Open Bug 727790 Opened 12 years ago Updated 4 years ago

New mail sound, indicator, and toaster popup rarely play or show in Windows 7

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect)

x86_64
All
defect
Not set
major

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: webmaster, Unassigned)

References

(Depends on 1 open bug, Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; rv:10.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.1
Build ID: 20120208060813

Steps to reproduce:

Received new mail on Windows 7.

Sometimes all happens correctly (sound, tray icon, and toaster popup), but more often than not, none of the above happen.


Actual results:

Message indicator for account on main window incremented and bolded showing a new mail was present.  No sound played, no envelope indicator in system tray (try is set to always show when it's there, so not an issue with it being hidden), and no toaster popup occured.



Expected results:

New mail sound (default) should have played, the envelope icon should have been placed in the system tray, and a toaster popup should have appeared.
OS: Windows Vista → Windows 7
(In reply to Trel from comment #0)
From my daily use of Thunderbird, sound notification and tool-tips are consistent.
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:10.0.1) Gecko/20120208 Thunderbird/10.0.1
Application Build ID: 20120208125353
(In reply to Hashem Masoud from comment #1)
> (In reply to Trel from comment #0)
> From my daily use of Thunderbird, sound notification and tool-tips are
> consistent.
> User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:10.0.1) Gecko/20120208
> Thunderbird/10.0.1
> Application Build ID: 20120208125353

I just got a new mail notification on my phone.  There was nothing on my computer.  Upon checking thunderbird, I did indeed have a new mail, account was bolded with (1) showing next to it.  

There was absolutely no indication from thunderbird that this email was received.  

(It was to inform me of your reply to this very bug report)
(In reply to Trel from comment #2)
Try it with add-ons disabled: Go to Help ➡ Restart with Add-ons Disabled...
(In reply to Hashem Masoud from comment #3)
> (In reply to Trel from comment #2)
> Try it with add-ons disabled: Go to Help ➡ Restart with Add-ons Disabled...

I don't use any addons in Thunderbird.
Still occurring in 10.0.2
If it makes any difference I have three different accounts, none of them give notifications.

They are enabled in options, and the accounts are IMAP.
(In reply to Trel from comment #6)

Maybe this is specific to Windows as I don't have it in Linux.
(In reply to Hashem Masoud from comment #7)
> (In reply to Trel from comment #6)
> 
> Maybe this is specific to Windows as I don't have it in Linux.

I think it might even be specific to windows 7, since it never happened on XP before I upgraded.
Yes this still occurs. I've since fresh installed both Windows 7 an. Thunderbird.

It still occurs.
Flags: needinfo?(webmaster)
I'm seeing this intermittently, now increasingly, with SeaMonkey 2.19a2 builds. Neither action (icon, balloon alert, or sound) shows up in some instances, but folders are bolded and have a number to indicate that new mail arrived. Once it "decides" to no longer inform me about new messages, it stays like that until restarting (or beyond, continuing the silence into the next session).

Neither of the bugs in comment #9 match this, nothing in the Error Console. Preferences related to the biff settings are as they should be.

Moving to MailNews Core as this seems to be related to the backend handling.
Component: General → Backend
Product: Thunderbird → MailNews Core
I don't know which provider Trel is using, but it appears from the forum thread that this issue is limited to IMAP accounts and to Gmail in particular.

I'm confirming this bug despite the lack of sufficient steps to reproduce it, but based on the number of reports something is going on here.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
(In reply to rsx11m from comment #13)
> I don't know which provider Trel is using, but it appears from the forum
> thread that this issue is limited to IMAP accounts and to Gmail in
> particular.
> 
> I'm confirming this bug despite the lack of sufficient steps to reproduce
> it, but based on the number of reports something is going on here.

My accounts are IMAP.  I have pop accounts, but they're run manually to archive my IMAP accounts.

None are Gmail, they're all private.
So I have two gmail accounts, one is pop3 access, the other is imap.
I always get the notification on the pop3 account, but not on the imap account.
Seems to me that I get the sound, but not the popup on imap.
Matter of fact gmail imap sounds off a lot, with no new mail there.
(In reply to Joe Sabash from comment #15)
> Seems to me that I get the sound, but not the popup on imap.

The notification should appear, it doesn't show a message preview text though due to bug 861911 (which may be caused by bug 854161).

> Matter of fact gmail imap sounds off a lot, with no new mail there.

I'm not seeing this, but the same mail may be reported as "new" multiple times if it shows up in several folders (i.e., has multiple labels assigned).

