Closed Bug 1556269 Opened 6 years ago Closed 6 years ago

Thunderbird loses emails on failure to send via smtp

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Untriaged
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1077418

People

(Reporter: itamarh, Unassigned)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:66.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/66.0

Steps to reproduce:

I tried to send an email
Version: 60.6.1 (64-bit)

Actual results:

I got an error from gmail
"An Outgoing server (SMTP) error occurred while sending mail. The server responded: 4.7.0 Temporary System Problem. Try again later (1). n10sm2899267qtp.81 - gsmtp."

the email is gone from both drafts and outbox (or trash, etc.)

Expected results:

temporary error is ok, but email should stay in outbox?

This happens were rarely. Gene, could you please look at this and/or the duplicate.

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 6 years ago
Flags: needinfo?(gds)
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE

Sounds like "the most hated bug" (TM) that I worked on and thought was fixed: Bug 1366591. I mainly tested with bad connections to the server and not with intermediate error returned by the connected server. I will look at this. Also, good info in dup bug 107418 however not sure how fix for "most hated bug" affects those observation the since the dup bug was posted before "most hated bug" was landed.

I just simulated the error. The message never arrived at destination. However I see the message in the gmail Sent folder.

Reporter, you didn't explicitly mention Sent folder. MIght it be there?

Flags: needinfo?(gds) → needinfo?(itamarh)

my configuration is drafts (and outbox) are on local folders.
I checked for the missing email on all folders under local folders) and searched in gmail itself, which would cover 'sent items'.
The emails were nowhere to be found.
HTH.

Flags: needinfo?(itamarh)

Did you look in gmail "All Mail" too.?

I'm not real up on what "outbox" is exactly. How do you configure it?

Also, do you have a configuration for where "sent" messages are put?

Yes, "all folder in gmail" included all mail.
when you use local folders for drafts, emails go to outbox while being sent.
i.e., under accounts I have both gmail and local folders.
and in my gmail account, I have "keep drafts on 'Drafts' in <Local Folders>"

I set sent destination to "Sent" folder on local folder. Now I am seeing the message appear there but after a few minute delay. Also, set drafts to local folders for gmail account. Drafts go there too. This is still with the same error you see being simulated.
Note also that with local folders being the sent destination, I don't see the failed sent message in gmail's All Mail now.

I assume you mean under the gmail account, copies & folders, 'place a copy automatically'?
I do not have "place a copy in" selected.
(not supposed to be a need, as the email sent on gmail will automatically be tagged in gmail to sent items folder, and I don't need all sent items to have a copy in my local folder)

I have mine set so sent messages are explicitly saved by tb to a folder (originally gmail's sent folder and now to local folders) and I see the failed message there (after a few minutes).

So maybe to not lose the messages that don't send due to gmail failure you need to set tb to save sent messages somewhere?

Seems like this might save them twice (once by gmail and then by tb) but I only ever see one saved per sent message.

(In reply to ih from comment #8)

I assume you mean under the gmail account, copies & folders, 'place a copy automatically'?

Sorry, didn't answer this. Yes, automatically is checked; and this seems to be the default tb setup for gmail.

"An Outgoing server (SMTP) error occurred while sending mail. The server responded: 4.7.0 Temporary System Problem. Try again later (1). n10sm2899267qtp.81 - gsmtp."

Just curious as to how often you see this error?

ok, so if you don't have it checked, you will lose the email sent, despite the error to send it, which should have kept it in drafts or outbox?

and to your question - I only saw this when gmail had their June 2nd meltdown, causing that error.

Yes, that's right. If you tell tb to save sent messages to gmail's sent it is usually redundant but since I think gmail sees the message put there by tb as having the same X-GM-MSGID number as gmail just put there, gmail lists it as the same message and you don't see a duplicate in tb or webmail.

Drafts are only saved automatically after a configurable period, I think 5m default, or if you manually tell tb to save the draft. This may not work if gmail is down and, in that case, you should see a prompt to save to local folders instead.

I just checked Local Folders/Outbox and I only see something there when I do a "Send Later" so not sure how useful that is for this problem. In the "duplicate" bugs mentioned above, I think someone suggested that you always do a "Send Later" so you don't lose messages that don't send. Probably not the greatest thing to suggest.

Yes the June 2nd outage was weird. I could connect to the google servers but there was no useful response, as you saw.

So this is different than the "most hated bug" Bug 1366591 since for it the problem was that the message was sent OK via smtp but the message failed to save to Sent via IMAP. Now, if save to sent fails, the compose window stays open and the user is prompted to save the message into local folders.

But for this bug the failure occurs after smtp server is connected when the email is being sent. In this case, tb is not sure the message was sent or not so it goes ahead and saves the "sent" message to the designated "sent" folder via imap or via file copy if sent folder is in Local Folders. As long as the user has designated a sent folder, the message is not lost. Only if no sent folder is designated is the message lost (and this will occur with the non-default setup that the reporter is using).

If the smtp server can't be connected to during the send process, an error occurs informing the user that the message definitely wasn't sent and the compose window stays open so the user can re-send the message later or save the message to drafts.

I need to look closer at the situation in the bug currently marked as a duplicate of this, bug 1077418. In that case the smtp server is reporting the message as too big to handle (by reporter) and by commenter "Gerv" as too many smtp connections (which doesn't seem to make sense unless he is sending multiple emails to the same smtp server used by several accounts at the same time).

Interesting that in "duplicate" bug 1077418, with both failure modes: size too big in EHLO request and too many smtp connections causing a bad "greeting" response, the compose/write window remains open and allows the failed message to be sent again or to be saved to drafts on close. So bug 1077418 seems to be fixed. Maybe a side effect of some other fix (*).

However this bug closes the write/compose window after the error is dismissed; but it does save the message to the designated Sent folder (if a folder is so designated). Maybe this is because the error occurs later in the SMTP state machine than the errors in bug 1077418.

Will keep looking...

(*) If the user runs tb full screen, after dismissing the error the compose/write window is actually under the main tb window and not visible. So possibly that is why the reporters in bug 1077418 didn't see a way to save the message that failed to send.

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