1580793 - Background actions can block user action with "Operation failed because another operation is using the folder ... try again" for 30 seconds or more, related to RSS activity

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[Stephan Sokolow]

Attachment: Screenshot of "actual results"

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Have the bad luck of trying to delete something from a folder when it's "in use"

(In my case, from an RSS feed folder, but I'm pretty sure I remember it happening with IMAP folders too)

Actual results:

See attached screenshot.

Upon closing that error dialog, the requested change had not happened.

Expected results:

The requested action should at least have been ENQUEUED so I don't have to play butler to my software.

It should never be possible for a background action which doesn't even show up in Activity Manager to slap a user with a "try again later" message and refuse to even ENQUEUE their requested action . (For what could be 30 seconds or more.)

This and related instances of Thunderbird having its priorities completely backwards (eg. blocking showing a e-mail's contents because it randomly decided to re-download the entire folder from GMail) is the second-biggest reason I'm currently looking for a replacement for Thunderbird.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Which linux are you running?
And how big is the RSS folder from which you are deleting, and the trash folder in the RSS account?

Comment 2

[Stephan Sokolow]

Which linux are you running?

Kubuntu 16.04 at the moment. I'll be upgrading to 18.04 once I finish cleaning up the mess made by all the changes between 14.04 LTS and 16.04.

And how big is the RSS folder from which you are deleting, and the trash folder in the RSS account?

It was my CamelCamelCamel.com Product Alerts folder, which is normally kept empty. I was trying to delete the three new arrivals created by adding some things to my Amazon.ca wishlist.

As for the trash folder, I always forget that it even exists. Looks like it has 33,565 entries in it. (It doesn't show up in the "Unread Folders - Compact View" listing, so, even if I remember it, It's a pain, and I'm used to using things which either have direct deletion enabled (eg. PCManFM) or automatically expire based on time (GMail) or to hold to a quota (KDE's Trash support).)

Comment 3

[Stephan Sokolow]

Speaking of things from the 1990s, I just double-checked my retro-hobby PC and Windows 98 SE installs with a Recycle Bin quota enabled (10% of disk size)... something which I remember existing all the way back in the original release of Windows 95.

Why does Thunderbird default to "Use my account settings (Don't delete any messages)" for the retention policy on Trash folders when even Windows 95 got that right?

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

This typically happens because of a performance issue, filters, or a compact in progress.

Is delete behavior better if you do "Empty Trash" on the RSS trash? (that zeros out that folder)

Comment 5

[Stephan Sokolow]

It depends on whether the aforementioned not-showing-in-activity-manager background action is in progress. Since I don't know how to trigger that, all I can do is keep using it for a month or two and see if I trip over it again.

(Depending on luck and my usage patterns, sometimes, I go a month without any sign of it and sometimes I trip over it again and again.)

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

How many RSS feed?
And do you still see this issue when using version 68?

Comment 7

[Stephan Sokolow]

At the moment, I have over 100 RSS feeds and that's after pruning it down a lot in the wake of Tumblr getting so strict about what counts as adult content that unauthenticated Tumblr RSS is practically useless.

As for version 68, I'm still on the version 60 builds being pushed through Kubuntu 16.04 LTS repositories (partly because I never managed to get the UI properly reverted on my mother's laptop after it tried to put her on the new toolbar layout and I like my UI as it is), so I'm not sure.

Given that I need to upgrade anyway to be ready for GMail dropping non-OATH IMAP, I'll try to upgrade within the next few days but getting you an answer will take longer. (I still get the problem on 60, but never figured out a way to trigger it on demand, so I'm stuck just waiting for the collision to occur as a matter of probabilities.)

Comment 8

[Stephan Sokolow]

On that note, is there a list of ways to manually trigger the different processes I might be colliding with to narrow things down?

Also, s/OATH/OAuth/ (Clearly, not having slept well is impairing me)

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

On that note, is there a list of ways to manually trigger the different processes I might be colliding with to narrow things down?

We don't know what to trigger, so there's not much point.

The best thing to do is get on version 68, then reassess.

Comment 10

[Stephan Sokolow]

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

The best thing to do is get on version 68, then reassess.

Naturally. I'm just saying that it could take me a few weeks once I'm on version 68 to be certain that the problem isn't going to trigger unless I have a way to manually trigger processes that normally run on timers or other infrequent events. The standard deviation on the frequency of occurrences isn't small.

Comment 11

[Stephan Sokolow]

Sorry. Life's been a complete and utter mess and I'm still on the old Thunderbird.

Will the needinfo request remain on the bug once it's closed? If not, is there a way to make it remain so I have it as a TODO?

Comment 12

[Stephan Sokolow]

Sorry for the insane wait. I just encountered the problem on Thunderbird 68.8.0 (64-bit), so it's not fixed.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Stephan,
Do you still see the problem with RSS?

Comment 14

[Stephan Sokolow]

I'm not sure. It's intermittent enough that I generally only remember the most recent time it happened and, this time, the most recent time it happened was an IMAP folder.