Closed Bug 1609389 Opened 5 years ago Closed 5 years ago

OSX Thunderbird keeps crashing on startup

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Untriaged
Platform:
Desktop
macOS
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
critical

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1580262

People

(Reporter: zaga1, Unassigned)

Details

(Keywords: crash)

Attachments

(4 files)

mystery nameless folders
21.56 KB, image/png
Details
Related account folders in Profile > ImapMail
33.25 KB, image/png
Details
Mystery imap folders from thunderbird profile.zip
6.31 KB, application/zip
Details
imap-log file
1.60 KB, application/zip
Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.10; rv:72.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/72.0

Steps to reproduce:

clicked app icon

Actual results:

App opens the crashes after a few seconds. Same happens when starting in safe mode

Expected results:

app should have stayed open

Severity: normal → critical
OS: Unspecified → macOS
Hardware: Unspecified → Desktop

Please post your crash IDs from help > troubleshooting

Flags: needinfo?(zaga1)

what do these IDs look like? where are thy stored?

Flags: needinfo?(zaga1)

Go to help > troubleshooting, scroll down do where you see "Crash Reports for the Last 3 Days", crash IDs look like bp-xxxxx.

Copy the text under that heading and paste into bug report

TB wont stay open long enough to get to Help > Troubleshooting. are the files stored any on OSX?

These are some of the file names I could find listed under user profile > Crashes > Events:
3BFC3B13-F26A-452E-8E4D-750BC3B5B927-submission
00866D65-5CCF-4285-91EA-D61D0BF8B076-submission
B8662ABB-AC69-4C58-B8A2-75F05B132132-submission
29A8DE1F-14DA-4C32-A08C-21EA3F38BDEC-submission
4FA9872F-3C1C-43DD-8073-7642CACF8552-submission
EAF7CA44-AE81-42E4-AB83-05C5DF73CD78-submission

Looks like bug 1580262

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

How was bug 1580262 resolved?

It's still un-resolved.

I'm unsure if my crashes are triggered by the same issues raised for bug 1580262

The cause is unknown, but the stack for the crash looks the same, as you can see if you look at the crash reports of comment 7

What is a stack? No sure what to look for

Any workarounds? Can I import all my mail and data into a new profile?

zaggie1, I'm curious if you are using any slashes in folder names? Since the failure is on "unescape slashes" that might something to do with this. Thanks.

I've used dashes but not slashes in folder names

Ok, dashes should always be fine. Were there any recent changes like new tb version, new account, new imap (or pop3) server? Do you know the type of mail server you are connecting to and the vendor? E.g., imap, pop3. Who is the providers you are using? E.g., gmail, yahoo, your isp etc?

I haven't changed or added any new accounts (they are all IMAPs). Its a mix of providers eg. gmail, chimail, yahoo, msn etc. Everything had been working fine until TB launch this morning.
I noticed in the updates log, that TB auto update to 68.4.1 failed last week. So (earlier today) I manually updated but that has not made any difference.

I have an old macbook air (2008) running Mavericks that I only fire up to test tb issue. It just updated tb several times from tb 60 to 68.4.1 and seems to run OK with the newer/latest tb versions, at least no crashes. Don't know what to suggest specifically. If tb will stay up long enough, you might try disabling all your accounts by looking under server settings and unchecking "check new mail on start up", "check new mail every X min" and "notify new mail immediately" then restart tb. Then click on the Inbox and other folders in each account and see if there is a specific folder causing the crash when you click on it. Anyhow, just something to try. The tb crash experts are also looking deeper into the issue.

TB doesn't stay open long enough to get to the settings before crashing. Is there a 'backdoor' way/through preference files to turn off accounts?

I would try startup with offline switch in terminal window
thunderbird -offline

Do I need to add addtional info in Terminal?
Terminal response:
[mac]:~ [user]$ thunderbird -offline
-bash: thunderbird: command not found

Got Terminal to work with:
/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin -offline

Offline TB is staying open and has not crashed yet! I have turned off 'new mail checking' for all accounts.

Found 2 empty folders in an imap account - one has no name and other has a slash (see screenshot 1) - these folders do not exist on the server so it appears that TB has created them (they have been there for years but looks like latest TB update doesnt like them?). TB folder properties window won't let me rename them. Also can't delete folders (delete option 'greyed' out)
Also found, I think, the related folders in Profile > ImapMail folder for the same account (see screenshot 2) - is it safe to delete these manually?

