1176944 - Folder message retention policy ignored

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(MailNews Core :: Database, defect)

Description

[Jim Moe]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
Build ID: 2015051400

Steps to reproduce:

In an email account (not a newsgroup):
- Selected the Trash folder's Properties
- Selected Retention Policy
- Selected "Delete all but the most recent" XXX "messages"
- Set XXX to 100



Actual results:

Nothing changed. The messages accumulate in the Trash folder exceeding the limit of 100. At one point there were 6000 messages in the folder. TB had been opened and closed a number of times since changing the policy.


Expected results:

The number of message should have been trimmed to a count of 100.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I cannot reproduce this with a current nightly build on windows

Comment 2

[Jim Moe]

Just checked the Trash folder in that account: 116 messages.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

But it still has the rentention policy you set?

Comment 4

[Jim Moe]

Yes. And the count is now 459.

I have changed the Policy to delete messages more than 1 (one) day old, time based instead of count.

Comment 5

[Jim Moe]

The time-based policy works. Messages older than 1 day are erased.

Comment 6

[Jim Moe]

I was wrong: The time-based policy also does NOT work. 

I have it set to delete messages more than 1 day old. I checked today and message from 5 days ago were still there. :-(

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Jim, any of https://mzl.la/1U6HTC8 describe your issue ?

Comment 8

[Jim Moe]

After browsing the list of reports, #647493, #1087454 seem most like this report.

I had not considered that the folder was being reloaded at startup with the supposedly deleted messages. That could be the case as well.

Comment 9

[Jim Moe]

However, that does not seem to be the case. The only messages that accumulate in Trash are those that are moved there since the last time Trash was emptied.

The Trash folder has the Retention set for 1 day. Messages are never removed.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Do you still see this when using version 52 or newer?

Comment 11

[Jim Moe]

I do not know. I have been manually deleting the Trash folder. I will let that go for a few days and report the results later.

The odd thing is, it appears to affect only this one account. Removing X day old message from the Trash works as expected in other account folders.

Comment 12

[Jim Moe]

I forgot to mention;
Thunderbird v52.6.0 (64-bit)

Comment 13

[Jim Moe]

I have the Retention Policy set for 1 day. After 3 days no messages were removed from the Trash folder of the account.

Comment 14

[Joe]

Just set a retention policy on an IMAP folder where there are messages dating back to 2015.  Set retention for 60 days. Nothing deleted.  Set for 30 days, nothing.  Set back to 60, still nothing.

When is retention supposed to trigger?  If immediately, I'm experiencing this bug too.

Win 10 Pro 64b, TB 52.8.0 32b

Comment 15

[Joe]

Just to add, restarting TB, compact folder, repair folder all - tried all, did nothing.

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

You had many reports of settings not saving in this time period of bug 855751. Are you still seeing this problem?

Comment 17

[Jim Moe]

Yes.

Comment 18

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

QA can you reproduce?

Comment 19

[Ramona Gavrilescu]

Hello!
I have tested this issue on Win 11 on TB 154(20260818021538) and I was not able to reproduce it.

I configured an account in TB , opened the Trash folder properties, going to Retention Policy, select Delete all but the most recent, and setting the limit to 100 messages.
I tested the policy with more than 100 messages in the Trash folder and verified that the messages were trimmed according to the configured limit. I also closed and reopened Thunderbird and checked the folder again to make sure the policy continued to be enforced after restarting the application.
I also tested adding additional messages to the Trash folder after configuring the retention policy. The folder continued to respect the configured limit, and I did not observe the messages accumulating beyond 100.

Comment 20

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Jim, are there no values that work for you? For example a test folder with >100 messages sent to retention of 100?

Comment 21

[Jim Moe]

Jim, are there no values that work for you?

It looks like the issue is resolved.
At some point the Retention Policy settings started to work again for all folders. I cannot say how long ago that may have been, a few years at least. I remember deciding to try setting some retention values and they performed as expected.

From my perspective the issue may be closed.