111256 - Can only open 3 subfolders on IMAP server - maxed server's connections per IP

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[Julian Fitzell]

QMail IMAP server

Mozilla 0.9.6

1) open an account with subscription to 4 or more folders on the IMAP server 
(bug 97700 may be related?)
2) click on 3 folders to see their contents
3) click on a 4th folder

Expected Result: see the contents of the 4th folder
Result Obtained: Mozilla attempts to connect until you hit Stop.  No data is 
displayed

At this point, you can still click on the first 3 folders but every other 
folder will exhibit the "Result Obtained" above

Comment 1

[Steven Noble]

I have found the same bug in linux on my computer

Comment 2

[Julian Fitzell]

It appears that this problem only occurs with subfolders.  I can click on INBOX
+ 3 subfolders before I am no longer able to click on a 4th subfolder.

Comment 3

[Julian Fitzell]

This seems to have been a problem with the Courier IMAP server's default config
allowing a maximum of 4 connections per IP.  Is it necessary to make a
connection to the IMAP server for each folder?  I don't know enough about IMAP
to know.

Comment 4

[Keyser Sose]

Marking NEW based on comments.

Comment 5

[Antony Mawer]

I'd suggest this bug is probably invalid, pending a solution to being able to
control the maximum number of connections Mozilla uses. Courier has a rather
conservative default limit of 4 connections per IP address.

See bug 71792 for more details.

Comment 6

[Tim]

I was just replying to someone in the newsgroup regarding this. The original
person posted, bewildered. Then there were three replies which all were ignorant
of this situation. I would suggest that while it's good for preformance, it's
bad for compatibility to be caching extra connections by default. I was hit by
this myself and spent hours of frustration tracing the problem finally to my
Courier IMAP server settings... 

I think the solution should be to open only one connection by default; but have
the setting to up the cache number somewhere a little more obvious than on 
the "advanced" pop up... so people can easily see and increase as needed.

Comment 7

[Mike Fedyk]

Ok, I've tested this on a courier-imap server (I'm switching from pop3 to imap),
and I was able to see folders six levels deep.

But there is something else now (never saw the initial behaviour since I didn't
use imap at the time).

If you leave the folders open, showing their subfolders, when you open mailnews
again, it only shows the first two levels of subfolders, and not the rest.  You
have to collapse the second from last in the tree (the last one with a marker
showing subfolders), and then press it again to show the subfolders, then it
shows that there is another subfolder and you can open all six levels of
subfolders after that.

Gecko/20030714 Debian/1.4-2

That's 20030708 with a couple patches IIRC.  Sorry, but my latest nightly is
from last month (I use the debian snapshot packages.  the fonts in the mozilla
binaries released are butt ugly).

Anyway, should I file another bug for this or is this one good enough. 
Otherwise, this bug should be closed as WFM.

Comment 8

[Mike Fedyk]

Ok, mark this one as WFM.

Previous report is Bug 138759

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

David, invalid?  comment 3, 6

Comment 10

[David :Bienvenu]

yes, marking invalid. We do try to give the user an error message about courier's four ip address limit when we detect that particular error.