Closed Bug 1517778 Opened 6 years ago Closed 5 years ago

click on a mail folder inoperative - message list does not update when changing folders

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: richard.leger, Unassigned)

Details

(Whiteboard: [dupme?])

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:64.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/64.0 Steps to reproduce: Moving few messages at once from Inbox into a sub-folder (IMAP setup) in Thunderbird Actual results: Click on different mail folders, does not update the view (list of messages) accordingly. (issue is not systematic, seems to happen randomly after a while of usage. Only way to come out of the issue is to restart Thunderbird. No particular errors appear in Error Console nor Activity Manager) Expected results: Click on different mail folders shall show list of emails in that folder.
TB Version 65.0b1 (32-bit)
Issue seems to happen since upgrade to that version.

I've seen this - only a couple times a year

Whiteboard: [dupme?]

It happens multiple times to me in the past two months so as beta increased in version it seems to happen less and less.
My gut feeling it that with the introduction of workers and load balancing (CPU processing sharing) within TB recently may be the source cause of the issue.

I have the gut feeling that issue occurs after clicking on a folder which start processing the folder, but just at this moment, the processing power of TB is switch to another part of TB (supposedly another worker), and when switching back to the worker that was processing the folder, it cannot resume its action because it did not stop/pause its processing previously in a state/stage it could resume processing the folder (get folder content list, render/update the view,etc)... at this stage clicking on any folder have no action at all. The only way to recover is to restart TB.

It is not inhabitual sometime in recent TB version to feel the interface is "frozen" or action "delayed" very briefly as TB process something else in the background... like if it was "not responding" sometime it is long enough for this warning to appear briefly sometime it is short enough for observing the slight delay (very quick) without the warning appearing...

And I am thinking similar situation may happen at a specific stage just after your click on a folder which cause the issue with the folder content rendering...

This is hard to debug as it is very hard to reproduce. I'll try to check the console next time it happens...see if any errors occurs.

(changing summary terminology)

My gut feeling it that with the introduction of workers and load balancing (CPU processing sharing) within TB recently may be the source cause of the issue.

I am not aware of any such changes. I suggest the information you saw or the conclusion you derived is incorrect.

Perhaps some other change that tickles a fairly old problem https://mzl.la/2Pvs5OW

Issue seems to happen since upgrade to that version (65.0b1)

What are your results if you go back to 64?

Component: Untriaged → Folder and Message Lists
Flags: needinfo?(richard.leger)
Summary: Cannot switch between folder views - click on a mail folder unoperative → click on a mail folder inoperative - message list does not update when changing folders

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #5)

(changing summary terminology)

My gut feeling it that with the introduction of workers and load balancing (CPU processing sharing) within TB recently may be the source cause of the issue.

I am not aware of any such changes. I suggest the information you saw or the conclusion you derived is incorrect.

Perhaps some other change that tickles a fairly old problem https://mzl.la/2Pvs5OW

What I meant is before when Thunderbird had performance issues, the all UI was "Not Responding" and looked like freezing... with no action from end-user possible till it unfreeze...

Currently with introduction of worker/async feature possibly, it seems the when TB is "Nor Responding" due to performance issue, the UI remain available (slow or very slow), end-users can still trigger some action and teh "Not Responding" is not permanent but intermittent...

It feels like the processing power of TB is better shared between all the feature, it feels like there is a better time sharing of the processing power so the UI never get comletely blocked like before... that is what I meant by cpu pocessing sharing if that make more sense... I would not know if that is by luck or by underlying improvement of TB.

Issue seems to happen since upgrade to that version (65.0b1)

What are your results if you go back to 64?

I cannot at the moment as I am still dealing with regression Bug 1545042... and would rather not change TB version for now...

Flags: needinfo?(richard.leger)

Folder display issues are typically not performance issues, and I expect that to be true in your case, even if you experience other performance issues. They are either failures of the display code, or intermittent issues where the folder is locked/blocked on some event - often a previously failed event (often silent failure) like a message drag.

What are your results if you go back to 64?
I ... would rather not change TB version for now...

Actually flipping versions is trivial - each version installed into its own directory, and then executed from a directory as needed. I have a mozilla.org directory with some 200 subdirectories of various versions.

(In reply to Richard Leger from comment #6)

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #5)

(changing summary terminology)

My gut feeling it that with the introduction of workers and load balancing (CPU processing sharing) within TB recently may be the source cause of the issue.

I am not aware of any such changes. I suggest the information you saw or the conclusion you derived is incorrect.

Perhaps some other change that tickles a fairly old problem https://mzl.la/2Pvs5OW

What I meant is before when Thunderbird had performance issues, then all UI was "Not Responding" and looked like freezing... with no action from end-user possible till it unfreeze...

"Not responding" in a window title bar (or Mac spinner) or "Unresponsive script" dialog warning typically result from high CPU or high IO - and normally be

Currently with introduction of worker/async feature possibly, it seems the when TB is "Nor Responding" due to performance issue, the UI remain available (slow or very slow), end-users can still trigger some action and teh "Not Responding" is not permanent but intermittent...

Again, TB has no workers, and no recent sync vs async changes that I know of.

It feels like the processing power of TB is better shared between all the feature, it feels like there is a better time sharing of the processing power so the UI never get comletely blocked like before... that is what I meant by cpu processing sharing if that make more sense... I would not know if that is by luck or by underlying improvement of TB.

Many newcomers with performance issues hope for a "silver bullet", and the bullet they often bring is multiprocess or multithreading. In the ideal world, maybe that would be the first angle of attack. And Firefox has finally done it with great success via "e10s" - I run 200-500 tabs for weeks, something I cannot do with chrome.

In Thunderbird's real world, no.

  1. Even if we could do more "multi-whatever", doing it without refactoring the code that is causing your load doesn't get rid of too much IO or CPU; so Thunderbird responsiveness may get better but you won't improve battery or disk drive life, nor reduce impact of thunderbird activity on other applications running on the PC - in fact it may get worse.

  2. The unfortunate reality is, Thunderbird code is deeply, deeply dependent on the model of most things running on the main thread (i.e. the UI thread), which isn't going to change any time soon, and when it does it will require many man months of effort.

What we CAN address today is find the low hanging fruit, such as determining WHY in your specific case thunderbird goes not responding, and fix that specific issue.

(In reply to Richard Leger from comment #4)

It happens multiple times to me in the past two months so as beta increased in version it seems to happen less and less.

Richard, Has it reduced to zero in beta 70?

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #3)

I've seen this - only a couple times a year

But only the folder not updating - not any frozen UI

Flags: needinfo?(richard.leger)

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #9)

(In reply to Richard Leger from comment #4)

It happens multiple times to me in the past two months so as beta increased in version it seems to happen less and less.

Richard, Has it reduced to zero in beta 70?

I haven't seen it recently...

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #3)

I've seen this - only a couple times a year

But only the folder not updating - not any frozen UI

If I recall correctly, when issue raised, TB UI remain responsive... just when you click on a mail folder (from IMAP account) the message list is not updating to show messages from that folder... it remain just remain as it was last before issue occurs...

Flags: needinfo?(richard.leger)

Super. Please reopen if you see it again

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 5 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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