1776505 - Seemingly empty message list after deleting one message and compact

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1952311

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect, P3)

Description

[Bostjan Kravcar]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:101.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/101.0

Steps to reproduce:

After an unidentified update of Ubuntu 18.04 (regular manually commenced updates, with 'apt update' command), Thunderbird started to exhibit the symptoms, as described below (happened for the first time about 4 months ago).

Actual results:

Upon deleting a message in the Message Pane (selecting the message with mouse, then hitting DEL key), all messages in the Message Pane seemingly disappear (as if deleted), regardless whether the focus in the Folder Pane is on Inbox or any other adjacent folder (Drafts, Sent, etc.). When focus is shifted to a parent folder or any adjacent folder (by clicking with mouse pointer), then shifted back to folder where issue occurs, all the messages that were present in the Message Pane of associate folder, magically reappear.

Expected results:

Nothing as described above.

Comment 1

[Bostjan Kravcar]

The issue only happens upon first deleting a message after Thunderbird is started up, and if there's a longer duration between the deletes. When deleting another messages takes place within minutes after first, the issue does not occur.

Comment 2

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

I'll mark this as dataloss because to the user that's what it is, albeit temporarily.

• Bostjan, is this still happening with the latest version of Thunderbird, 102.1.2 (pls use original install from thunderbird.net)?
• Does this happen after unchecking ≡ > Settings > General > [ ] Use hardware acceleration when available?
• Does this happen with ≡ > Help > Troubleshoot Mode…?

Comment 3

[Bostjan Kravcar]

Hello Thomas,

I did try two of the three suggestions, here's the outcome;

• Unchecking the checkbox for "Use hardware acceleration when available" did not solve the problem.

• The Troubleshoot Mode also didn't resolve the issue; as soon as the TB restarted, I was able to replicate the problem by deleting the newly arrived message. At this point I'd like to emphasize, that the issue of "disappearing messages" in the Message Pane is identical, regardless where the message I delete is residing (any given folder in the Main or Local Folder Pane.

Updating TB as suggested (downloading installation tarball from Mozilla website), is anything but routine task; since my current TB was installed (and regularly updated) via 'apt update', I cannot update it by installing 102.1.2 downloaded from Mozilla. As explained in Mozilla tutorial ("Installing Thunderbird on Linux"), this option would install a new TB client (overriding symlinks for current installation) and would require fresh configuration of user account settings. I need to get acquainted with all the aspects of this action, and decide whether to delete the old 91.11.0 or keep it (just in case), resorting to running it from terminal if needed.

At this point I don't want to rush anything, as chances are that I'll be upgrading to Ubuntu 20.04 sometime soon (fresh install, not an actual upgrade), which makes further efforts of troubleshooting this issue a bit questionable. Any additional suggestions would be most welcome though.

Kind regards,
Bostjan

Comment 4

[brb]

Hello,
We have been having the same issue on Windows 10 and 11 for the past couple weeks. I thought it may be one of the interim updates, so I started with clean download and it is still doing it. For some reason, it wants to compact the entire folder after the first delete. However, clicking on another folder and clicking back to the original suspended folder displays the emails immediately while it continues to compacting or rebuild an index file (as indicated by the fuel gauge at the bottom of the screen).
Bob

Comment 5

[brb]

FWIIW, I just unchecked "Compact all folder when it will save over xx MB in total" and it seems to have reduced the first-delete delay to about a second. See Setting/General/Disk Space (second item up from the bottom of Settings).
Bob

Comment 6

[Bostjan Kravcar]

Hello Bob,

thanks for the hint, I'll have a look at this. Mind you, if "Compact all folder when it ..." checkbox is enabled in TB by default, chances are that the onset of this annoying behavior had nothing to do with one of my TB updates; it could be that at some point I have exceeded certain folder size threshold, which may have activated the compacting feature you're referring to. I'll check the size of individual folders in TB and report back.

