1368911 - Slow startup and "Unresponsive Script" with single pop account, ~240 folders on file share

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[[e-mail]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0
Build ID: 20170518000419

Steps to reproduce:

In V48 and previous versions in either Win7 or 10, TB would not hang on startup. Since updating to V52 It would hang. (I had a V48 that was working. Unfortunately when I clicked on 'help' to check the version, I saw it was V48, then it autoupdated to 52 and then stopped working) I am using POP since we have archived emails dating back to the early 2000's. 

I attempted at first to see if there were corrupted files/folders. I created new inbox, sent, trash, etc.  It would still hang. It appears inbox, sent, trash, etc were not corrupt.

I have separate project folders by year.  Each year has between 200 to 300 projects. So, for instance, folder 2015 has sub folders 15101 through 15253. For my example I am going to be specific using these project numbers

I tried rebuilding my each year folder, bringing in a few project folders at a time to see if I had a corrupted file.  TB was working until '2015'. Once I reached project 15240, in folder 2015, TB would hang on startup.  Coincidentally, the total data for each project from 15001 to 15240 is about 15GB.

Just to see if it would work, I made three sub folders for 2015. (15001-15099, 15100-15199, 15200-15253.)  After adding in the project folders into these sub folders of 2015, TB does not hang on startup.

Since I got around the problem by making sub folders of sub folders, I thought I should report the limitation.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I don't think you would be hitting a windows limit:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/fbad33ee-b10b-4ab8-9370-a2af017ca46b/maximum-folders-in-a-folder-in-ntfs?forum=winserverfiles
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1065993/has-windows-7-fixed-the-255-character-file-path-limit
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247(VS.85).aspx

Comment 2

[:aceman]

What kind of hang is this? Is the Thunderbird process using 100% of a CPU? Do you get the "unresponsive script" warning? How many folders do you have in total? Are you using any saved search folders that would span over multiple of those folders?

Comment 3

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to :aceman from comment #2)
> What kind of hang is this? Is the Thunderbird process using 100% of a CPU?
> Do you get the "unresponsive script" warning? How many folders do you have
> in total? Are you using any saved search folders that would span over
> multiple of those folders?

Thunderbird will open.  No 'unresponsive script' warning.  No save search folders. Global search and indexer is disabled.

I had 'Manually Sort Folders' (to launch in a specific folder instead of last folder or inbox) and 'Lookout' (for customers who keep sending winmail.dats) extensions.  I also have Shockwave flash with 'ask to activate'.  Disabling the extensions did not fix the problem.

The folder pane will show a list of folders.  No list of emails in the thread pane, nor an email will show in the message pane.  I cannot choose another folder.

Straying from default, I am using the 'menu bar' toolbar.  Choosing file/edit/view, etc will bring the pulldown menus, but choosing something from the pull down menus does not appear to be do anything (at least visually). I cannot even choose to exit thunderbird.  To close, I have to terminate via taskmanager.

Thunderbird floats between about ~88 and ~92MB in memory.  CPU time mostly is mostly at 0.  If I watch it for a bit, every 10 seconds or so it uses about 1 to 10% CPU time lasting a second or so.

For comparison, now that I have it running, it uses about 135MB.  switching between folders and messages CPU time will be ~3-7%

Comment 4

[:aceman]

Can you start Thunderbird passing it a -jsconsole argument (e.g. via command line or setting up the launcher icon (lnk file)) ? It should open the error console where you can see if there are any errors triggered when you try to operate TB.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to :aceman from comment #4)
> Can you start Thunderbird passing it a -jsconsole argument (e.g. via command
> line or setting up the launcher icon (lnk file)) ? It should open the error
> console where you can see if there are any errors triggered when you try to
> operate TB.

also start *Windows'* safe mode with networking enabled
- win7 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17419/windows-7-advanced-startup-options-safe-mode#start-computer-safe-mode=windows-7

Still In Windows safe mode, start thunderbird in safe mode
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/safe-mode-thunderbird

Comment 6

[[e-mail]]

I apologize, I 'fixed' the problem a bit ago, and should have posted.

