1766382 - The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing server has timed out - does not obey configured tcptimeout

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Networking: SMTP, defect)

Description

[Jippy]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/100.0.4896.127 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

This is an intermittent issue that affects all our TB users on the same server from time to time. It is more likely to occur if there is an attachment.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Send email with or without attachment (more likely to fault with attachment)
2. Wait as dialogue box confirms sending

Actual results:

If issue present, 20-30 seconds after hitting send, dialogue box with error message appears. Upon retrying, it will either fault again, or send. Sometimes it takes 3-5 attempts to finally send.

Expected results:

It should have sent.

I have attempted to change the timout figure (defaults to 29 seconds) to allow more time before time-out is determined, however this keeps resetting back to 29.

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

For support, please refer to https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird
Sounds like networking issues, and/or server issues.

Comment 2

[Jippy]

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #1)

For support, please refer to https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/thunderbird
Sounds like networking issues, and/or server issues.

Hi Magnus

The issue is that other email clients like WIndows Mail, Outlook, Mailspring and so on do not do this with the same server. If the server is a bit slow that day, I can see how this can trigger an error like this, however timing out after only 20-30 seconds is an issue - and the inability to change it in the config editor as well. Surely it is not unexpected that an email with 5mb of attachments can take more than 30s to send and timing out so soon is not an expected outcome?

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Does it reproduce with Windows started in safemode?

Comment 4

[Jippy]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #3)

Does it reproduce with Windows started in safemode?

Good question! I'll flick into Safe Mode for a while and see if it does it over the next couple of days.

Comment 5

[Jippy]

(In reply to Jippy from comment #4)

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #3)

Does it reproduce with Windows started in safemode?

Good question! I'll flick into Safe Mode for a while and see if it does it over the next couple of days.

Apparently W10 doesn't let you use Wifi in Safe Mode so I wasn't able to test that. My laptop doesn't have an ethernet port so that isn't an option :(

Comment 6

[Jippy]

Are there any suggestions from anyone? I suspect the issue isn't that TB is failing to send itself, but that the server is on a go-slow due to traffic or whatever and TB is just timing out. The other clients mask this by queing the emails to send in the background, however TB doesn't do this, it just throws the error.

Is there a way we can get it to que, or increase the timeout to several minutes instead of 20-30 seconds? I have tried increasing the timeout value in the editor and it just goes straight back to 29 seconds. Can we increase this another way, or do something else to prevent this occuring?

Comment 7

[Matt]

YOu issue will most likely be a startup program. I suggest you try disabling all of them and then see if it reproduces.
About 99% of people I have encountered in the past decade with issues with time-outs also have an antivirus product that is causing the issue. Nothing like programs that reduce the overall performance of slow consumer devices by another 10% or so.

Comment 8

[Jippy]

(In reply to Matt from comment #7)

YOu issue will most likely be a startup program. I suggest you try disabling all of them and then see if it reproduces.
About 99% of people I have encountered in the past decade with issues with time-outs also have an antivirus product that is causing the issue. Nothing like programs that reduce the overall performance of slow consumer devices by another 10% or so.

That is a good suggestion, I had not thought of that. I whitelisted the program in our AV and it made no difference though.

Comment 9

[Jippy]

Any suggestions? It is quite annoying, if I have an attachment it can take several attempts to send. The time-out is just too low and needs to be able to be increased in case some have a slower internet connection or busy server.

Comment 10

[Jippy]

Any help from anyone at all? Just about every email with an attachment of over 500kb triggers this issue.

Comment 11

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Antivirus/firewall, try to disable them completely. Like Matt writes, very likely some 3rd party software causing it. You can also try reproducing in windows safe-mode

Comment 12

[Jippy]

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #11)

Antivirus/firewall, try to disable them completely. Like Matt writes, very likely some 3rd party software causing it. You can also try reproducing in windows safe-mode

Yes, I have tried that already and it did not help. Windows safe-mode is a challenge as it won't allow WiFi and my machine has no ethernet port. The issue is mainly that the time-out is so fast and cannot be extended. Some smaller, slower servers with high traffic sending a larger email may take more than 30s for the email, however by this time it has already timed out.

Comment 13

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Maybe we should make mailnews.tcptimeout apply to smtp as well...

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #13)

Maybe we should make mailnews.tcptimeout apply to smtp as well...

Makes sense to me.

Comment 15

[Ping Chen [:rnons] (away)]

Attachment: Bug 1766382 - Use mailnews.tcptimeout in SmtpClient.jsm. r=mkmelin

Comment 16

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/39a51c57d4ae
Use mailnews.tcptimeout in SmtpClient.jsm. r=mkmelin

Comment 17

[Ping Chen [:rnons] (away)]

Comment on attachment 9303634 [details]
Bug 1766382 - Use mailnews.tcptimeout in SmtpClient.jsm. r=mkmelin

[Approval Request Comment]
Regression caused by (bug #):
User impact if declined: Since bug 136871, SMTP connections are reused, some users reported timeout error when sending. I suspect some connections went dead but not noticed by TCPSocket. This patch may help prevent it.
Testing completed (on c-c, etc.):
Risk to taking this patch (and alternatives if risky): low

Comment 18

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9303634 [details]
Bug 1766382 - Use mailnews.tcptimeout in SmtpClient.jsm. r=mkmelin

[Triage Comment]
Approved for beta

Comment 19

[Daniel Darnell [:dandarnell]]

Thunderbird 108.0b2:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-beta/rev/51aa2a92c759

Comment 20

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Any objection to taking this on 102?

Comment 21

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

That's fine.

Comment 22

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9303634 [details]
Bug 1766382 - Use mailnews.tcptimeout in SmtpClient.jsm. r=mkmelin

[Triage Comment]
Approved for esr102

Comment 23

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 102.11.1:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr102/rev/338a3fc6ea0e