Closed Bug 397398 Opened 17 years ago Closed 15 years ago

Password manager (and/or) account manager repeatedly asking for login credentials

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Security, defect)

PowerPC
macOS
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 121647

People

(Reporter: sethb, Unassigned)

References

Details

Attachments

(2 files)

Thunderbird continues to prompt me for my sbindernagel@mail.mozilla.com password.  I enter it, ask the password manager to Use Password Manager to remember, and then click OK.  When Thunderbird next tries to login into the Mozilla server to access my mail, I am prompted again to enter my password.  

Also, oftentimes when the same process happens above, I will add the password and the server will not accept it (or Thunderbird is doing something).  In this scenario, the window prompting me for user name and password repeated pops up after I enter my username and password and then click OK.  

I presently cannot access my mail from Thunderbird because the prompt will not go away.  See screen shots for an illustration of the window that is popping up.
Attached image Another screen shot
Is this an "all the time, 24/7" password problem, or a "right this minute, while LDAP is down so mail.mozilla.com is busted" wrong sort of prompt problem? 
Not an all-the-time, 24/7 problem.  It happens fairly regularly, and with RSS feeds that require login.  Last week I deleted two RSS feeds from forum-like conversations that I follow because of the same issue.  But, it might be an LDAP-is-down-so-mail.mozilla.com-is-busted.
I have a problem with TB not storing passwords even when I check the "remember password". One can verify in the Saved passwords window that it has not been saved and it asks for the password every time when starting the program. I have a Master Password set. I have 2 accounts. One is an old account for which the password is stored and protected with the master password. When I try to read email from this account TB asks for master password.  If I restart TB and try to read the new account it asks for the account password and even if I check "remember password" it does not ask for the master password, which further confirms that it is not even trying to save it.

Is this the same problem you have or should I file a separate bug. I actually noticed thi problem last year and I think I filed a bug but I cant find it.
(In reply to comment #4)
> I have 2 accounts. One is an old account for which the
> password is stored and protected with the master password. When I try to read
> email from this account TB asks for master password.  If I restart TB and try
> to read the new account it asks for the account password and even if I check
> "remember password" it does not ask for the master password, which further
> confirms that it is not even trying to save it.

Unlike you, I do not have two accounts, but every time I click "save password", inevitably the password manager pops up, prompting me to re-enter password.  It doesn't happen every time I restart, but when the pop-up window appears, it does cycle through a number of times, asking me to re-enter.  Then, it will go away at some point after multiple re-enters.  I believe it is the same bug.
I believe mrz told me that the zimbra servers locks you out of your account when it does maintenance on your imap account. I think we took a look at the imap log together and the server returns an authentication failed error. Thunderbird will eventually ask you to try a different password when the server says we failed to authenticate correctly. Might be useful to poke zimbra about returning a folder busy error code instead of authentication failed error.
I occasionally have this problem on the Thunderbird 2, and recently, even in the latest nightly build of Thunderbird 3. This happens to me on Windows XP SP3 though, not on Mac OS X. I have two IMAP accounts: one Gmail and one Google apps. Sometimes when checking mail, the password manager will tell me that my password is incorrect and to reenter it. The original password is still there in asterisks. If I just try to use that, it fails again. If I delete it and reenter it, it sometimes will work, but sometimes will fail. If it fails, the only thing that I can do is exiting Thunderbird and wait awhile, then reopen it before it will accept my password again. If I don't wait awhile, it still won't accept my password. This only happens to my Gmail account, but not my Google apps. I have Thunderbird set to remember my password, but I don't use master password. The error log does not recognize any problems when this happens.
I use Thunderbird with 3 Gmail IMAP accounts simultaneously.  I see this problem all the time.  If Thunderbird loses connectivity to the IMAP server for a minute or more due to other unrelated network/bandwidth issues, then Thunderbird re-prompts for each IMAP password again, when the desired behavior would be to just wait 5 minutes (or so) and try again with the stored passwords.  

I too use the password manager WITHOUT a master password (since for my setup, the entire app and my app data is stored in a TrueCrypt volume so I don't need to use a master Thunderbird password), and I'm not sure if that is part of the problem or not.  Thanks.
I got exactly the same problem as above (3 Gmail IMAP and one Zimbra IMAP accounts) and it occurs very very often.

I think it would be a good idea to delay the mail check on accounts that are concerned with a schedule like this : first 5 min, and if it doesn't work after, 15 min and then 30 min. (idea to be improved of course)

Another idea : that the password prompt box would not be a modal box that block the checking of the other accounts and that appears in front of all other windows on the desktop when Thunderbird is minimized (very annoying)

For information : the only "solution" I use today is to close TB and then restart it again, and so it stays calm for a while, waiting for his next access of password-prompt fury...

(Arghh it happens one more time while I write this comment... very annoying indeed...)

Oh I was forgotting : my Thunderbird version : 2.0.0.19 (20081209)
can you reproduce using version 3 beta?

If you do, please comment.
If you do not, please close the bug with resolution WORKSFORME (or some
appropriate resolution, but not FIXED)

** Beta 2 has fixes Bug 239131 Thunderbird should use the new password
manager, which includes numerous improvements
http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/
(suggest you backup your profile before using beta release)
Component: Account Manager → Security
QA Contact: account-manager → thunderbird
I'd love to, but I run this as the PortableApps repackage running from a TrueCrypt volume (work-owned computer).  

I can install the beta on my Vista laptop or my Ubuntu server and respond later.

Thanks for the responses... much appreciated!
To bug opener and all problem reporters:

POP3/IMAP case: DUP of Bug 224032?
IMAP case: Same issue as or similar issue to Bug 423354(improved by Bug 435306)?
See also Bug 435306(request for improvement in all of POP3/IMAP/SMTP/NNTP).
Correction. Bug 423354 was improved by Bug 422814. Sorry for mistype & spam.
FYI. Older Bug 121647 existed (oldest?)
Whilst the core issue in this bug would need further analysis of protocol requests, it is entirely possible that Thunderbird couldn't do anything better anyway - due to the limitations of the protocols not always giving us clear error codes.

Additionally as we don't seem to have had any response on this since April, I think the changes we've just implemented in bug 121647 will actually fix this bug as best we can - therefore marking as duplicate of bug 121647.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 15 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
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