Closed Bug 1778248 Opened 2 years ago Closed 2 years ago

Deleting a message blanks out message list display until revisiting folder (allegedly involving loss of messages)

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Thunderbird 102
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: dannyfox, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/102.0

Steps to reproduce:

Launch TB -- the problem happens only on the first deletion since launch. Delete one message from any folder (or select & delete a group of messages).
Click on another folder, then go back to the original.

Actual results:

The message(s) gets deleted, and the entire folder display window goes blank, creating one of those sickening expletive-filled moments! The missing items do not re-display until you click elsewhere and come back. Deleting any additional messages now works fine, until you re-launch TB again.

Looks like the re-display mechanism first erases the window in its usual way but then fails to activate the display of any remaining messages. Because it happens only on the first delete since launch, I'm guessing some pointer or flag isn't initialized. Therefore I suspect this issue might also occur on the first MOVE since launch -- which effectively deletes from the display window in the same manner -- but I'm not able to test that prediction right now.

Expected results:

The selected message(s) should be erased from view (and the display should roll up the vacant space) without the other messages disappearing from the window. (C'mon, we all know how DELETE usually works and displays.)

UPDATES:
(1) I noticed this issue happened today on the first DELETE following WAKE-UP (not re-launch). Two items were selected together and deleted, and the Display Window went blank as previously reported.
(2) Sure enough, as I suspected, MOVE invokes this display problem too, as it removes the item(s) from the Display Window. I received an email (sent for the purpose) and then moved it elsewhere. The Display Window went blank as per DELETE.

(3) Critical Note: THIS BUG IS NOT SO BENIGN -- Messages are actually being lost !!
...because immediately after this, I polled a specific account to pull down an email which I had previously sent. The poll failed because something else was running -- the automatic compacting, as it turns out. After CF completed, the email did come down. But then the alignments of senders and subjects and email subjects went wonky again (as I mentioned in passing in Bug 1778037 -- see excerpt below). The first two messages would not display anything in the Preview Window nor would they open when clicked, including the one just brought in. I ran REPAIR FOLDERS to get the info to re-align with reality. The displays normalized, but the first two messages were actually and truly GONE !! (Fortunately I could re-send mine and forward the external from my machine.) This exact thing happened previously but I thought it was a phantom message that had disappeared. I have no idea how often this has actually happened and what might have been lost.

Excerpts from Bug 1778023 (my addendum in Comment 1):
When selecting specific messages to view, I had display issues whereby Msg 1 & 2 displayed OK, then Msg 3 was indicating from Sender 4, Msg 4 from Sender 5, etc. Switching folders and coming back didn't help. I ran REPAIR FOLDER and the problem went away. I also noticed that the COMPACT FOLDERS process now runs automatically (nothing in the Release Notes about that!), which is a likely candidate to have caused this mis-aligned display issue.

First time a file is deleted after loading TB, the entire message Display Window goes blank as though everything in the folder has been deleted. Does not refesh or restore itself until I click any other folder and go back -- then all is displayed normally (and the deleted item is gone as expected). Worrisome when it happens -- first time, I thought I had deleted my entire Inbox! Does not recur until you close and restart TB.

I was not aware of losing messages when I first mentioned this issue. Deleting messages seems to work normally without misaligning anything (so no repair or loss of messages), but the first DELETE(s) or MOVE(s) definitely do! (I've seen it twice now.)

See Also: → 1778037

I also meant to say that the faulty compacting process that ran today (in Comment 1) allegedly saved 220 mb -- more than double yesterday's numbers. I have no idea if that is a pie-in-the-sky figure, actual freed space, or lost messages further back in time.

Dan, can you try if this happens after unchecking ≡ > Settings > General > Use hardware acceleration...?

Severity: -- → S2
Component: Untriaged → Folder and Message Lists
Flags: needinfo?(dannyfox)
Summary: Deleting message erases folder display window in TB 102 Release → Deleting a message blanks out message list display until revisiting folder (allegedly involving loss of messages)

OK Thomas, done.

