Open Bug 1691637 Opened 5 years ago Updated 2 years ago

error message is not precise, "error reading data" instead of "connection refused"

Categories

(Calendar :: General, defect)

Product:
Calendar
Component:
General
Version:
Thunderbird 78
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: mozilla, Unassigned)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Set up a caldav calendar
  2. Stop web server where this caldav calendar resides
  3. Click on warning sign next to calendar to see details about error
  4. After failure of 3, browse to Tools->DeveloperTools->ErrorConsole

Actual results:

  1. A warning sign (triangle) appeared next to the calendar definition in left sidebar
  2. Nothing
  3. Error message misleading / generic (mentioning generically "... an error reading data" rather than connection refused). On the plus side, URL of failing server is mentioned.

Expected results:

  1. On clicking on the warning sign, a popup with the error should show up. Discoverability!
  2. Error messages should include relevant information actually returned by the system (such as "connection refused" in example above, or timeout, or "certificate expired" or whatever may have happened) if server can't be contacted. Or error messages returned by the server if server could be contacted (such as "syntax error in task 1-2-3-4" or whatever problem server might be reporting)

Right now, troubleshooting lightning issues is exceedingly difficult. First you have to remember about the error console, and second, even if you do remember, and peek into it, it contains only vague information. In my simulation of a problem, the word "Connection refused" did not show up even once :-(

duplicate?

Summary: Make error messages more accessible → error message is not precise, "error reading data" instead of "connection refused"
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