Anyway, based on comment #14 it may or may not depend on being a Gmail account, but IMAP is a common factor in all instances so far. Thus, apparently processing of new mail still gets to the point where it's registered in the backend and the folder marked respectively, but gets interrupted before getting to the handling of the sound/icon/visual alerts. I don't see anything in the Error Console that would suggest an exception happening anywhere (no messages are logged on a biff).
(In reply to rsx11m from comment #16)

> Anyway, based on comment #14 it may or may not depend on being a Gmail
> account, but IMAP is a common factor in all instances so far. Thus,
> apparently processing of new mail still gets to the point where it's
> registered in the backend and the folder marked respectively, but gets
> interrupted before getting to the handling of the sound/icon/visual alerts.
> I don't see anything in the Error Console that would suggest an exception
> happening anywhere (no messages are logged on a biff).

I wouldn't say it's gmail related.  I'm definitely not using gmail (and I'm the original reporter), so it definitely looks like it's IMAP.)
See Also: → 885220
There is now also bug 885220 specific to Gmail IMAP, mentioning indexing as a possible trigger for the issue (which can't apply in my case given that SeaMonkey doesn't employ the global indexer).

I didn't dupe that bug as Trel's issue and the recent Gmail-related observations are certainly similar but may well have different causes and may require different solutions.

FWIW: I didn't have a missing sound/alert for the last three days or so.
(In reply to rsx11m from comment #18)
> There is now also bug 885220 specific to Gmail IMAP, mentioning indexing as
> a possible trigger for the issue (which can't apply in my case given that
> SeaMonkey doesn't employ the global indexer).
> 
> I didn't dupe that bug as Trel's issue and the recent Gmail-related
> observations are certainly similar but may well have different causes and
> may require different solutions.
> 
> FWIW: I didn't have a missing sound/alert for the last three days or so.

Even in my case, it does eventually stop happening for stints of time, but then I'll come back and see a bunch of unread that I was never notified of.
Bummer - it was working fine this morning, now I've noticed that the folder count shows several new messages but no icon, balloon, or sound anywhere...

I don't recall if I've restarted since the time where it still worked.
(In reply to rsx11m from comment #20)
> Bummer - it was working fine this morning, now I've noticed that the folder
> count shows several new messages but no icon, balloon, or sound anywhere...
> 
> I don't recall if I've restarted since the time where it still worked.

Exactly why I can't get precise steps to reproduce.  It works for a while and then just suddenly stops.  Every symptom is the same.  Folder (correctly) shows new emails, bolded and everything.  There are just no notifications of those emails arriving.
Weird, now it works again after the machine was powered down.

What I've noticed (talking about SeaMonkey) is that the Component Bar at the left-hand side of the Status Bar doesn't show the green new-mail arrow either along with the missing alerts. Since the processing of that icon occurs /before/ the platform-specific processing of the alerts, apparently somethings goes wrong already before that. In this case, I would expect it to be independent of the platform used (i.e., the issue should also occur on Linux or Mac).

Just to add another thought to the mix.
The number of reports in the forum thread increases, thus I'd assume that this has become a more wide-spread issue. I'm elevating the severity to "major" given that the lack of an alert may pose a substantial usability issue (not quite reaching the level of dataloss, but if you miss an important message due to the lack of an alert, that's getting close to it).
Severity: normal → major
Blocks: tb-gmailWIP
What's the probability that this bug is an IMAP bug (rather than gmail) and it's becoming more visible now that more people are using it for gmail, and prior to that, most people were using pop accounts?
IMAP-specific certainly, but not IMAP in general. It more seems like certain behavior of an IMAP server may cause the part where the alerts are issued to be omitted, and that apparently Gmail (and some other servers like yours) trigger that problem. I'm using IMAP for several years by now but only recently saw those alerts gone missing, and also just for Gmail but not other providers, thus it's definitely limited to certain configurations.
A user was able to reproduce the issue in 3.1.20, though it seems to be easier to trigger in current versions. Thus, it's not a recent regression in Thunderbird contributing to the problem, more something recent happening in affected servers exposing the problem.

There is also a partial IMAP log in bug 885220 comment #5.
Some information from my scenario, the mail server in question for me, is likely either Courier or Dovecot as it's from domains hosted on WHM/Cpanel.
(In reply to Trel from comment #27)
> Some information from my scenario, the mail server in question for me, is
> likely either Courier or Dovecot as it's from domains hosted on WHM/Cpanel.

It also uses EXIM, but I believe that's strictly for outgoing.
"A user was able to reproduce the issue in 3.1.20" -- that was me.