SETUP:
(i) Previously as a safety matter I had disabled automatic compacting by unchecking the new option. After deleting a wack of duplicate msgs, the old standard popup promised to save me 81 mb and asked if "OK to Compact Now?" I said NO.

[[ Just now, while typing THIS note to you into FF, a newly-arrived email temporarily displayed its arrival with an empty white box at the TOP LEFT of the screen rather than above the system tray -- then the arrival notice eventually displayed in its usual location. Probably a Windows quirk, but who knows? ]]

(ii) It happens there were several conveniently consecutive Bugzilla reports which I copied to a SAVE area -- and in any case I have the real versions on my Tower (safely running TB 91.10.0). I could easily sacrifice these for the test.
(iii) I unchecked HWR ACC as requested, closed & relaunched TB, and proceeded with the test.

TEST 1:
Newly loaded TB with HWR ACC unchecked. Deleted first msg, Display Window did NOT disappear as it had been doing. Ran a manual compact to save the 81 mb. Progress bar made several passes this time (unlike the automatic which does one long leisurely crawl), so it packed much more than just INBOX. Done, saved 81.8 mb. Messages in the Display Window seemed OK, but honestly I didn't check more than the first two or three, which is where the issue of missing or misalinged messages comes in.

TEST 2:
I re-checked HWR ACC and re-launched TB. Deleted first msg, Display Window again did NOT disappear. Closed and relaunched TB and deleted the second (now first) message. Likewise deleted OK with no effect on the display. Manually ran CF -- for two small text msgs, I expected ~20 Kb. Specifically said was compacting INBOX, only one long progress bar, and it came back saying 18.8 kb saved, just as expected. Checked first few messages -- BAD NEWS! Fifth msg down was all text and later html code etc, not a viable email -- it had regular-looking header display info, but body looked like a piece of the msg file grabbed at random and "containerized" into a msg. TB also said there were another 61 unread msgs -- not sure how or when they came in.

So I ran REPAIR FOLDER. Afterward, the top (first by date) msg was the random text msg, time-stamped 10:07 (when I ran the RF) but with subject and all other meaningful info now blank. Not sure what got lost this time, don't think it was important -- and a copy probably exists on the Tower anyway.

CONCLUSION:
Can't think of anything. The first-deletes did not affect the Display Window these times, but perhaps (as I speculated somewhere) whatever wasn't calling the Display Window rollup/packup re-display might also not be calling the deletion part properly either. The compacting obviously messed something up (likely, as it has a lot of new stuff) -- or the REPAIR is now buggy (scary thought, not so likely -- after all, it does fix all the other issues). And I left HWR ACC checked since it hasn't been proven to be at fault.

(Question: What does "if available" mean in the HWR ACC prompt? Is it "the machine HAS IT", or is it "the capability is not available to use RIGHT THIS SECOND" ? Makes a difference if this bug is intermittent, such as the display thing.)

Flags: needinfo?(dannyfox)

Cross-posting my Comment 5 from Bug 1778453...

Last night I went to a target/destination folder (holding messages from a specific online subscription) and deleted scores of duplicates. Then I did a REPAIR FOLDER first, followed by the inevitable manual CF. Perfect -- no misalignments, no scrogging of data or missing headers. The first many entries looked fine afterward.

So that convinces me the CF trips up to cause the misalignment of headers(?) -- or certainly the message bodies being seen -- because the folder was already broken prior to the CF. Then REPAIR afterward does the best it can to at least realign everything and give a proper display, understanding there will be one or two mangled losses at the top.

Question now is: What did a massive series of DELETEs (single, multiple, contiguous groups of records, etc) do to the structure of the folder in the first place??? And this brings us back to Bug 1778248 -- THIS bug -- the not-so-benign problem of DELETEs sometimes erasing the Display Window, implicating the deletion process as the inital cause. (Notice CF was always done first -- automatic or manual -- followed by the REPAIR.)

