Closed Bug 147711 (losingmails) Opened 22 years ago Closed 12 years ago

Losing mails by "get all new messages" downloading the mails from two accounts in one folder - insufficient locking? [pop]

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Networking: POP, defect)

x86
All
defect
Not set
critical

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 218439

People

(Reporter: martin, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Keywords: dataloss, Whiteboard: [support])

I am using several pop (4) an imap (2) accounts for getting my mails. If I
receive more than a few mails - for example 10 at one account - Mozilla gets a
huge synchronization problem:
Mails exists just with the Name and Subject, but without body of the message.
Elsewhere mails are getting "mixed" - the body shows one part of the one mail
and another part of the other mail. Some mails you never see from whom they are
- they seem to be new, but when you click on it, nothing happens ... just if
this mail does not exists.
When I delete such a mail I get a mail in the trash from the 01.01.1970 without
any Name and Subject.

I think this problem is just "reproducable" when I click on "get all new
messages" first, instead of downloading every single account extra.

It seems to me, that Mozilla has problems with the "speed" of getting the mails
from the server, when you understand what I mean.

What information can I give you for that more, that might help you?
-> Navin  - you could say what build you're running for starters.
Assignee: bienvenu → naving
Component: Mail Database → Networking: POP
QA Contact: gayatri → sheelar
This happens to me from Mozilla 0.9.6 up til now with 1.0RC3
Reporter,
We have had some problems with earlier builds when the summary file(.msf)
corruption resulted in mails getting mixed up. Since you have so many different
accounts in that profile isolating the problem would help here. 
Can you create a new profile with a recent build and see if you are able to get
and view messages correctly on your pop accounts.
FYI..."Get all messages" will get messages to only those accounts that you have
logged into or saved password for.  If not get all messages will not work.  
The problem still appears. :-(
I deleted all msf files and created a totally new Mail account with my pop and
imap accounts.
One mail landed in a folder with a filter, where it never has to land. One mail
seems to be there three times (in a threaded view), but I couldn't read at least
one of them. I couldn't read some mails, just see their content, just subject
and sender.

I use the password manager for my mail accounts.
I use an external Mail folder (/home/martin/E-Mails/) in which every folders and
files are stored - I remember difficulties with this technique by newsgroups
accounts in earlier times.
Maybe this is the key???
Corrected a misspelled word for better "queryability".
Summary: Loosing mails by "check all new messages" → Losing mails by "check all new messages"
The problem still appears, even if I check an account sepperately. It seems,
that Mozilla downloads the Mails "too fast" and gets a synchronization problem.
This time I saved my Inbox and my Inbox.msf files - maybe you could get some
information out of it. But I didn't want to attach it now, because even if there
are just four visible Mails in my Inbox, it has a size of over 30MBytes ... (by
the way: why?).

It's a really big problem which needs to be fixed. I can give you all my datas
you need.

Martin
QA Contact: sheelar → stephend
The problem appears also with 1.2.1 at my mothers account. I activated the Boxes
for two POP Accounts at
Mail & Newsgroup Account Settings -> [Account-Name] -> Server Settings ->
Automatically download new messages.

Two Mails overlapped. So in one - which had some pictures in it - I found just
some cryptical code, and in the other - which should contain a 36KB HTML
Newsletter, you could just see one line of the message.

Looking with an editor at the Inbox file, I could see the disaster. These both
mails are not stored correctly. The HTML Mail for example still "exists", but
starts after the one line with the code fragment of the other mail - so Mozilla
can't see any html Mail in it.

There are some observings I did. First of all, I think it depends at this time
mainly on the second account. Then I created a special folder to store the
profile in (D:\mozilla-profil\) and after that I also store the Mails in one (!)
folder (D:\mozilla-profil\gudrun\xyz.slt\Mail).
I think the last point could make the problems. Because I remember one time,
when it was not allowed to store the Newsgroups files in special folders.

So I think it's a kind of synchronization problem from Mozilla - he's sometimes
too fast. I don't think that this has anything to do with the msf files.
Alias: losingmails
OS: Linux → Windows ME
Summary: Losing mails by "check all new messages" → Losing mails by "get all new messages"
first of all, your INBOX is probably so big because it hasn't been compacted -
context menu | compact this folder. You might want to back it up first, because
it sounds like your INBOX is corrupted.

I didn't quite understand your comments. Are you downloading mail from two
accounts into one directory/folder? That would definitely cause problems, and we
shouldn't allow it.
No, sorry, I don't think taht the Inbox is too, just about 2MB.