Comment 7

[brb]

(In reply to Bostjan Kravcar from comment #6)

Hello Bob,

thanks for the hint, I'll have a look at this. Mind you, if "Compact all folder when it ..." checkbox is enabled in TB by default, chances are that the onset of this annoying behavior had nothing to do with one of my TB updates; it could be that at some point I have exceeded certain folder size threshold, which may have activated the compacting feature you're referring to. I'll check the size of individual folders in TB and report back.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Comment 8

[Bostjan Kravcar]

Greetings,

I can now confirm that Bob's suspicion was right on, pertaining the compacting folder feature being the culprit, for the strange behavior I reported as a bug. The "Compact all folders..." checkbox is checked in TB by default and compacting is automatic, without asking user for consent. As soon as I also checked the "Ask every time before compacting" checkbox, the compacting prompt would appear on every delete attempt (and also when restarting TB), while confirming the action would result in "flushing" messages in the Message Pane. Later on when the prompt showed up again, I opted for automatic compacting and the "Ask every time..." checkbox got unchecked in TB settings, which caused the disappearing behavior to reemerge.

For the time being I'm having the "Compact all folders ..." and "Ask every time..." checkboxes unchecked, along with "Override automatic cache management" checked and set to "up to 700MB" value. Ever since these changes were applied, I haven't been able to replicate the "disappearing messages" behavior. As for losing the convenience - I can always opt for manual compacting when I see fit.

Comment 9

[ona]

I have this problem also for some years.
I have an Ubuntu 22.04 and Thunderbird 102.13.0 (64-bit)
I have the folders view ordered by threads and at the same time that folder gets empty, when I return to the folder, the folders are ordered unthreaded.

Thanks a lot for Thunderbird

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Anyone using beta?
Rewritten compact is coming to beta

Comment 11

[Julian Gantner]

I am using version 128.2.3esr (32-Bit) and facing the same problem. When deleting a (the first) message in the inbox the list is suddenly empty and I need to restart. But the message counter on top of the list shows the number of messages in the list. It would be nice to get this fixed. Thanks for your great work on TB! Julian

Comment 12

[Julian Gantner]

(In reply to Julian Gantner from comment #11)

I am using version 128.2.3esr (32-Bit) and facing the same problem. When deleting a (the first) message in the inbox the list is suddenly empty and I need to restart. But the message counter on top of the list shows the number of messages in the list. It would be nice to get this fixed. Thanks for your great work on TB! Julian

I just wanted to also leave the note that when I click on the parent folder (i.e. the mailbox itself) and then back on onbox all messages are back.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

All,

Do you still see this problem when using a current, newer version?

Comment 14

[Bostjan Kravcar]

No problems whatsoever, ever since I unchecked the "Compact all folders..." checkbox in TB settings. I'm now on Ubuntu 22.04, Thunderbird 115.18.0 (64-bit).

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Bostjan Kravcar from comment #14)

No problems whatsoever, ever since I unchecked the "Compact all folders..." checkbox in TB settings. I'm now on Ubuntu 22.04, Thunderbird 115.18.0 (64-bit).

Thanks. However, the point of this would be to test version 128 or newer, with compact enabled ;)

Comment 16

[Bostjan Kravcar]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #15)

(In reply to Bostjan Kravcar from comment #14)

No problems whatsoever, ever since I unchecked the "Compact all folders..." checkbox in TB settings. I'm now on Ubuntu 22.04, Thunderbird 115.18.0 (64-bit).

Thanks. However, the point of this would be to test version 128 or newer, with compact enabled ;)

Understood ... I suppose it's up to others then, who are on 128 or newer, to test whether bug is still present. In case I decide to install Xubuntu 24.04 on another machine (near future, TO-DO list with zillion entries), I'll be more than happy to assist in testing.

Comment 17

[Julian Gantner]

I am on version 128.9.2esr and the messages do not disappear upon deletion of a (the first) message in the inbox. I will test some more days. Thanks for your help and work on improving TB!

Comment 18

[Julian Gantner]

Sorry, now after some minutes of usage/restart of TB the inbox mails disappeared after deleting the first mail. Problem seams to be still alive.

Comment 19

[Kai Engert [:KaiE:]]

Hello everyone affected by this bug.

The latest DAILY versions from yesterday, build date 2025-05-01 (from bug 1952311 Comment 59), but we aren't sure if the fix is sufficient.

We would greatly appreciate your help if you could please help us test that version, and give us feedback if you still see the problem with it.

When you report back, could you please indicate the version and build date you were using?
(You can find that information in the "about" dialog.)

Thank you in advance!

Comment 20

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Kai Engert [:KaiE:] from comment #19)

Hello everyone affected by this bug.

The latest DAILY versions from yesterday, build date 2025-05-01 (from bug 1952311 Comment 59), but we aren't sure if the fix is sufficient.

Bug 1952311's initial patch is now on 139.0b2, available from https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/download/beta/. But not yet on 128.