Open Bug 1868160 Opened 2 years ago Updated 1 year ago

Copy sent to folder is hanging with mailnews.sendInBackground false

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Product:
MailNews Core
Component:
Composition
Version:
Thunderbird 115
Platform:
All
Unspecified
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: BenB, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Keywords: hang, regression, regressionwindow-wanted, Whiteboard: [needs protocol log])

Attachments

(4 files)

Sent Copy hanging
8.58 KB, image/png
Details
Retry Save Copy dialog
29.15 KB, image/png
Details
Send copy settings for this account
35.02 KB, image/png
Details
error-on-save-to-Sent.png
160.25 KB, image/png
Details

Reproduction (at least on my machine):

  • Settings:
    • [x] Save sent copy in: (o) "Sent" folder in same mail account (first radio button option)
    • [x] Save replies in the same folder as the original message
  • Open a message (in the main window) in Inbox
  • Click Reply
  • Write reply
  • Send

Whereas:

  • The bug is not 100% reproducible. It fails mayb 50-70% of the time, but it works sometimes.
  • I have a local IMAP server, so it's not the network connection at fault, nor a slow server.

Actual result:

  • Sending process hangs with:
    "Copying message to folder Inbox"
    The progress dialog stays there forever and doesn't go away until I click [Cancel]. The save never completes. After I click [Cancel]:
  • In the following dialog, I have the options [Save] [Don't save] [Try again] *1
  • If I click [Save], the dialog usually closes, but I cannot find the saved message neither in Sent folder nor in Inbox.

Expected result:

  • Saving sent message in folders (either Sent or Inbox or other folder) works reliably, every time, without exceptions.

BTW:
*1 [Save] and [Don't save] are not translated, even though the rest of the app and the dialog is in German. Even the [Try again] is translated, but [Save] and [Don't save] is not translated.

This appears to be a regression. I started seeing this bug a few weeks or maybe 2-3 months ago.

You may not be able to reproduce it on your system, but the bug exists.

Keywords: regression

Thanks for the reference. We'll have to see whether it's the same bug.

[EDIT: Incorrect statement removed]

Actually, while the send is hanging, I see on the error console:

15:51:58.857 mailnews.smtp: NetworkTimeoutError: a Network error occurred SmtpClient.jsm:442:17
    _onError resource:///modules/SmtpClient.jsm:442

This is strange, because the SMTP server is on my local network.

Also, the emails do seem to arrive in most cases, because people reply to them, and I see the replies. But the sent process is hanging without error message, no Sent copy is saved, and even "Save" (after "Cancel") doesn't work. So, if the SMTP server is really timing out, why do emails arrive?

At the very least, the bug is that the error from the SMTP client is not forwarded to the frontend and to the end user, and the process is hanging. Even if it was a problem with the SMTP server (which I am not sure is true), it would still be a bug in the error hanging.

(In reply to Ben Bucksch (:BenB) from comment #4)

Actually, while the send is hanging, I see on the error console:

15:51:58.857 mailnews.smtp: NetworkTimeoutError: a Network error occurred SmtpClient.jsm:442:17
    _onError resource:///modules/SmtpClient.jsm:442

This is strange, because the SMTP server is on my local network.

Also, the emails do seem to arrive in most cases, because people reply to them, and I see the replies. But the sent process is hanging without error message, no Sent copy is saved, and even "Save" (after "Cancel") doesn't work. So, if the SMTP server is really timing out, why do emails arrive?

This is probably a known issue that occurs due to "connection reuse" when sending emails. When you send one email and it goes out OK, TB keeps the connection open in case there is another messages to be sent. If no more messages are sent, eventually (maybe after 30 seconds or so) the smtp server times out the connection and you see the console error. I have a patch in work to fix this by sending QUIT after the connection is idle for 5 seconds. This will avoid the timeout response from smtp server that you are seeing and has also been reported in bug 1864924.

At the very least, the bug is that the error from the SMTP client is not forwarded to the frontend and to the end user, and the process is hanging. Even if it was a problem with the SMTP server (which I am not sure is true), it would still be a bug in the error hanging.

