1244094 - Message filters feature stopped working

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Filters, defect)

Description

[David Spector]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0
Build ID: 20160105164030

Steps to reproduce:

I didn't do anything, I believe.


Actual results:

The message filters feature stopped working on incoming email (entering the local Inbox). However, message filters still work if run manually (selecting the local Inbox manually).


Expected results:

Message filters should have continued to work as they always have for me, for years.

Note: this is possibly a duplicate of Bug 1096096 - Messages Not Moved to Folders, but it is hard to tell if the problem is limited to moving to folders, since all my message filters have as their action moving the message to a folder. I don't feel like testing this, but I'm willing to if my bug cannot be replicated by a developer.

Note: this bug started happening yesterday (1/28/16). Did anything interesting happen yesterday with TB?

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Which version? Same as bug 1245157?

Comment 2

[David Spector]

I believe I already gave the version number above, it is 43.0 . I had switched my release channel from beta to release, if that could have caused this problem.

Comment 3

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

I could not reproduce this, see bug 1245157 comment #1.

Comment 4

[David Spector]

Thank you for trying. I must have put the TB config database into a strange state that prevents the automatic running of message filters. I understand that TB has no official support now, so I thank you for your service.

Comment 5

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

(In reply to David Spector from comment #4)
> Thank you for trying. I must have put the TB config database into a strange
> state that prevents the automatic running of message filters.
There is no "TB config database". The configuration is stored in various files in your profile folder. Filters are stored in msgFilterRules.dat.

There are various configuration option for filters: Whether they run before or after junk classification, whether they execute when manually run, when receiving e-mail, etc.

You could start TB with "thunderbird -p" (p for profilemanager) and create a new profile. Then add the rule afresh and see whether it works. You could also remove/rename msgFilterRules.dat from your existing profile while TB is not running and then add the rule.

> I understand
> that TB has no official support now, so I thank you for your service.
Bugzilla is NOT a support forum. It is a tracking system for bugs in Mozilla products.

This is the support forum for TB: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird

Other than that, TB is under active development, TB 45 beta is being released at time of writing. TB 45 ESR will be released in mid-March. Bugs are fixed, depending on their importance. Filters not working *is* important, however, we can only fix it if we can reproduce it ;-) I am currently perusing of a body filter supposedly not working in bug 1245157.

You have to present a reproducible case to get the developers interested. So far, you've presented a support case, not a bug. No one is interested in TB 43. I suggest you use TB 45 beta to present your case. At the very least, you need to make it reproducible and then attach msgFilterRules.dat for us to look at.

Comment 6

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Additionally to attaching msgFilterRules.dat you would have to attach the message(s) that don't get filtered (drag it/them to the desktop as a .eml file, attach the file(s)). Take a look at bug 1230815 to see how a bug needs to be reported. In that bug someone successfully identified a problem with message filtering which hits under certain circumstances.

Comment 7

[David Spector]

This seemed like a bug to me, rather than some misunderstanding of how TB works that required support. At any rate, Message Filters have suddenly started working again, as of several days ago, according to the evidence (messages have been moving to Trash again). The version is still 43, and I have made no changes to the filters list, or any other changes to TB since posting this report.

I agree that an intermittent bug can't be fixed. But I think I was right to post this, since I observed filters not working for several days (I applied them manually during this time by using Tools > Run Filters on Folder).

Comment 8

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Let us know if it happens again, then please supply the data requested in comment #6.