folders exist on the server. The problem doesn't seem to exist
on local folders.

On the IMAP advanced settings, i have the 'Show only subscribed folders' setting
*unchecked*. and the 'Server supports folders that contain sub-folders and
messages' unchecked.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create the folder structure with large amounts of entries.
NB: You'll need to create this under a IMAP server somewhere else and NOT in
mozilla. The following linux command line can be used to to create mailfolders
(not subfolders). For sub folders, just use mkdir

i=0; while [ $i -lt 800 ]; do touch "file$i"; let i=$i+1; done

The folder structure should look a little like this:
-INBOX
 |- subfolder01
 |- subfolder02
   |- subfolder01.01
     |- mailFolder001
     |- mailFolder002
     .
     .
     .
     |- mailFolder800

2. Change the IMAP settings
Make sure the following is set in the Advanced IMAP Server settings
'Show only subscribed folders' = unchecked
'Server supports folders that contain subfolders and messages' = checked
IMAP server directory = INBOX (this is what's setup on mine, but will obviously
depend on the where you create your folders in step 1)
Make sure you reset mozilla for the changes to take effect.

3. start the mozilla mail client
4. If the the subfolders haven't appeared, collapse the inbox folder and then
expand it.
5. try to expand all the folders.

Actual Results:  
it stopped expanding after it reached mailFolder350.

Expected Results:  
Should have shown all 800 mail folders

Comment 1

[Chris Hirsch]

I can confirm this problem on Mozilla clients up to v1.4a running on both Linux
and Windows. While this bug may not seem severe by itself it does become VERY
important when you have filters for subfolders that do not expand.

- Inbox
  |-People
    |- Bob
    |- Andy
    |- George

For example, if you have filters to put emails from Bob and Andy into the Bob
and Andy folders, those filters will fail and be disabled because only People
has expanded. This is especially true when loading mail for the first time. Only
the People folder exists (like below) 

- Inbox
  |-People

while the subfolders within People are not shown so the filters will fail. You
must then manually re-enable filters and then re-run the filters on the inbox.
This can be very time consuming if you have a lot of filters and a lot of email
from various people sitting in your inbox. I have found that by opening and
closing the Inbox sometimes will open sub folders it doesn't always seem to be
the case. In a directory structure like

- Inbox
  |- Work
     |- People
        |- Bob
        |- Andy

closing the Work folder and re-opening it will ALWAYS display the subfolders
within People.

Comment 2

[Chris Hirsch]

It *appears* that this bug is the result of when Mozilla expands the folder
treef or the first time. The BEST way to reproduce this over and over is to
simply collapse the root tree and expand it again. Mozilla will say at the
bottom "Looking for folders" and only second level folders will expand. This is
especially true if you already have all the folders expanded and you collapse
and expand the tree again. Only folders up to the second level will be displayed.

In fact I have noticed that when starting up Mozilla that it will correctly have
the folders expanded from when I last shut it down. Then it must do an init of
some sort and you see the message "Looking for folders" presumably to make sure
that no folders were added or deleted since last time and then it incorrectly
collapes the expaned folders.

Comment 3

[jonas]

I have the same problem: Mozilla 1.4/WinXP never seems to find 3rd level
folders* at startup, so the message filters pointing to those directories are a)
not run and b) deactivated, which is VERY ANNOYING.
Filters to 1st and 2nd level work fine.
Maybe connected to bug 111256 et al.?

*folder structure
- Inbox
   |-Work (1st level)
     |-project 1 (2nd level)
       |-admin (3rd level - filters don't see this)

Comment 4

[Valerio Messina]

Confirm this bug with Seamonkey 2.17 on 
Linux Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS with kernel 3.2.0-39
At the startup all the subfolders are show correctly.
After a while some of them disappear.
Opening a closing two level up parent folder many times I always got some subfolders disappear.
See attachment with down arrow but without subfolders.

Comment 5

[Valerio Messina]

Attachment: after a while some subfolder disappear

Comment 6

[Valerio Messina]

Attachment: opening & closing parent folder, always made disappear some subfolders

Comment 7

[Valerio Messina]

two other hints:
- only opened subfolders disappear
- folding and defolding the subfolder, doesn't resolve the problem. The arrow change orientation, but no subfolder appear

Comment 8

[Valerio Messina]

> only opened subfolders disappear
are always the same subfolder in different sessions. Some opened subfolder are not affected, I do not understand the criteria.

Comment 9

[Valerio Messina]

for me is confirmed with
User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0 SeaMonkey/2.49.4
on Ubuntu 18.04 and very annoying.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

So maybe the current flavor of this is linux-only?

Comment 11

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

I don't normally use sub-folders, but created some in my only IMAP account and will try to monitor it for a few days.

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to WaltS48 [:walts48] from comment #11)

I don't normally use sub-folders, but created some in my only IMAP account and will try to monitor it for a few days.

How did it turn out?

Comment 13

[Valerio Messina]

Attachment: Seamonkey2.49.5 subfolder shown

Comment 14

[Valerio Messina]

Attachment: Seamonkey2.49.5 subfolder hidden

Comment 15

[Valerio Messina]

just updated to
User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0 SeaMonkey/2.49.5
immediately after Mail startup it do not show the subfolder.
Closing and reopening "spam" folder, show its subfolder

Comment 16

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #12)

(In reply to WaltS48 [:walts48] from comment #11)

I don't normally use sub-folders, but created some in my only IMAP account and will try to monitor it for a few days.

How did it turn out?

I did not see any problem with them in Thunderbird.
Accounts are too hard to setup in SeaMonkey and i did not test this in my SM 2.49.4.

Comment 17

[Valerio Messina]

I can confirm Thunderbird on Windows does not show this trouble

Comment 18

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thanks for the tests! I'm not sure this is worth keeping open for Seamonkey - perhaps it has a front end issue

Comment 19

[Valerio Messina]

should I open a new/clone bug for Product:Seamonkey, Component:Backend or we can change this one to Product:Seamonkey?
I imagine at the time (Opened 17 years ago) it was opened for Seamonkey as Thunderbird does not existed.

Comment 20

[Valerio Messina]

the right thing is to change this bug to Product:Seamonkey or to open a new/clone bug for Product:Seamonkey, Component:Backend referring this one. Thank you