Problems with saving the sent message were a know issue but I thought it was resolved back at bug 1745130. So not sure why you would just recently be having problems saving the sent message to Sent folder or Inbox since I think that patch has been in ESR quite a while.

If you are using IMAP and their really is a failure to access the imap server to save the sent message, the "Save" button will cause the message to be saved into Local Folders. Are you using imap and seeing that? (Edit: re-read above, yes you are using imap.)

See Also: → 1745130, 1864924

(In reply to gene smith from comment #5)

failure to access the imap server to save the sent message, the "Save" button will cause the message to be saved into Local Folders.

I don't see these messages in Local Folders, neither in Sent nor in Drafts folder. They seem to be just lost.
Yes, I use IMAP.

TB keeps the [SMTP] connection open

In which bug was this introduced? Do you know?
Your theory seems plausible, and it's fair to assume that the SMTP server will terminate the connection after 30s idle or so. It seems obvious, even. I wonder why nobody thought of testing that.

But so far, we don't know whether that is really the cause. Let's assume it is. Is there any way for me to work around that? If I do that, and it works, it would also prove the theory.

Severity: -- → S1
tracking-firefox121: --- → ?
tracking-firefox121: ? → ---
tracking-firefox122: --- → ?
tracking-firefox122: ? → ---
Keywords: dataloss
Priority: -- → P1

FWIW, re bug 1745130: the problem is definitely new. I use Thunderbird almost every day, with the same setup since years, and it worked fine until maybe 2 months ago.

(In reply to Ben Bucksch (:BenB) from comment #6)

failure to access the imap server to save the sent message, the "Save" button will cause the message to be saved into Local Folders.

I don't see these messages in Local Folders, neither in Sent nor in Drafts folder. They seem to be just lost.
Yes, I use IMAP.

If it fails to save to sent message destination, e.g., Sent folder or Inbox, you have to tell it to save to L.F. by clicking the "Save" button. The dialog when save to sent fails looks like this and mentions saving to "Local Folders" in whatever language:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=9255631

TB keeps the [SMTP] connection open

In which bug was this introduced? Do you know?

It was the change that introduce allowing multiple SMTP connections and sending more than one message on an connection: Bug 136871. So this has only been in ESR since 115 was first released (a few months ago?).

Your theory seems plausible, and it's fair to assume that the SMTP server will terminate the connection after 30s idle or so. It seems obvious, even. I wonder why nobody thought of testing that.

The timeout error is after the message has been successfully send and it doesn't seem to affect most users. Maybe if the timeout occurs during the save to sent it does affect users, not sure. The timeout on the "reused" connection was only recently noticed by a user sending calendar notifications via SMTP, I think: bug 1864924 (the reporter there is calling reused connection "cached" connection).

But so far, we don't know whether that is really the cause. Let's assume it is. Is there any way for me to work around that? If I do that, and it works, it would also prove the theory.

There is a work-around but it's only in daily and in beta right now. It's been approved for 115.6.0 but that's not yet released: bug 1854567
If you set mailnews.smtpserver.default.max_cached_connections to 0 (default 3) it causes the behavior to revert to 102 and earlier SMTP sending and cause each message to open a connection, send the message, send QUIT and close the connection. So you should never normally see a timeout.
I'm working on a more general solution so that QUIT is sent and the connection is terminated regardless of max_cached_connection if there are no more message sent on the connection after X seconds, where X is something less than 30s so the connection is terminated before the server reports a timeout. Right now X = 5sec seems OK but might make it a pref. I haven't submitted this for review yet.

Attached image Sent Copy hanging —

This is what I see when I try to send mail.
It says "Copying message to folder Inbox...." [Cancel]
Which suggests that the send process works, but the copy action fails. And indeed, the message was Sent.
If I click [Cancel], I see another dialog, which I'll attach in the next comment.

Attached image Retry Save Copy dialog —

This is what comes up after [Cancel] in the first dialog.
It says: "The message was sent [which seems to be true, based on the replies I get], but no copy could be saved in the Send folder (Inbox), because there was a problem while accessing it. You can try again, or save the msg in Local Folders/Inbox-MyAccount.
When I click [Save], the dialog goes away.

