1867762 - The folder ... cannot be compacted because another operation is in progress (gmail.com)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[pemensik]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0

Steps to reproduce:

I have quite a lot of messages on redhat.com account, which is gmail server backend over IMAP.

Actual results:

A blocking dialog appears, saying message:
The folder '<something> on <user>@redhat.com' cannot be compacted because another operation is in progress. Please try again later.

Problem is this is not reaction to any manual action I did. I have configured some rules to cleanup old messages. When I click okay, the same message appears after short delay for another folder. That continues about 8-12 times, while being blocking.

Expected results:

It should not conflict with itself, without obvious action related to this action. I do not use shared network home. It that error appears, it should not be modal and blocking until I click on something. Instead a non-modal list of errors should appear, which is not so annoying.

I think bug #288896 is about that.

Comment 1

[pemensik]

Originally reported on https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2222174.

I am not sure how can I find more information what exactly caused this error somewhere. I have tried running thunderbird in console to receive at least some details, but nothing helped. If you can help me find what exactly causes this behaviour, I would be very interested.

Sometime I have running two laptops with two instances of thunderbird running, but it seems not the primary cause.

Comment 2

[WhyAsk Now?]

Re: my similar bug 1869173.
"Error - Sent Mail on [e-mail]
Some folders (e.g. Sent Mail on [e-mail]) cannot be compacted because there is not enough free disk space. Please delete some files and try again."

I currently get 5 of these. I don't read them as they are a nuisance. Originally I got 1 then 2 then 3 4 and now 5 over the past weeks. It effects nothing else other than Me being annoyed by it. I know exactly what it means - so far it has informed me of nothing important. It bugs me, I wonder if soon there will be 6 repeats.

Even if the Error is specifically different in each popup generally it is about Not enough disk space to perform some house keeping task.

Comment 3

[Yedyge]

Good day, everyone!

"The folder <various folders from time to time> cannot be compacted because another operation in progress. Please, try again later".

Still has this bug, TB ESR115.6.0, no less than 10 years after first appearance!

Repro: none, as it is something done by TB itself, without user activity. Regular: fetch IMAP4 + Global Option to "compact folders".

I propose to completely remove this message, as it is an indicator of an internal conflict without involving user's activity.
If TB has non-critical problems between two own regular tasks, which TB will surely repeat later automatically, it is a nonsense to stress a user with such a message!

Comment 4

[pemensik]

Attachment: Thunderbird-compacting-BZ1867762.webm

Video of annoying sequence of errors, each stating the compacting has failed. Without any option from the user anyway to just click it trough.

Comment 5

[pemensik]

It would be great, if developers could at least provide some instructions, how to debug this issue and how to catch what have happened. This happens on a machine, where only one Thunderbird happens. Without network shared /home. There should not be a need for conflict, because all tasks involved are started by Thunderbird itself.

I would provide more debug information, but I do not know how to obtain more information. I am not sure what causes it. Sometimes it happens more often, sometimes less. It might be done in reaction to some gmail server response, but I do not know how to connect events with appearance of these errors.

I agree these kinds of errors are not helpful, they could be just printed for a while in status bar. There is nothing I can do with them and as an user, I did not have caused them. If I did, I have no idea how.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

pemensik, p.weiss, luca

Are you seeing this in version 128??
Compact code was rewritten.

Comment 9

[Luca Moscato]

Personally I didn't had the disk space issue anymore. Disk used by TB archives seems under control

Comment 10

[[e-mail]]

Hello,
after a while i got another problem with my thunderbird client.
Trying to get rid of all the problems and error massages i just uninstalled TB and searched the hard disc for any Thunderbird relating data.
I deletet all data i could find. Then i installed TB again. Now all the problems i had where gone.

Just uninstall and install again didnt helped anything. The manual data removal is necessary.

kind regards
p.weiss

(bug 1875997, filed against version 115)

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thanks for the updates. => WFM

Comment 12

[pemensik]

I use 128.6.0esr and no, I haven't seen this issue for some time. At least in Fedora 41 this seems to be fixed or mitigated.