182815 - mail hangs on startup

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 169777

(MailNews Core :: Database, defect)

Description

[Enno Borgsteede]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021129
Build Identifier: sorry, can't reproduce, it's release 1.2 for Windows 98

When I start the mail module from the start menu or via mailwasher the program
just shows the splash screen and hangs. When I start mail after starting the
browser first, the program hangs too.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
I have no idea what triggered it, but once it starts happening, it keeps
happening on every startup. I had this on release 1.2b too.
Actual Results:  
When starting Mail only, the splash screen shows, nothing else.
When jumping from browser to Mail, the browser screen just sits there.


Expected Results:  
Open Mail :-)


The cure that worked with 1.2b was installing a new build, and with the new 1.2
the same trick worked again, so I now run 1.3a (2002112908). Reinstalling the
1.2 release version didn't work.
Looks like installing a new build cleans up some index files or so.

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

-Did you follow the installation notes?
-Are you using a compatible theme?

If yes, and the error persists: Try delete XUL.mfl in your profile directory,
then restart mozilla.

Comment 2

[Enno Borgsteede]

Can't remember reading the installation notes. I just installed 1.2 the day
after it was released, on a clean system, i.e. Windows 98 SE with IE 5 on it, no
OE, no Netscape, nor any previous version of Mozilla. Haven't loaded any themes
at all.

I'll keep your hint in mind when it hangs again.

Comment 3

[R.K.Aa.]

i got confused by all the other versions you mentioned.
Just so I understand you right:

Mail stopped starting on a new installation - with a new mozilla profile - on a
PC where mozilla had never been installed before?

Comment 4

[Enno Borgsteede]

Exactly. It happened two days after that clean installation of release 1.2. I
get some HTML newsletters, but saw no crash on reading any message, just a
sudden hang on starting Mail. Restarting the system didn't help, reinstalling
1.2 didn't help either, but installing the latest build cured 'something'.

Since installing a newer build cured the same type of problem in 1.2b, I gather
that a new installation on top of an existing one rebuilds some essential files.

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

you could try deleting xul.mfl - I've seen it get corrupted and cause problems
(which would make this not a mail problem)

Comment 6

[Marc Branchaud]

Does it hang or does it just pause for a long time?

(I tried to find a different bug that relates to the behavior I'm seeing, but
this one's the closest I found.  If I should be posting elsewhere, please let me
know!)

Recently, the 1.2 builds have been troublesome for me.  When mail starts up, or
when it checks for new messages, I get a lengthy (1-2 minute; I'm on a 100Mb
LAN) pause with a bunch of disk activity.

I'm using Mozilla on Linux with POP mail on an Exchange server (bleah).  Because
the company here uses Outlook for its calendaring, I've set Mozilla to leave all
mail on the server (so I can deal with calendaring messages).  I currently have
about 11,000 emails on the server.  I also have a large hierarchy of much mail
stored locally in many folders (about 2GB right now).

This did not happen with the Nov.15 1.2 nightly, nor any nightly before that. 
It _does_ happen with the Nov.28 1.2 nightly, and any nightly I've tried since,
including the 1.2.1 builds.  I don't know about nightlies between Nov.15 and
Nov.28.  I install the nightlies by untarring each one into its own directory. 
I do not install as root.

I've tried the advice given in this bug (delete XUL.mfl [mine was called
XUL.mfasl]; using Modern theme) but the problem persists.

The issue is preventing me from moving beyond the Nov.15 1.2 nightly.  A 1-2
minute pause every 10 minutes is just unusable.

Comment 7

[David :Bienvenu]

Marc, have you tried a 1.3a trunk build (from the last week or so)? I suspect
it's fixed in those builds.

Comment 8

[Marc Branchaud]

Bienvenu,

You're right, I don't have this problem in today's trunk nightly.  Thanks!
(I take it the issue reported here is different than mine, then...)

Comment 9

[Enno Borgsteede]

The issue reported here is indeed different. There's no disk activity at all,
just the splash screen sitting there for minutes until I kill the program. Since
it hasn't shown up on my copy of 1.3a yet, I haven't had a chance to try
removing that xul.mfl mentioned earlier. Looks like I have to wait till some
event triggers the error again, if it's still there.
 

Comment 10

[Enno Borgsteede]

Found mail hanging during retrieval of message 3 of 3 (from a POP server), and
found that removing XUL.mfl cures the problem indeed. Now, what does that mean?

Comment 11

[David :Bienvenu]

It means that your XUL.mfl was corrupted, and this isn't a mail bug. Brendan,
who owns fast load corruption bugs?

I'm not really sure if there have been recent known causes of corruption of
XUL.mfl, or if they have been fixed...

Comment 12

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

jrgm is the man for FastLoad bug analysis.  This sounds like a dup, but I forget
the bug #.

Clearly, something's broken.  We're getting closer to understanding what.

/be

Comment 13

[John Morrison]

The bug where I'm doing most of the fastload analysis is bug 169777, and this
bug sounds like a duplicate. There's also another bug that has to do with 
third-party themes and bogo-entries in <profile>/chrome/chrome.rdf which 
also hangs, but deleting XUL.mfl is not the [complete] fix in that case (bug 
183849). There are also a couple of other bugs that I've filed to note some 
things that aren't working correctly (bug 184161 and bug 184339).

Marking dup of 169777. But Enno, if you happen to have one of these hangs 
again, just rename XUL.mfl (or XUL.mfasl on linux) to _XUL.mfl, put it in 
a zip file and mail it to me. [Note: there is no personal information 
contained in XUL.mfl file (aside from the path to your mozilla build and
the names of any third-party skins or xul applications that you may have
installed)].

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 169777 ***

Comment 14

[Gayatri Rimola]

verified