Now while I read this excessively long message carefully, I see that indeed, there is a new folder in Local Folders, which contains my mail. At least the mail is still there. I was looking in Drafts before. I didn't expect it to create new folders on its own, with non-standard naming scheme.

It's interesting that the previous message says that my Sent folder is Inbox. Indeed, I had changed the Sent folder to Inbox that a while back. And that's roughly the time when the problems started. (I didn't remember that, so sorry for not mentioning it earlier. I'm glad I remember now.) However, because it didn't work well. I changed the folder back to the standard Sent folder, as you can see on the screenshot. It has that setting for a couple of weeks now.

What's strange is that the settings UI says Sent folder is "Gesendet", whereas the error message says Sent folder is "Posteingang" ("Inbox" in German). This is a starting point for me to keep digging.

Attachment #9368811 - Attachment description: Send mail hanging → Sent Copy hanging

What's strange is that the settings UI says Sent folder is "Gesendet", whereas the error message says Sent folder is ... "Inbox"

Ah, stupid. I have [x] Save reply in the folder of the original message turned on, and reply to a message in Inbox, so of course it correctly tries to save in Inbox. So, that part makes sense.

I also checked my settings (advanced config...), the server for the account, and the identity, and esp. the "fcc_folder" setting, and it looks correct, both in the prefs and in the UI.

Ah, I'm getting closer. I tried to manually copy mail from another folder (of the same IMAP server) to Inbox, and that is failing, too. Same when I try to copy from Local Folders to IMAP Inbox. There is no error or anything, the copy just fails silently. The email just isn't in the target mailbox. There is no message on the error console, either. Nothing relevant in the Activities window, either.

Severity: S1 → --
Keywords: dataloss
Priority: P1 → --

(In reply to Ben Bucksch (:BenB) from comment #13)

Ah, I'm getting closer. I tried to manually copy mail from another folder (of the same IMAP server) to Inbox, and that is failing, too. Same when I try to copy from Local Folders to IMAP Inbox. There is no error or anything, the copy just fails silently. The email just isn't in the target mailbox. There is no message on the error console, either. Nothing relevant in the Activities window, either.

I can copy from LF to imap Inbox and it works OK. If I try the same copy to an IMAP server that is not turned on, I get a pop up error and the same error in Act. Mgr.

Copy within the same server just does an imap copy (tb tells server to do the copy). Copy from LF to imap inbox does imap "append" and has to send the whole message to the server.
If you could attach an IMAP:4 log showing what is happening in both cases it would help. Re: https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Logging

Anyhow, sounds like the send timeout is a red herring.

Flags: needinfo?(ben.bucksch)

Ben can you attach a log?

Whiteboard: [needs protocol log]

I experienced this issue with Thunderbird 102.11.0, and after reading bug #1745130 I thought this was fixed in 102.11.1... so I just jumped ahead to the latest version of 115.13.0. However this issue still seems to be there.

I unfortunately have to use Office 365 at work, so my workplace has both IMAPS and SMTPS support enabled and that's how my Thunderbird talks to Office 365 (no silly add-ons that do EWS or anything like that).

It happens in 1 out of a 100 emails (a rough guess) but it's enough to be really irritating at a busy workplace. The 'Activity Manager' will just constantly say it is 'Copying message to sent folder' and never stop trying, without any end or error message. I would hope I'd get a pop-up box telling me that copying to the sent folder had failed, asking me to retry... but that popup box never appears.

Unfortunately whilst it's in this state, you also can't send any messages... they just get stuck in the outbox.

So your only option is to restart Thunderbird... which means you actually LOSE a copy of the message that you've just sent successfully! Just so that you can resume sending emails!

When it's in this hung state... what is the advised thing to do? Since it's not in your Sent folder... it's constantly saying 'Copying message to sent folder' in the Activity Manager... it's not in the outbox either... it's just in complete limbo... stuck in memory but nowhere else?!

I looked in the Ctrl-Shift-J Error Console and I see a similar thing to what has been mentioned before...

mailnews.smtp: NetworkError: a Network error occurred SmtpClient.jsm:481:17
_onError resource:///modules/SmtpClient.jsm:481

But if there was a momentary network issue, surely it should be giving up and tell me? Not indefinitely showing as trying in the Activity Manager, holding a copy of my sent message hostage (never to be seen again, unless someone replies and quotes it), and preventing me from sending more emails!?

