1716385 - Dialog message "Cannot compact INBOX because another process is executing" does not identify account, cause nor solution

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[MozBug20]

Attachment: Posteingang_kann_nicht_komprimiert_werden.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:88.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/88.0

Steps to reproduce:

Compact Folders.
The currently selected folder is NOT INBOX.

Actual results:

A warning message appears (see screenshot, german) saying, that INBOX can't be compacted because another process is executing. Please try later.

Expected results:

1. I have multiple email accounts in my profile. Therefore the message should tell WHICH INBOX is affected.
2. The message should tell which is the conflicting process and how to avoid the conflict. Actually the message appears almost every time, when compacting folders. Thus it is quite impossible to compact everything

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Manual or automatic compacts?

Comment 2

[MozBug20]

Sorry, can't remember now, if it was manual or automatic compact, but i'm afraid it makes no difference.
If automatic, i did confirm compacting as i never did check the "do not ask again" checkbox.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Bug 1709165 will identify the account.

That still leaves the question about identifying the cause.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

MozBug20,
Are you working with imap accounts or pop?

A couple currently open issues

• Bug 707933 - Global inbox, Local Folders, access not serialized/synchronized when automatically checking multiple POP3 accounts every n minutes causing POP3_MESSAGE_FOLDER_BUSY error "This folder is being processed. Please wait until processing is complete..."
• Bug 1521449 - In offline sync the dialogue "folder already in use" stops the process

One fixed a long time ago is Bug 466933 - Error with "Get Mail" or "Get all Messages" after resuming from computer's sleep mode - "This folder is being processed. Please wait until processing is complete to get messages" [pop]

bug query https://mzl.la/3nlqxIZ

Comment 5

[MozBug20]

I'm using IMAP accounts.
I don't think, that any of the mentioned bugs (707933, 1521449) applies.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

How is version 91 or version 102?

Comment 7

[MozBug20]

Using version 91.10
Selected INBOX of one IMAP account.
Selected menu item Datei->Alle Ordner des Kontos komprimieren" (in english probably: File->compress all folders of account)
Got an error message:

Der Ordner "Posteingang in .................." kann nicht komprimiert werden , da gerade ein anderer Prozess läuft. Bitte versuchen Sie es später nochmals.

(in english probably:
Folder "INBOX in ......................." cannot be compressed as another process is running. Please try later.
)

where ..................... is the name of the email account.
This is fine!
However there still is no indication, which is the other process and how to avoid the problem.

Tried with several other IMAP accounts:
When selecting the enclosing folder named like the email account and the selecting menu item "Datei->Alle Ordner des Kontos komprimieren" then everything works fine without error message. However this may be accidentally.

An interesting test remaining is:
Accepting compression, when TB suggests this, instead of manually starting compression.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Reporter, does this still fail for you when using version 102 or newer version?

Comment 9

[Jonathan Buhacoff]

I ran into a similar issue. Thunderbird 102.6.1 (64-bit). I have automatic compacting enabled. All my accounts are IMAP.

Today I was moving some messages from the inbox to another folder. A similar modal dialog was displayed saying a folder could not be compacted because another operation is in progress. Since I have automatic compacting enabled, I would expect that the totally not critical automated background operation would silently fail and just try again later, without bothering me with this message.

Whether automatic or manual compacting, there's no point to showing this message at all. If another operation is in progress that is higher priority than compacting, a more useful feature would be to add compacting to an action queue for that folder so the compacting will resume automatically after the other operation is finished. Also, it would be useful if compacting is already in progress and another operation is being blocked, to add that other operation to an action queue for that folder so it will resume automatically after compacting is finished.

The UI could then have a window for the activity queue and offer an icon to indicate if activities are in progress and make it clickable to show/hide the activity queue. So if a user is wondering why something hasn't finished yet, they could look for that icon.