1413847 - Persistent spinning wait cursor on MacOS High Sierra 10.13 when clicking on imap folder. OK if Thunderbird is set offline. Not solved by update to 10.13.1

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[zoot]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.10; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
Build ID: 20171024165158

Steps to reproduce:

Two recent MacOS Sierra updates, referencing cursor issues appeared to resolve this for a short period, but the behaviour has resurfaced.


Actual results:

Using Thunderbird 52.4.0 on MacOS 10.13.

Periodically and progressively more regularly, the Mac OS spinning wait cursor appears, particularly when selecting IMAP folders. The account is configured for synchronizing all messages, regardless of age, so there should be local cached versions of the data.



Expected results:

The spinning wait cursor shouldn't constantly display!

Comment 1

[zoot]

Attachment: Sample of Thunderbird.txt

Sample file while Thunderbird was running.

Comment 2

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

I don't see this on my IMAP GMail account.
Maybe this is fixed by the update to OSX 10.13.1 like for bug 1410806. Please could you try this?

Comment 3

[zoot]

Upgrading to OSX 10.13.1 seems to have resolved it, thank you!

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thanks zoot

Comment 5

[zoot]

Unfortunately, this bug has resurfaced. To be clear, it only occurs when Thunderbird is running.

The issue was dormant for a while after upgrading OS X, but has resurfaced.

The wheel spins for quite some time when selecting random IMAP folders, or messages therein.

The Macbook was recently upgraded (fresh installation) to High Sierra, including using the native Mac OS disk encryption. Might the latter be contributing to the issue? I believe the machine is seldom shutdown, but put to sleep and woken daily.

Next steps? What other info would help identify the issue?

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

> The issue was dormant for [13 days] after upgrading OS X, but has resurfaced. 
> ... 
> Next steps? What other info would help identify the issue?

Odd that it returned. Mac is outside my area of expertise. The only thing I can offer is https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Memory_Usage_Problems

Perhaps others can offer advice. And, perhaps 10.13.2 will be out next month?

Comment 7

[zoot]

I've subsequently tested the difference in Thunderbird's speed while in off-line mode vs on-line mode. The former results in zero lag and the absence of the spinning cursor. Even on my Mac (OS X Yosemite 10.10.5) I'm now aware of the spinning cursor. Note that this bug report was started because of the issue on a client's Mac.

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a way to force Thunderbird to continue polling the server every (n) minutes, even while in off-line mode (this trick works with Outlook). I assumed (incorrectly) that the on-line/off-line modes merely enabled/disabled IDLE support, respectively. However, it appears that off-line "really" means off-line ;-)

So, I tested Airmail for comparison and it's message and folder access are instantaneous, while on-line, just like Thunderbird in off-line mode. I suspect Airmail doesn't couple the background server checking processes to the mouse cursor, so that the user experience is instantaneous. This behaviour would be ideal for Thunderbird in on-line mode too.

Comment 8

[zoot]

I've subsequently submitted a feature request:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1421924

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to zoot from comment #7)
> I've subsequently tested the difference in Thunderbird's speed while in
> off-line mode vs on-line mode. The former results in zero lag and the
> absence of the spinning cursor. Even on my Mac (OS X Yosemite 10.10.5) I'm
> now aware of the spinning cursor. Note that this bug report was started
> because of the issue on a client's Mac.

Regardless, if the problem didn't occur prior to MacOS High Sierra 10.13 and the only thing that changed when you started seeing this was that update, then this bug should be reopened and bug 1421924 is just a duplicate of this.

Comment 10

[zoot]

I have an update:

The problem is very real and remains, having spent some time using Thunderbird on the Mac with OS High Sierra this morning.

The spinning mouse cursor can appear for extended periods, when switching folders. Both the OS and Thunderbird are up to date, as of typing this.

I discovered a nested folder hierarchy which was subscribed to, but non-existent on the server itself, so cleaned that up, but doing so didn't seem to improve the situation.

I have used my own Macbook (running OS X Yosemite) with Thunderbird, at the client's location, using their network, without noticeable lag and spinning wheel issues. This would infer that it's unrelated to network issues in any way.

Please advise on next steps to help resolve this issue, such as acquiring debug logs, or anything else.

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

As mentioned in bug 1421924, this might be a duplicate of bug 589310 / bug 588952.
We need more info from zoot to proceed.

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

zoot, is it better with version 60 from getthunderbird.com ?

Comment 13

[Phoenix]

Resolved per whiteboard

Comment 14

[karen]

Having this issue with Thunderbird 60 on a 2017 iMac i5 OS 10.13.6 (17G65). I have 6 email accounts I use with it and only one is POP and the rest are IMAP. It hangs after about 30 minutes and then I have to force quit and restart. It compacts regularly. I installed it from brand new and re-set everything up. I suspect it's the Lightning and Google Contacts that it is getting stuck on b/c the application seems to run better w/o those installed (but I need those so this makes this program, unfortunately, useless for me). It also runs slower for opening and replying to emails versus something like Gmail.