I'd love to help get this fixed if I can, but if it means constantly leaving massive amounts of debug accumulating and waiting for that 1 in 100 sent emails for this to occur... it might be tricky.

(In reply to Lantizia from comment #16)

I experienced this issue with Thunderbird 102.11.0, and after reading bug #1745130 I thought this was fixed in 102.11.1... so I just jumped ahead to the latest version of 115.13.0. However this issue still seems to be there.

I unfortunately have to use Office 365 at work, so my workplace has both IMAPS and SMTPS support enabled and that's how my Thunderbird talks to Office 365 (no silly add-ons that do EWS or anything like that).

Just want to make sure I understand. Both IMAPS (incoming) and SMTPS (outgoing) are using the O365 server, right?

It happens in 1 out of a 100 emails (a rough guess) but it's enough to be really irritating at a busy workplace. The 'Activity Manager' will just constantly say it is 'Copying message to sent folder' and never stop trying, without any end or error message. I would hope I'd get a pop-up box telling me that copying to the sent folder had failed, asking me to retry... but that popup box never appears.

When I send a message with TB using my outlook account, I'm not seeing anything in the "Activity Manager" about saving to sent folder. Instead I see a pop-up window that shows what is happening. It comes and goes very quick with a short message and fast network, but it says things like, "sending message, sending complete, saving message to Sent folder with a progress bar going from 0 to 100%, then says save complete". But you have to send a big message with a large attachments to see most of this. So is this what you mean when you say "Activity Manager"?

If there is an error this pop-up will/should give you the opportunity to retry or to save the message to a local folder.

Unfortunately whilst it's in this state, you also can't send any messages... they just get stuck in the outbox.

When TB sends a message and then saves the sent message to Sent folder, it doesn't make use of an "outbox". The only usage for an outbox is when you do a "send later" and then tb copies the message to be sent into Local Folders/Outbox and then you can complete the send from there. So I assume you are not doing "Send Later"?

I don't know how your o365 is setup but I suspect it uses an Exchange server like outlook.com. With outlook.com, assuming you are sending with your outlook.com SMTP server, you don't have to tell TB to save the message to Sent folder. Outlook.com does it for you automatically. When I tested it I was seeing 2 copies for each message sent in Sent. So I went to "Settings", "Copies and Folders" and un-checked the first checkbox "Place a copy in:" and now I only get 1 saved message in Sent instead of 2. I would assume that o365 also has this feature.

Do other TB users at your location have the same problems sometimes with saving to Sent folder?

So your only option is to restart Thunderbird... which means you actually LOSE a copy of the message that you've just sent successfully! Just so that you can resume sending emails!

When it's in this hung state... what is the advised thing to do? Since it's not in your Sent folder... it's constantly saying 'Copying message to sent folder' in the Activity Manager... it's not in the outbox either... it's just in complete limbo... stuck in memory but nowhere else?!

Again, is really the "Activity Manager" you seeing this?

I looked in the Ctrl-Shift-J Error Console and I see a similar thing to what has been mentioned before...

mailnews.smtp: NetworkError: a Network error occurred SmtpClient.jsm:481:17
_onError resource:///modules/SmtpClient.jsm:481

But if there was a momentary network issue, surely it should be giving up and tell me? Not indefinitely showing as trying in the Activity Manager, holding a copy of my sent message hostage (never to be seen again, unless someone replies and quotes it), and preventing me from sending more emails!?

That's an error for SMTP (sending) which you say worked OK. The copy to the Sent folder occurs via IMAP since the Sent folder is on the imap server. So whatever that error is, it would have no effect on saving to Sent (AFAIK).

I'd love to help get this fixed if I can, but if it means constantly leaving massive amounts of debug accumulating and waiting for that 1 in 100 sent emails for this to occur... it might be tricky.

There a way to record an IMAP log over a long time period that rotates the results between 4 files. But first, if you could answer some of my question that might not be necessary.