And yes, I downloaded the mails from two accounts in one folder. The reason for
it is, that I have one Inbox for all my POP-Accounts. If you'd like to disallow
it, you shouldn't give the user the possibility to change the folder in which
the mails should be stored and you would have to create the possibility to use
one Inbox for several accounts (as it is done e.g. in Outlook Express if I
remember correctly).
right, we'd have to disallow setting the same directory for multiple accounts.
It would be nice to have multiple accounts feeding mail into the same inbox, but
our folder/account architecture is just not set up for that, and trying to
change it would be a largish task. In particular, the locking mechanism we use
to prevent multiple access to the same folder doesn't realize that the INBOX for
the two accounts is actually the same folder.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → ASSIGNED
Ever confirmed: true
mass re-assign.
Assignee: naving → sspitzer
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
Product: MailNews → Core
sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.
Assignee: sspitzer → nobody
David, obsolete?
QA Contact: stephend → networking.pop
Martin appears to be gone.
tony, wdy think?
Keywords: dataloss
Summary: Losing mails by "get all new messages" → Losing mails by "get all new messages" downloading the mails from two accounts in one folder - insufficient locking?
(In reply to comment #14)
> Martin appears to be gone.
> tony, wdy think?

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20090112 SeaMonkey/2.0a3pre - Build ID: 20090112000551

This is news to me. I have four POP accounts (where I get mail at startup and periodically thereafter) plus a Movemail account (whose mail can only be got manually, in practice on the rate of one mail per day plus one per week, all of them from cron jobs), they all pour their mail into the Global Inbox (i.e. Local Folders/Inbox), and I don't remember ever losing mail (which doesn't mean that I never lost mail, only that I never _noticed_ that mail had been lost through the mailer's fault). If it makes any difference, I move my mail out of Inbox and into either Trash or some storage folder as soon as I've read it -- or even before, if it's mail that my Message Filters can identify and sort into folders for "repeat mail" of well-known kinds; and I let SeaMonkey auto-compact all folders (with a confirmation popup) as soon as it will save 512K of disk space.

Also, AFAICT SeaMonkey gets mail from each account in succession, not from all of them at the same time; and sometimes (especially after having turned the power off for some time) I may get a lot of mail in one batch: the most abundant sources being the Vim mailing lists (to my gmail account, but filtered out of Inbox), the Mozilla bugmail (also to my gmail account, and also filtered out of Inbox), and spam (to all accounts, but less of it from gmail because it holds what it thinks is spam and delivers it only by webmail, not by POP; and of course SeaMonkey filters what it recognizes out of Inbox and into Junk).

To summarize, in practice I keep my Inbox empty most of the time.
Product: Core → MailNews Core
seems like we should give this a future direction or put to it to bed
OS: Windows ME → All
Summary: Losing mails by "get all new messages" downloading the mails from two accounts in one folder - insufficient locking? → Losing mails by "get all new messages" downloading the mails from two accounts in one folder - insufficient locking? [pop]
Whiteboard: [support]
Well, this bug report dates from 2002 and by now I don't have any POP mail accounts anymore and hence, cannot reproduce the problem anymore. In case no one else appears to have trouble with this bug or can reproduce it with a current Thunderbird version, I would recommend closing this bug by now, i.e., I won't vote against closing it.
bienvenu, is this a UI issue in a account settings, where we allow user to specify the local directory to be used??
I believe the UI is checking that the folder isn't a currently used folder and has been for a very long time - see http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mailnews/base/prefs/content/amUtils.js#43

However, the code that puts up the error message is broken - top.gPrefsBundle is not defined, so that when you try to pick a directory that's currently used, it fails silently.
So is this another dupe of bug 218439 now?
Depends on: 218439
(In reply to David :Bienvenu from comment #19)
> I believe the UI is checking that the folder isn't a currently used folder...
> However, the code that puts up the error message is broken -
> top.gPrefsBundle is not defined, so that when you try to pick a directory
> that's currently used, it fails silently.

Do we have a bug for that?

Is that the only problem which remains of this bug? iow, can this be closed as a dupe of 218439, as suggested by aceman's comment 20?
yes, sure.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 12 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #21)
> (In reply to David :Bienvenu from comment #19)
> > I believe the UI is checking that the folder isn't a currently used folder...
> > However, the code that puts up the error message is broken -
> > top.gPrefsBundle is not defined, so that when you try to pick a directory
> > that's currently used, it fails silently.
> Do we have a bug for that?
Bug 218439 fixed exactly this problem with the string bundles.
Thanks everyone! Mission completed, bug terminated. Proceed with next bug ;)
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