125664 - Frozen inbox of POP email account

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Networking: POP, defect)

Description

[Mirek]

Moz 2002020406, WinNTSP6a
Symptoms:
I use several pop-accounts. One of them has not files stored locally but on the
network server (the files are huge several MB).
All accounts work as expected at the beginning. Later, when Moz is periodically
checking for new mail, Moz signals arrival of new mail to the server. However,
it is impossible to download the new mail since on inbox of this account the
hourglass apears and it is frozen. The account inbox can get frozen even without
new mail arrival. 
All other accouts and folders still work fine, i.e., only inbox is frozen. This
error occurs sometimes also for the accounts stored locally, but much less
frequently. Time to time the Moz. "unfreezes" itself (rare).

Way to reproduce: none. But it happens several times a day. Sending of email
(even from the "frozen" account) is still working fine.

Workaroud:
Restart of Mozilla always solve the issue, however, Mozilla is always
re-creating index for the frozen account inbox after the restart.

Comment 1

[Navin Gupta]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 125503 ***

Comment 2

[Mirek]

I am not convinced it is duplicate of bug 125503. I would tend to disagree,
reopening for discussion. Reason:
No data loss and Moz behaves correctly in this respect - once the Inbox is 
frozen, the index file is correctly marked as invalid. However, 
bug 125503 is just the opposite - that the index is marked valid and 
its actually incorrect.

My point was different. That if the connection is not working, Moz. is not 
able to mark index invalid *and* re-start the connection process itself or, 
it does not allow to unfreeze the Inbox in other way but restart of the 
whole Mozzila. I think that this is the core of the bug.

Moreover, the connection is over the 10Mb LAN so the likely cause of the 
connection failure is response of the server "busy" or refuse 
of the connection at one instant.

Comment 3

[Navin Gupta]

This bug is fixed because of bug 125503, because db was getting invalid in some
states like when server is busy/ connection is dropped or something not normal end.
In that state we were not synching the index file (db) with mbox and also
not committing the state. Now with fix for bug 125503 we are going to do that. 

marking fixed. 

Comment 4

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Mirek, is this working for you, now?

Comment 5

[Mirek]

I'd rather wait about a week for the next milestone build. (I'll check it then
and -if necessary- re-open this bug.)

Comment 6

[Mirek]

Re-opening, the behavior has not changed, build 2002031104, Moz 0.9.9. WinNT4Sp6a.
Now it seems it was not duplicate of 125503 but a different problem. It seems
not to be only mail issue - possible link with networking?

Comment 7

[Navin Gupta]

*** Bug 134042 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Mirek]

Well, I regret to point out that the problem is still present in the RC1
(WInNT, SP6a, Moz. build 2002041711). No change in the behavior.
I feel this can be a potential problem for the business usage of Moz since
one of the reasons to store "local" accounts remotely on a server is the 
possibility of automatic simple backup together with the regular server 
backups for all local users. 

Comment 9

[Mirek]

The problem has not disappeared in the Moz release 1.0.0, build 2002050312.
According to me, the bug 134042 describes exactly the same problem.
I think the problem is the REMOTE storage of Inbox file on a different machine
than the mailserver.

Comment 10

[Mirek]

Well, just to update: no change, same problem in Moz 1.1, build 20020826.
During normal use it appears about 2-3 times a day on average, however no
regular pattern or a way to reproduce.

Comment 11

[TWilson]

Mozilla 1.2.1 
(Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130)
  NT4 sp6a, 256MB, ZoneAlarm3.1.291

Same effect as described, however hang locks up system, requires hard (power
off!) shutdown and restart to recover.  Cannot repeat this on demand, but it
occurs about twice a week.  Mozilla memory usage goes through the roof (when I
can actually get the Task manager to start) though this may not be an important
clue.

Comment 12

[Mirek]

I have not observed this behavior in Moz 1.2 and 1.2.1. Neither in Mozilla 1.3b,
build 2003021008, WinNTsp6a. Suggest to mark it WFM.

Comment 13

[Daniel Wang]

wfm per reporter comment

Comment 14

[Mirek]

Just to really close the bug: It seems to be dupe of later bug 142196 , the
problem became WFM on NT once the first fix of bug 142196 was checked in (see
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142196#c68 ).

Comment 15

[tobias]

i found a way to reproduce the bug by lets say 90%

things you need:
1. mouse wheel
2. two mail accounts
3. first mail account with lots of messages in the inbox so that there appears a
scrollbar
4. second mail account with no scrollbar visible

things to do:
1. restart (!) mozilla and start mozilla mail (the first mail accounts inbox
should be visible now)
2. scroll to the bottom of the inbox and click on the last messages symbol in
the list where you can mark the msg unread (if it is allready marked unread mark
it read and remark it)
3. go to the second mail accounts inbox
4. position the mouse cursor on the list where the messages of the inbox are
displayed and move your mouse wheel up and down.
5. go to your first mail accounts inbox and at mine the cursor stays a hourclock

annotations:
1. this probably works too if a new mail arrives.
2. i dunno if it makes a difference in step 4 if you position the cursor on text
or on whitespace in the inbox (whitespace works for me at least)
3. my mail accounts are stored on another computers harddisk in the lan
   => my inbox takes quite a long time to view the first time i start mozilla
mail (~5s)
   => i dunno if this is a problem: if i suspend my computer A to ram (mozilla
still running) and start computer B and access the same profile (which is as i
said on a third computer) this works (!) (though one mozilla app still has
"mounted" the profile). maybe this causes corrupted inboxes?!
   => i often do not update mozilla to the latest version on ALL computers so
different versions share the same profile which might lead to problems too