1480623 - "folder busy" dialog when downloading messages in pop account (gmail)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 707933

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[David McDivitt]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/67.0.3396.99 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

I downloaded for all accounts. All are POP3.


Actual results:

On the first two accounts there was no issue, then on the main account with the most messages, a dialog appeared saying the folder was busy and could not be updated. The download proceeded, but the UI did not update with message count, and redownload did not update the UI. Closing the program, opening, and downloading again updated the UI.

This is a daily occurrence. It only happens when I get home and do the first download of the day when there are many messages in the POP3 account. I have many filters with move actions. None of the filters are set to execute when retrieving mail, and only when done manually.

I have not done any testing to see how many messages need to be present in the POP3 mailbox to trigger the error dialog. As mentioned, once the dialog appears, I must close TB and open again.

Tomorrow when this happens, which probably it will, I will do a screen snapshot of the dialog and also harvest the text in the dialog.

I've had this issue several years and I'm tired of it.


Expected results:

My email should download without issue, and it should not matter how many messages are in a mailbox.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Yeah, long time issue for some users. https://mzl.la/2LZtNsL includes a few reports. (seems like there should be more)

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Suspect this will be a duplicate of some filter bug report and/or bug 707933. Pleaes check the workaround mentioned in that bug report.

Comment 3

[David McDivitt]

Wayne, I did apply the workaround described in another bug regarding this issue, two years ago. That workaround is to limit email filters and not use filters when retrieving email. It helped, but the problem still happened occasionally, and the problem has gotten worse due to more filters and more email. I have not tested to see if removing the filter definition file before opening TB and retrieving, will relieve the problem, to then close and replace the filter definition file. I will do that today when the mailbox is full, and subsequent days, to see if that makes a difference. I did searches to try and find the existent bug, but could not.

Nevertheless, a problem is a problem and no workaround should be needed.

Comment 4

[David McDivitt]

UPDATE

I've been trying to isolate this issue. When the problem would occur, I would restore the entire TB folder and download email again. My hope was to do trial and error to find cause. But the problem would never occur again, for that day's email. I read email on different devices as IMAP, but at home use POP3 and delete after 45 days.

A cause has been found. I have several email accounts. There is a single GMail rule that copies everything received into the inbox on my main account. I only use GMail to receive notifications from web domains, since I can't use an address hosted by the domain. GMail does not stay on the server when retrieved via POP3. When I restored the TB folder and downloaded again, any GMail emails would not be present, again, so the problem would not happen, again.

Today I noticed a GMail email appear, halfway through receiving my main inbox, and the problem instantly happened. I looked at the GMail rules finding one rule, and that rule copies to the other account. I must have done that several years ago and forgot about it. Also, the rule runs when email is received. For my main account the rules are all manual.

I don't know if the problem is worth pursuing. I can see how it may be an issue for someone once in a while, and it may be good to document the issue.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

>  There is a single GMail rule that copies everything received into the inbox on my main account.

So both accounts are in Thunderbird?  But gmail?   Can you be much more specific about how this is set up?

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(correction) 
Both gmail?
Which is pop and which is imap?

Comment 7

[David McDivitt]

For Thunderbird, all the accounts are POP3. Mail for each is fetched equally. One of the POP3 accounts happens to be GMail.

The same accounts are accessed on other devices via IMAP. For instance on my phone I view with IMAP.

The age attribute in Thunderbird is used for management. When interrogated via POP3 in Thunderbird, if too old they are deleted. The emails are no longer available on other devices via IMAP when this occurs.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Fetch headers only - is unchecked?
Leave messages on server - is checked (enabled)?
Automatic checking for new messages is enabled?  What is the minutes interval value?
Are you using global inbox?

Comment 9

[David McDivitt]

fetch headers only - no (fetches full email)
leave on server - yes (45 days for each POP3 account)
automatic checking - no (only manual checking is used)
global inbox - no

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Aceman, Gene, see comment 4 and comment 9

Comment 11

[gene smith]

So the problem is that the filter for the gmail account will move messages into the "main" account's inbox while the main account is also downloading into the same inbox folder. This causes the "folder busy" error and message counts are wrong until tb is restarted. Disabling the gmail filter fixes the problem. (This "gmail" filter is definitely a tb filter and not a "server side" gmail filter, right?)

What I don't completely understand is if only manual checking for new mail is used, it would seem that the reporter would start the "check for new mail" on each account separately and move to the next one after each completes and they wouldn't overlap, so you shouldn't get a "folder busy" error. But maybe pop3 also has a "check for new mail at startup" that might be causing simultaneous checks for new mail and downloads on the multiple accounts.