Basically I've downgraded trying to fix the issue with notification for my GMail account. My conclusions:
- It is most likely related to something specific to INBOX. I was able to fix notifications under 3.1.20 by creating GMail filter rule that moves all mails that would normally go to Inbox into special label _Inbox (I use a lot of labels/folders and lots of rules place mails in different folders; this last rule simply makes sure nothing new is placed into actual Inbox).
- It might be related to GTalk/Jabber integration showing up in Inbox -- or it might not as people not using this functionality also report the problem.
- 3.1.20 with _Inbox workaround seems to work fine so far. Latest version (don't have number handy) seems to still lose notifications.
(In reply to Trel from comment #27)
> Some information from my scenario, the mail server in question for me, is
> likely either Courier or Dovecot as it's from domains hosted on WHM/Cpanel.

Trel, based on the analysis in bug 885220, can you create an IMAP log following the http://kb.mozillazine.org/Session_logging_for_mail/news instructions, using NSPR_LOG_MODULES=imap:5,timestamp as parameters?

Then, send yourself a message after logging into your account and note the time when it arrived in Thunderbird (regardless of whether or not you get the alert). The log file will be huge, but the timestamp (in UTC) should be a good guide.

Look for some line like "* 40593 FETCH (UID 41159 MODSEQ (1152046) FLAGS ())" and check if the "FLAGS" response includes a "\Recent" or not. Gmail doesn't use that flag to report new messages, whereas another account for which I reliably get alerts does. Thus, if your server doesn't produce a "\Recent" notification either, that would be a common factor with the Gmail occurrences.
dupe of bug 531002 ?
Trel, can you please set mail.server.default.use_condstore and any other server-specific mail.server.server#.use_condstore (with # = some numerical identifier) to "false" as described in http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=12965417#p12965417 and apparently resolving the issue for Gmail accounts?

If it works for your account as well, then we know that the affected accounts are using the CONDSTORE mechanism, and that's where things seem to go wrong (see WADA's analysis in bug 885220 comment #65 and following).
(In reply to Nikolay Shopik from comment #31)
> dupe of bug 531002 ?

Similar symptoms but no mentioning of CONDSTORE (RFC 4551) as being a possible source of the issue.
(In reply to rsx11m from comment #32)
> Trel, can you please set mail.server.default.use_condstore and any other
> server-specific mail.server.server#.use_condstore (with # = some numerical
> identifier) to "false" as described in
> http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=12965417#p12965417 and
> apparently resolving the issue for Gmail accounts?
> 
> If it works for your account as well, then we know that the affected
> accounts are using the CONDSTORE mechanism, and that's where things seem to
> go wrong (see WADA's analysis in bug 885220 comment #65 and following).

I will change that tonight.  I've been away for the past week, but so far this week, the issue hasn't happened yet.  Which makes it so hard to find out if something worked to fix it or not.
(Also, someone on the forum said this fixed it with their ISP's imap mail rather than Gmail, so it looks like a strong possibility it may ultimately fix it for me too)
According to bug 885220 comment #73, Gmail only recently introduced the use of the CONDSTORE extension. Thus, it looks more like an issue with Thunderbird's implementation of that specification (given that other providers are affected as well, and in your case the feature apparently was used much earlier already, thus exposing the issue much earlier than with the Gmail accounts).
I'm going to guess my webhost uses Dovecot on their servers then.  That does use CONDSTORE

It apparently caused issues in Thunderbird with caching in the past
http://dovecot.2317879.n4.nabble.com/Thunderbird-caching-problem-td8732.html
I haven't had a chance to get to my machine with Thunderbird yet, but I can confirm that the server in question uses Dovecot, and that Dovecot does use CONDSTORE.  It's looking very likely that if CONDSTORE is the issue, that's what mine stems from as well.
See Also: → condstore-default
iI sounds same issue as bug 885220, so set in dependency for ease of problem analysis and tracking.
Depends on: 885220
See Also: condstore-default
See Also: → 1059598

Do you still encounter this issue?

Flags: needinfo?(webmaster)
Flags: needinfo?(rsx11m.pub)

Yes, this still occurs as of 68.8.1.
I would say it happens less frequently, but I still will open switch to Thunderbird and see new unread mail despite never having any indicator that it came in (neither toast, sound, nor tray icon).

And as I don't use any POP accounts except for archiving, this is all in regards to IMAP accounts (though not Gmail).

Flags: needinfo?(webmaster)

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #40)

Do you still encounter this issue?

For me, happens neither on Windows 7 nor Windows 10. But then, CONDSTORE is disabled by default and I haven't tried to re-enable it since.

Flags: needinfo?(rsx11m.pub)
OS: Windows 7 → All
See Also: 8852201123617
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