Yes you can delete them from profile. Don't know why they are there. Should get you running again.

Before you delete them, could you zip up them? Those could help solve the mystery of this (bug 1580262)

Deleted those folders (zip file attached) then restarted TB then checked for new mail on all accounts - TB crashed.
Then remembered to delete the unnamed and slash named folders (as in screenshot 1), but TB crashed whilst deleting folders (even in safe mode), however the folders keep reappearing on TB relaunch! Tried to rename folders but TB crashed again.
Deleted problem 'dvd' account, including message data. TB no longer crashing when checking new mail.
Recreated 'dvd' account - TB crashed on checking mail (rogue unnamed and slash named folders did not reappear but still crashed.)
Looks like something wrong on 'dvd' account server? Any test I can run to check?

Also using Postbox.app - 'dvd' account (including rogue folders) doesn't cause any problems there, so maybe problem is something in TB?

Thanks for the zipped files. Who is the imap server provider for the dvd account? Possibly chimail? If so, I haven't dealt with that company in the past. Possibly an imap log recorded while accessing the dvd account would show some information. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Logging

I think postbox is based on an older version of tb. Anyhow, tb shouldn't crash when it sees something strange.

Created .command file with the following:
#!/bin/sh
export MOZ_LOG=IMAP:5,timestamp
export MOZ_LOG_FILE=$HOME/imap.log
/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin &

Where do I save this *.command file? Don't understand "add execute permission by typing "chmod a+x filename" in a Terminal window, then double-click it." Do I run this command "chmod a+x /[file location]/[filename].command" inside Terminal or add this to the *.command file then double-click on that file?

The file can be anywhere. You run the chmod command inside the Terminal

Ran command file. Not sure what to look for in the resulting log file. Should I post log file results?

zaggie1, Yes you can post the file using the attach new file link above like you attached the screen shots. You might first edit out anything in the log file that you might consider personal. Also, write in the comment what you were doing in tb, as best as possible, when you recorded the log. Thanks.

Attached file imap-log file —

Setup tb to only check new mail for 'dvd' account, then quit tb.
Ran command file from Terminal:
$ cd ~
$ /Users/••••/tb-imap.command
$ chmod a+x ./tb-imap.command
$ ./tb-imap.command

command automatically launched tb and checked for new mail, seconds later tb crashed.

Thanks for the log. However, I can't tell much from it. Is it the full log or has something been removed from it? I do see "dots" in the chimail select url that maybe you entered for privacy? However, it looks a bit strange to see a select url made by tb occur at the top of a log since usually you see the server send a capability response first after the tcp connection occurs. Does chimail use ssl/tls and normal password?
Anyhow, it looks like the login occurs OK and then the log just stop in the middle of a line since tb crashed.

Sometimes these weird problems require that a temporary test account be made available so I can test it from here. Would that be possible with chimail? (I can't find much about chimail when searching with google.)

I used the dots for privacy.
Chimail is part of UK2.net (https://chimail.uk2.net/help/en_US/help.html). Yes, using ssl/tls and normal password. I have a few other chimail accounts that run concurrently and work without any problems. They all use the same login format - I can't see why the dvd account is not working in TB.

Zaggie, I'll move the discusion back to this bug report since this is where you reported the mystery folder (one just / the other blank). At least for the one that is just /, yes tb sees the name as ^^ and tries to replaces the ^^ back to / using the crashing unescape function. That is interesting. Most of my other theories have been red herrings.

A good thing is to determine why these phantom folders are appearing. Tb doesn't just create random folders. The folders must be being reported by the server somehow. If you can check using webmail to the account, you might see something on the server independent of thunderbird. If that doesn't show anything, if possible can you delete the problem "dvd" account in tb? If so, restart tb with logging enabled and, once dvd is re-created, access it and let tb crash and attach the log. This might show more info as to why tb thinks there are these phantom folders containing / or whatever.

So that more information is stored to the log file and not dropped due to the crash, I would suggest adding the "sync" item to the MOZ_LOG environment variable like this before you run tb to create the dvd account:
export MOZ_LOG=IMAP:5,timestamp,sync
The other items you do in comment 32 above are OK as is.
Thanks!

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