Closed Bug 183837 Opened 23 years ago Closed 23 years ago

Deleted mail not actually removed from Inbox file

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Database, defect)

Product:
MailNews Core
Component:
Database
Platform:
x86
Linux
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
VERIFIED INVALID

People

(Reporter: cliffo, Assigned: Bienvenu)

References

Details

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130 It appears that if I delete a message from any local mail folder, the body of the message is not actually removed from the flat-file in my profile. Over time, this results in large amounts of wasted space. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. delete mail 2. view contents of flat-file (i.e. "Inbox") for message text Actual Results: Muchas wasted space (450Megs for my mail folders!!?!?) Expected Results: Deleted messages should also be cleaned from mail database as appropriate
Have you tried the "compact folders" option ?
you need to compact the folder. you can also set up mozilla to automatically compact folders when XX KB of disk space are being wasted.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 23 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
hmm, the fast bug resolving way -> verified
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
Yep, that is the fastest bug fix I've ever seen :) Thanks
see bug 181248#c1 why you need to compact
And I agree that it should be turned on by default since I doubt many users really know it exists...
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Because this is now the dupe target ... The reason for this : Imagine that you have a 300MB Inbox file. You delete now ine message in the middle of the file (size=1k). Mozilla would have to rewrite the whole 300MB file after you deleted this mail and you have to wait 2 minutes before you can work again with Mozilla. That would be dumb or ? Mozilla does this (currently) : It seeks in the file to the message and changes one byte in the message Header (X-Mozilla-Status). You don't need to rewrite the whole file if you change one byte in the file and Mozilla knows now that you marked this mail is deleted. (and you can't see it in the UI) Mozilla rewrites the whole 300mb if you do a compact folder and there are "deleted" mails inside this file.
As a follow up and request for additional feature.. The confussion comes in do to dear old Bill G and MS double dos disk compression. Us achients that have been around since DOS 3.1 and 5.25 drives go no where near anything that remote resembles disk compression as "compact" ambiguously implies. True had I rtfm as I finally did immediately before the DE responded, I would no the behavior, but I have been using netscape mail since the beginning. I would there for suggest that the compact feature be changed to compact/purge or add another button called purge of houskeeping anything that implies that the removal of dead messages is being performed. I still say as a user if I "trash", I assume that time will be spent on the operation especially if I delete 500M of mail. Thanks John
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Product: MailNews → Core
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(In reply to comment #11) Suggestion: Why not have thunderbird "zero out" the payload of an e-mail within the inbox-file upon deletion? This should only take slightly longer (linear function of the e-mail size; independent of overall inbox-filesize) then the current behavior and avoid the current security/privacy issues. The "compress folder" function would then only be used to defragment/compress the inbox-file.
*** Bug 278464 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
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There should be default options that automatically compact folders when the deleted/non-deleted ratio reaches some extent. I had the case on my mum's PC where the deleted mails took 500MB of space - while the inbox only contained a dozen of e-mails without attachments. Her disk was almost full. She freaked out when I explained her how to actually delete her mails. Also, an option to compact folders in the background when Thunderbird exits sounds like a good idea too. So please, think about your average-joe users.
There is such an option in Seamonkey, don't know about Thunderbird but that is not this bug.
To wait until an automatic compacting option and/or a command-line tool for compacting, i suggested a few ways to compact mailboxes with a script. The goal is to delete all messages with a "X-Mozilla-Status" field equal to "0008" or "0009", this is a good way to gain diskspace but this is *not* equivalent as a "real" compacting. After the deletion, all .msf files must be deleted, they'll be automatically reduild during the fist access to the mailbox. http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=425074 I've tested on mailboxes of real end-users and even with a binary program working in place (mutt on Cygwin), it's deadly slow. Obviously it's too late for me because end-users have already very large mailboxes and the script works with an average of 100MB per minute, furthermore, the "speed" is unfortunately decreasing exponentially with the size of the mailbox.
*** Bug 297298 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Product: Core → MailNews Core
I've reached 8GB of space wasted by your "Feature" unless stuck with incoming emails with zero inside even headers was deleted ... (subject was present) and Ispend 4hrs to solve this problem and my search come me to here at the end, here I've realized that is not an error and solution is on the surface. And yes as mention above "Compress folder" - is really not appropriate title for this function and at least it should be more explained in program, for any user that your emails well be actually deleted only after this operation!!!!!! I assume new title as "Purge old emails" is more self explanatory in this case. Maybe you should give number of emails that is deleted and you can purge. Bear in mind I'm Russian so English is not my first language.
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