247534 - Unable to switch from a mailbox in one IMAP account to another

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Dustin Puryear]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9

I have not isolated this to a problem when using multiple IMAP accounts, or just
a problem of accessing various folders within one or multipe IMAP accounts.

I have three IMAP accounts setup. Each uses a different username, but the same
IMAP server (localhost). I can open a folder or two when I open Thunderbird.
After that if I click on a folder in another IMAP account I get this in the left
bottom of the screen, "Connected to localhost.." And that's it. Nada.
Thunderbird does *not* lockup, but no mails are shown in the folder. I can try
other folders and I don't see anything, unless I have already looked at that
folder before this happened. In that case I can see the same mails.

This is consistent. Closing and opening Thunderbird lets me view the folder, but
this happens again when I try another time for a new folder.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open Thunderbird
2. Setup multiple IMAP accounts.
3. Switch between viewing one of several folders for each account. Keep doing
this until you get the message.

Actual Results:  
Saw "Connected to localhost.." and no new messages would be shown.

Expected Results:  
Shown me the mail.

Comment 1

[Gayle]

I get the same problem but within a single IMAP mailbox hosted remotely
(courier-IMAP).

I find going offline then online again achieves the same as restarting TB.

Comment 2

[Gayle]

I know what caused my problem, may or may not be the same for you.  Every time
TB goes to a new folder it creates a new connection and the old connection is
left open as well (presumably to allow new mail notification).

In my case I have quite a few folders and was exceeding the maximum allowed
connections per IP limit on my server.  I've upped this limit and now the
problem has gone away.

As far as I am aware there is no defined way for the server to pass back this
error to the client, with courier-imap I see a few SYN/ACK/FIN packets going
back and forth but that's it.

It seems this is not a bug in Thunderbird but the IMAP implementation could
possibly be cleaner, I have a suggestion for a better way of doing things but am
going to post on the forums before submitting it to Bugzilla as it may be
completely unworkable and I'd like to see some discussion first.

Comment 3

[Gayle]

Glad I thought before making stupid suggestions.  Try reducing the maximum
server connections in tools->account settings->server settings->advanced.

Note to devs:  Courier-IMAP is probably the most popular imapd out there and has
a default of 4 connections per IP.  Maybe worth changing TB default from 5 to 4?

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Dustin Puryear, did comment 3 help resolve your main problem?

xref bug 229902

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
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If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
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Thank you for your help in this matter.

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Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.