2022-07-11_1317_mass-mark-TB102found

Blocks: tb102found

Cross-posting my Comment 8 from Bug 1778241...

Just when I thought I had a handle on all this, they throw a curve! FYI, running TB 102.0.2 this time...

Inbox is sorted descending by DATE -- as usual. I had two pre-exsting weird text/html messages, preceded by two Bugzilla notices, which themselves were preceded by two recent read messages, all preceded by a few new pieces from specific fetches. So new/unread on top, two read, two Bugzillas, the two weirds, and then everything else. Before doing anything further, it so happens that I previewed all of the top messages (and a couple more for good measure) by moving the cursor down, just to make sure everything was OK -- and it was.

So... I copied the two weird messages (to ensure I had them for reference), and then MOVE'd the two Bugzillas to their folder -- and recall I had done the fetches (when TB woke up) plus COPY just now, so the MOVE was not the first thing done. The two messages moved OK and no longer displayed in Inbox -- exactly normal.

Then I inspected the Inbox items again. The next two messages (ie, right below the ones just moved) went weird, now having misaligned headers & subjects -- same subjects as before but different content -- but all the rest seemed fine. I ran REPAIR FOLDER followed by manual COMPACT on the Inbox, and things got stranger! The two moved Bugzillas were gone (as they should be), the original two weird ones now appeared at the top again (strange), followed by the new/unread (all OK). But the two newly-weirded items now had disappeared completely!

New comment...
Again looks like the DELETE process -- in this case, the delete done by MOVE -- is the actual culprit. Not all DELETEs mess up, and not all MOVEs, but out of the blue, something happens and some records get damaged.

Further, seems to be the number (count) of deleted or moved items is the number damaged, and so far they're all sequential in the Inbox.
(This might be coincidence, due to what I've been doing...)

Since installing TB 102.0.2 Release, I haven't seen the screen disappear when DELETE (or MOVE) is the very first action taken. Today I installed TB 102.0.3 Release and specifically looked for this. So far, looks fine: deletes delete. Further, I did a REPAIR and COMPACT on my Inbox since it hasn't been done in awhile. So far as I can tell, all is well.

However I can't say that COMPACT on its own is actually safe without the REPAIR -- ie, I don't know that the deletion process is working cleanly and not leaving something that COMPACT would trip over. See Comment #5. (This aspect is not reported as fixed in the Release Notes, and I'm not willing to risk my Inbox to find out right now.)

OK, I just did a few DELETEs from the Trash folder, and then ran COMPACT without doing a REPAIR. I don 't see any corrupted messages (except for a few known weird items deleted early on in TB 102). So the DELETE today did not mess up.

But I don't know for sure what state the Trash was in originally -- there may or may not have been some deletions from prior 102 versions. When I first clicked on Trash, TB decided to rebuild its summary(?) -- it displayed the Local Folders menu screen for awhile, then came up normally.

Let's presume Trash was in good shape. If that's true, then the DELETE was OK since the COMPACT was OK. Had the Trash been bad, COMPACT likely would have tripped over something, I think, since REPAIR was not run to clean it up.

See Also: → 1778243

So we can close this?

Flags: needinfo?(dannyfox)

Yes, I think so -- I haven't seen the symptom in awhile, even when specifically planning and looking for it.

Flags: needinfo?(dannyfox)
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 2 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME

Post-resolution comment to Thomas (for context & continuity)...
Actually, THIS bug is similar to Bug 1778243 only in that here the emails in a folder disappear from view on the first deletion after launching, and come back if you switch folders and return. After that, I've never had them disappear or play hide-n-seek like they do in Bug 1778243. (I'm currently running TB 102.0.3 Release. My disappearances seemed to stop happening at 102.0.1 or .2 Release.)

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