Closed Bug 1593039 Opened 5 years ago Closed 1 year ago

Unable to open the summary file for Inbox. Perhaps there was an error on disk, or the full path is too long.

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Mail Window Front End
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: tomdkat, Unassigned)

References

(
URL
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Details

Attachments

(3 files)

unable to opent the summary file.png
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unable.to.open.the.summary.file.png
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image.png
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Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:70.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/70.0

Steps to reproduce:

Open Thunderbird

Actual results:

I receive the error message "Unable to open the summary file for Inbox. Perhaps there was an error on disk, or the full path is too long." There are 5 or 6 mail accounts defined and since the error message doesn't indicate which inbox summary file can't be opened, I have no clue which account is impacted.

Expected results:

The error message should not have appeared or the error message should indicate which inbox summary file can't be opened, if multiple summary files exist.

This issue is being experienced on a Windows 10 system, in Thunderbird 68.2.0

Well, the summary file for the Inbox. If you have multiple account with various inboxes that's obviously not precise enough.

Is that for a local or IMAP folder?

Great question! On this system, there's a mixture of POP3 and IMAP accounts. There aren't any local folders being used that are outside of any specific email account. After creating this bug report, I did more investigation and have identified the ONE account encountering this issue. This account is an IMAP account with a ton of folders. (ton = 100+).

So, what I did was this:

  1. Made note of the account connection settings (server addresses, login IDs, etc)
  2. Deleted the account (including mail data)
  3. Exited Thunderbird
  4. Started Thunderbird
  5. Noticed the error message did NOT appear
  6. Created the IMAP account from scratch
  7. Watched Thunderbird re-download all of the mail and folders
  8. Exited Thunderbird
  9. Re-started Thunderbird
  10. Noticed the error message DID appear

So, there's something up with this particular IMAP account. My next step is to delete the account, from the primary profile, create a second profile, and define ONLY this IMAP account and see if the error message comes back.

Sounds like a very good investigation. I don't think that moving the account to a new profile will make any difference. Could this aspect of the error message be semi-correct: ... or the full path is too long? Amongst the ton of folders, perhaps there's one with a very long name?

Thanks! Yes, I'm taking the path to the file into consideration, so I'm creating the new profile in C:\mailprofiles (\Email is where the actual profile files will be located, which makes C:\mailprofiles\Email the "root" of the profile). One other bit of information I forgot to mention: when the error message appears, the inbox still has its contents and I can open messages without problems. Some of the IMAP folders simply won't appear, despite being subscribed to. Eventually, the folders re-appear and Thunderbird downloads the messages again.

What I want to see is Thunderbird's behavior when processing just ONE IMAP account, that has a lot of folders.

Lastly, Windows Defender is currently DISABLED in favor of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium, which provides run-time protection for the system. Nowhere in Malwarebytes' logs do I see any references to blocks or detections of Thunderbird files, folders or email.

As for the folder names, that's not something I thought of to check. I'll see if there are any folders, with long names, and if there are, I'll find out how long those names are.

Ok, the IMAP mail is now populating in the new profile. The longest folder name is 35 characters and has embedded spaces (e.g. CD Release - This is a sample). There are a total of 161 folders (I counted 161 MSF files). I'm heading out of town today and won't be able to respond to new questions until Monday (11/4).

Thanks for your help!

Ok, I'm back from my trip. I need to conduct some testing tonight and I'll post an update. For now, I think the cause of the "unable to open summary file for inbox" error was being caused by a corrupt Thunderbird profile. I'll have more definitive information in a day or two.

Ok, the corrupt Thunderbird profile seems to be the culprit. After moving all email accounts to the new profile, everything is running smoothly and the "unable to open summary file" error message no longer appears. I would still like the message to be updated to indicate which inbox encountered the summary file issue, in the event there's more than one email account defined in the profile. Does this require me to open a new enhancement request?

Thanks!

FYI, I encounter the same issue lately in Thunderbird 84.0b3 (64-bit) at a higher frequency and randomely... and possibly noticed as well sometime to time in 84.0b2 (64-bit) on Windows 10. It may have had happen with previous version of TB occasionally. It happens in my IMAP account with no local caching enabled which contains a lot of folders. Other accounts are also setup in parallel but rarely used.

Behaviour at my end when clicking on an IMAP sub-folder is either:

  • no error appear on screen but the folder appears totally empty no email listed - If I right click > Properties > Repair - Emails appears listed in the folder and message content become accessible.
    or
  • the error attached appears on screen with folder not showing any email listed but is not totally empty some icons appears (spam, favourites) on the line where email shall be listed.
    See attached.

When that happens, it usually get fixed for a while by a simple restart of Thunderbird till somehow it happens again randomly at some point with another IMAP folder... it does not necessarily happen to the same one but when it starts to occur it affect many folders.

When issue occurs it tends to happen for more and more IMAP folders so a restart is required to fix. Not sure to understand how profile can get corrupted when there is no changes applied to it.

See Also: → 1708842

Bug 1240722 might be an interesting candidate for causes.

See Also: → 1240722

We're about to add account info to IMAP error messages in Bug 1709165.

(In reply to Tom Williams from comment #0)

I receive the error message "Unable to open the summary file for Inbox. Perhaps there was an error on disk, or the full path is too long." There are 5 or 6 mail accounts defined and since the error message doesn't indicate which inbox summary file can't be opened, I have no clue which account is impacted.

Expected results:

The error message should not have appeared or the error message should indicate which inbox summary file can't be opened, if multiple summary files exist.

