1587930 - Broken legacy preview property causes folder summary panel to crash

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[[e-mail]]

I have a folder where some old messages have an existing but broken preview property on the message header. In Thunderbird 60, this wasn't a problem, because the property was decoded inside a try/catch and the value ignored if it wasn't valid UTF 8. However in Thunderbird 68 this crashes because there's no try/catch there any more. When this happens the preview panel opens on my screen but it never gets filled in or closes so I need to restart Thunderbird to remove it.

Comment 1

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

You mean this horrible hack using the deprecated escape function :-(
https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/29706036071c4629c2b44512d1acecb64008cc46/mail/base/content/foldersummary.js#192

See bug 1551746.

Comment 2

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

It's actually the decodeURIComponent that threw.

It's sane coding to expect any complicated function (including particularly any XPCOM call) to throw, and to catch it at the level where it would not do harm. The notification is optional, so that's the level where to catch. In this case, the old code did the right thing, caught the exception, and did not show the notification in this case. The new case doesn't catch and breaks.

Comment 3

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

it never gets filled in or closes so I need to restart Thunderbird to remove it.

This is what makes this bug bad.

Comment 4

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

(In reply to [e-mail] from comment #0)

I have a folder where some old messages have an existing but broken preview property on the message header.

How did they end up broken, and how is that a problem for the folder preview, which by design will only show NEW messages (not old at all).

Comment 5

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to Magnus Melin from comment #4)

How did they end up broken

Because I had been using an old extension which created broken previews.

and how is that a problem for the folder preview, which by design will only show NEW messages (not old at all).

I meant old in terms of age. The folder preview will show messages marked as new in the database; this doesn't go away until you either get messages on the folder or leave the folder. If you never open the folder the messages will remain marked as new.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

No crash signature?

Comment 7

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Since this was caused by an extension, and only affecting new mails (which by now would be old, non existent), I don't think there's anything we need to do here.