I have set "dom.max_chrome_script_run_time" to '0'. The current default is '20'
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Dom.max_chrome_script_run_time

Please note, the link above indicates the default is 10.  That is out of date

Thunderbird was taking longer than 20 seconds to load on startup due all the data it tries to parse.  It appears after the 20 second timeout the script for the folderpane, et al, terminates.   This is a issue with a POP mbox, with very many, and large files, which are located on a remote machine. 

I have someone putting together a email server (fetchmail / postfix) so we can move from POP to IMAP on each of our workstations.  After the switch over, I will see if setting "dom.max_chrome_script_run_time" back to 20 will be sufficient, since postfix should have more control over the folders than the TB client. 

A quick background: We have been using a single email address for our company since the early 90's.  In the early 2000's, when there were only 3 of us, setting the 'local directory' to the same location on TB for POP, for each of us, worked OK, as long as none of us tried to be in the same folder at the same time.  TB probably really shouldn't be configured this way, but it is simple to implement, and works for a small number of people.  Our files are large and numerous, and we have grown in people.  Using TB this way is stretching its capabilities.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Please clarify "located on a remote machine".  Do you mean, an a file share or external drive?  Or do you mean, pop messages being kept (never/not deleted) on the pop server?

> POP mbox, with very many, and large files, which are located on a remote machine. 

message size doesn't matter unless you are repeatedly syncing them - which you wouldn't be doing if this is pop, unless you are never deleting messages from the pop server.

> A quick background: We have been using a single email address for our company since the early 90's.  In the early 2000's, when there were only 3 of us, setting the 'local directory' to the same location on TB for POP, for each of us, worked OK, as long as none of us tried to be in the same folder at the same time.  TB probably really shouldn't be configured this way, but it is simple to implement, and works for a small number of people. 

This is strictly unsupported, and you are lucky to have not had serious problems, eg, dataloss.

Comment 8

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #7)
> Please clarify "located on a remote machine".  Do you mean, an a file share
> or external drive?  Or do you mean, pop messages being kept (never/not
> deleted) on the pop server?
> 
> > POP mbox, with very many, and large files, which are located on a remote machine. 
> 

Remote machine = file share - Fedora 22, Samba v 4.2.12. Remote machine's only responsibility is file sharing.
Thunderbird is running on Windows 10 with file share mapped as 's:\'.


 
> > POP mbox, with very many, and large files, which are located on a remote machine. 
> 
> message size doesn't matter unless you are repeatedly syncing them - which
> you wouldn't be doing if this is pop, unless you are never deleting messages
> from the pop server.

messages are fetched from the pop server and are deleted from the pop server after 14 days.  Only one workstation fetches from the pop server. Messages are then filed elsewhere in a sub folder on the file share, so only the workstation that fetches has access to the inbox.

Mean mbox file size is 50MB.  Some do reach over 1GB.  At times, it does take Thunderbird 10 to 20 seconds to load a message.

 
> This is strictly unsupported, and you are lucky to have not had serious
> problems, eg, dataloss.

I realize this is unsupported, but has been working since the early 2000's without dataloss. But multi-access shouldn't be the problem.  I have a separate account and location of files on the file share for email older than 5 years (archive) for less clutter.  Only I can access the email archive.  This problem still exists for the archive.
Total data for the last 5 years ~70GB
Total data for the archive stretching back to 1990 ~60GB 

Yes, we do need the older data. It can be useful. I am currently referring back to data from '08 for a project.  I had to refer back to a 2000 project in the past 6 months.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

pvheesch

Do you still see the slowness on startup when using version 78 or newer?

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I just reread comment 8. In the case of file shares, bug 1242046 should help. And some other which I can't find at the moment.

But shortly we'll be at version 91. If you have new information please do update the bug report.