Richard, do you still see this issue?

Flags: needinfo?(richard.leger)

Tom, do you still have the corrupt Thunderbird profile? Or have you since learned anything more about your original issue?

Flags: needinfo?(tomdkat)

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #13)

Richard, do you still see this issue?

Yes sometime to time I would say it is more rare now a day but still happening. The only way to sort out is to restart TB.
Unlikely path too long as access works fine after TB restart. Could be error on disk but nothing shows up in Windows logs that would indicates I/O errors... and my SSD looks fine SMART wise... I/O errors would cause issues with other software none observed so far. Issue only appears with TB.

Flags: needinfo?(richard.leger)

As far as I know, this issue has been resolved. Creating the new Thunderbird profile resolved it. Since doing that, two years ago, I haven't heard of any more occurrences of the issue. I still think the error message should be updated to indicate which inbox encountered the problem.

Thanks!

Flags: needinfo?(tomdkat)

Hi Tom,
I am experience the same issue (since years already, but it didn't bother me too much). For me it can happen on nearly all folders, except those on top level. Could you please share with me, which steps you did to get rid of the error messages?
Thanks!

(In reply to Heiko Schultz from comment #17)

Hi Tom,
I am experience the same issue (since years already, but it didn't bother me too much). For me it can happen on nearly all folders, except those on top level. Could you please share with me, which steps you did to get rid of the error messages?
Thanks!

Hi! If you look back at my previous comments (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1593039#c6), creating a NEW profile seemed to do the trick. I haven't had ANY reports of the issue after doing that. Comments 6-8 document the impact of the new profile.

As a test, you can run Thunderbird with the "-P" or "-ProfileManager" command line option, to start the profile manager and create a new profile (without removing the current profile). Copy the mail files to the new profile and see what happens.

Hope that helps!

Thank you Tom!
Creating the new Profile did the trick for my case, so far no glitches.
I did not need copy any mail files, since all emails are on IMAP and wanted to minimize the chances of migrating any corrupt data.
If there is any change, I will update here, but so far I would agree that a new profile solves the issue.

Fyi, in recent betas, with IMAP in online mode (no cache) I started to sporadically get the attached error message unable to open summary file when browsing between folders in my mailbox. It appears after clicking a folder and no message are listed with the error popping up... if I click on another folder then msg are listed correctly and if I click back on the previous folder raising the error, everything works fine... msg are listed. It happens at least once every few days randomly but is not really easily reproducible... just thought notify it here. Profile is stored on an SSD drive with sufficient free space and not I/O error reported on Windows 10 Pro 64bits and last seen in TB 98.0b3 (64-bit) for the record with Windows Defender AV.

Severity: normal → S3

Tom, Richard,
Are you still seeing this issue with version 102

Flags: needinfo?(tomdkat)
Flags: needinfo?(richard.leger)

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #21)

Tom, Richard,
Are you still seeing this issue with version 102

Hi! I haven't seen the issue since my comment posted a couple of years ago:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1593039#c6

Creating a new profile also seemed to help someone else:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1593039#c19

So, I have NOT seen this issue with version 102.

Thanks!

Flags: needinfo?(tomdkat)

Correct, since the creation of the profile the issue never came up again - I am a 100% happy TB-user again! Thanks!

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #21)

Tom, Richard,
Are you still seeing this issue with version 102

Haven't been able to use 102 for a while as I by mistake upgraded the profile to beta version at some point... so I am waiting for an upper version of stable to fix over time :-)
So currently I am mostly using beta version up to 110.x (prior UX changes) and I have not noticed this issue in the beta(s) so far, at least not that I can recall, except with a dynamic search folders I had created ones which simply all disappeared when the issue raised after exit/restart of TB.
Probably a separate not related issue, I would not bother too much about it at the moment as I do no rely much on my dynamic search saved folders.

Flags: needinfo?(richard.leger)

Thanks for the feedback.
Let's declare this WFM

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 1 year ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME

(In reply to Richard Leger from comment #24)

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #21)

Tom, Richard,
Are you still seeing this issue with version 102

Haven't been able to use 102 for a while as I by mistake upgraded the profile to beta version at some point... so I am waiting for an upper version of stable to fix over time :-)
So currently I am mostly using beta version up to 110.x (prior UX changes) and I have not noticed this issue in the beta(s) so far, at least not that I can recall, except with a dynamic search folders I had created ones which simply all disappeared when the issue raised after exit/restart of TB.
Probably a separate not related issue, I would not bother too much about it at the moment as I do no rely much on my dynamic search saved folders.

Fyi, I have seen issue where view is empty but no error message in beta but don't recall if it was in 110.x or 113b3 currently using. It may have been linked to saved search folder as when issue raised after reboot of TB, the saved search folder stored in by Sent folder had disappeared! But I will wait more betas see how TB behave.

Attached image image.png —

Issue is not fully resolved, you may want to reopen it, as it re-appeared again in TB 113.0b3 (64-bit) on Windows 10.

Scenario is as below...

  • Sometime but not always when sending message (IMAP/SMTP) the message could not be properly saved in Sent items due to filters according to an error message appears (this message only happened ones so I don't have it).
  • Then I go to Sent folder to check if the message was save anyway despite the error, and the Sent folder appears with empty lines and the error message attached pops-up.

The only way to fix, is to Exit, restart TB... I noticed by doing so the Sent folder disappear all together for a while and then when it comes back all message headers are all re-downloaded again (I work in online mode - except for Inbox and Sent folder cached for 3 days).

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