1281085 - goes offline without warning

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[Phil]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.103 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Cannot reproduce, I don't know what caused TB to go offline but it did so on its own.


Actual results:

When replying to a message, I noticed that the SEND button had been replaced by a SEND LATER button. Upon researching the matter at the TB forum, I learned that this is probably "working as designed"


Expected results:

I was advised by the forum moderator that I might file this as an enhancement request. I think TB should do something to warn the user that it is going/has gone offline instead of doing so silently. Not sure what kind of notification fits into the TB design. Something that clearly shows up when the user is in TB main view. Possibly a desktop popup and/or some special icon in the (Windows) task notification area. I went for several hours not realizing TB was offline and missed see 18 incoming messages. A notification would have enabled me to try bring TB back online immediately. (All was OK when I eventually noticed and did bring TB back online. I have no reason to think any message was actually lost.)

Comment 1

[Phil]

I am able to reproduce the behavior by disconnecting the network adapter,causing the computer to lose its wireless connection to the internet. I go into TB>file>offline and see that work offline has been checked. That is, TB automatically went offline. TB is set to check for new messages every 2 minutes. I send a message from another computer and observe that it DOES NOT APPEAR IN THE INBOX after >2minutes. Unchecking "work offline" returns TB to work online and the test message is read.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Phil from comment #0)
> User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML,
> like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.103 Safari/537.36
> 
> Steps to reproduce:
> 
> Cannot reproduce, I don't know what caused TB to go offline but it did so on
> its own.
> 
> 
> Actual results:
> 
> When replying to a message, I noticed that the SEND button had been replaced
> by a SEND LATER button. Upon researching the matter at the TB forum, I
> learned that this is probably "working as designed"
> 
> 
> Expected results:
> 
> I was advised by the forum moderator that I might file this as an
> enhancement request. 

Please provide URL to this forum post.

> I think TB should do something to warn the user that it
> is going/has gone offline instead of doing so silently. 

What addons do you have installed according to help | troubleshooting?
(please paste the list here, but edit to show only the extensions/addons)

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Checked the offline.autoDetect pref?

Comment 4

[Phil]

1. comment 2 "Please provide URL to this forum post."
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1127952

2. comment 2 extensions/addons
Extensions
Name 	Version 	Enabled 	ID
FiltaQuilla	1.3.2	true	[e-mail]
Lightning	4.7.1.1	true	{e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}
Nostalgy	0.2.34	true	[e-mail]
Recover deleted messages	0.4	true	{8380f54c-9b7a-4107-b703-9b938e30fb54}
Remove Duplicate Messages	0.1.14	true	{12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc}

3. comment 3 offline.autodetect pref
I've never heard of offline.autodetect until now. I looked in Advanced>config editor:
offline.autoDetect;true

Apparently true is the default.
Of course, this confirms the notion that the behavior I'm asking about IS NOT A BUG. Nevertheless, I still believe that adding some sort of notification is worth discussing.

Comment 5

[Phil]

Followup to offline.autodetect:
I changed the option to false and reproduced the behavior by disconnecting from the network. Now TB DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY GO OFFLINE. 

Does anyone know where the option is documented? Is true the default? (As far as I know, I did not set it to true, but I may be wrong about that.)

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thanks for the info.

The value is determined by tools | options | advanced | network | configure offline settings | checkbox for automatically follow (unchecked=false, checked=true which is the default).  Many moons ago the default changed to true and Thunderbird's "offline setting" is not determined by the network state. 

The settings below the checkbox determine to what extent that the network state CAN affect Thunderbird offline settings at startup.

Comment 7

[Phil]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, NI for questions) from comment #6)
> Thanks for the info.
> 
> The value is determined by tools | options | advanced | network | configure
> offline settings | checkbox for automatically follow (unchecked=false,
> checked=true which is the default).  Many moons ago the default changed to
> true and Thunderbird's "offline setting" is not determined by the network
> state. 
> 
> The settings below the checkbox determine to what extent that the network
> state CAN affect Thunderbird offline settings at startup.

The needinfo flag appears to be set. Is there additional info I need to report? (This is my first bugzilla voyage...I apologize if I'm being dense.)

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Phil from comment #7)
> The needinfo flag appears to be set. Is there additional info I need to
> report? (This is my first bugzilla voyage...I apologize if I'm being dense.)

Yes, we need to know the values specified at the options location specified above

Comment 9

[Phil]

automatically follow detected online state is unchecked.