  • Yes both IMAPS and SMTPS are using the official O365 hostnames, no add-ons are doing the mail send/receive and I'm not using anything like DavMail.
  • When I say the 'Activity Manager' I mean just that (you can open it from the Tools menu)... and I open it up myself manually to see what the heck is going on.
  • There is no pop-up... I wish there was... as I could then just say give up, or try again.
  • No I'm not doing a 'Send Later'... I only mentioned the Outbox to highlight that unlike a message that might otherwise still be queued for sending... the message in question has actually already been sent and is just annoyingly in the clutch of this immensely stupid situation... with no way to rescue it.
  • I disabled the O365 ability to automatically save to 'Sent Items' from the SMTP server-side a long time ago (many years). I found it was very unreliable and didn't do it properly all the time... so instead I trusted Thunderbird to do this the conventional way by copying it there with IMAP! (which hasn't been an issue for a long loooong time)... Obviously having both do it is annoying, as you get two copies then, like you've found.
  • I'm the only Thunderbird user at my workplace.
  • Yes, yes it's really the 'Activity Manager' :P
  • True, the error message I mentioned shouldn't be the issue then, I guess we can ignore that... because the messages are actually sent successfully! The only issue is how Thunderbird constantly tries to indefinitely to copy the message to the sent folder... and whilst it's in this state (as seen on the 'Activity Manager') new emails I want to send will just get queued in the outbox.
  • Let me know about the IMAP log approach.

I sent you a fairly large test message so I could make sure the sending progress dialog pop-ups actually occur. (Sending small messages, it goes by so fast you can't read it.) It sent OK and the first progress bar graph said Sending Message with progress going from 0 to 100% and it showed Copying to Sent with same result, 0 to 100%. I don't see anything about Sending or Saving to Sent in my Activity Manager, I just see the pop-up dialog.

The attachment shows what I see when I disconnect my network while saving to Sent. I see the option to retry, quit or save the Sent message to a Local Folder. Again, I see nothing in Activity Manager other than "Failed to connect to mobile.charter.net" when the network went down.

If you could send the test message I sent you back to me (or send something else to me with a large attachment, maybe 16Mb is not too big) and let me know if you see the progress dialog pop-up like I described. If you only see stuff in Activity Manager, please copy or screen shot what you see there when sending the large message.

Let me know about the IMAP log approach.

I would like to get these question resolved first before we get into recording a log.
Thanks a lot and sorry for the my confusion!

It just occurred to me that maybe your "Sending/Copying to Sent" pop-up progress dialog is getting buried beneath your maybe full screen TB. These come up as separate windows so if you do alt-tab you might see them under other windows.

If we do need to record a long-term log, here's where I explain how to do it: bug 1890230 comment 46 (starting at 3rd paragraph A big "faff").
So you might take a look at this and see if you understand what you would need to do.

  • Sending me an email to the address I have listed on bugzilla does not mean it goes through to the computer or email account that I am having the issue with :)
  • I never get a sending dialogue box, ever... not sure why you do? I've never witnessed this behaviour with Thunderbird in the 20+ years of using it.
  • You realise the 'Activity Manager' doesn't pop up, it's something you have to open to see what Thunderbird is currently working on in the background?
  • No there is no pop-up progress box hidden in the background, nor is there a message about how it was unable to copy to Sent hidden in the background either.
  • I'll look at the logging method when I next get in to work either tomorrow or Monday... hopefully I can spot the issue for myself as I'm not sure I'm going to be able to send on such logs (at least not redacted) as obviously this is my workplace email on my workplace computer... at work :).

(In reply to Lantizia from comment #22)

  • Sending me an email to the address I have listed on bugzilla does not mean it goes through to the computer or email account that I am having the issue with :)
  • I never get a sending dialogue box, ever... not sure why you do? I've never witnessed this behaviour with Thunderbird in the 20+ years of using it.

That interesting. By any chance have you at some time in the past set pref mailnews.show_send_progress to false? I didn't even know that existed until just now! It defaults to true for new profile setups. I set it false and indeed no progress dialog occurs and there is no option to recover from a failed or hanging send.
So if it's set false, you can set it true and, as a test, "edit as new" the large email I sent you and send it to yourself. You should see the sending dialogs. If it fails (maybe your email provider rejects message that are 16M) you should see the error dialog like I show in comment 19.

  • You realise the 'Activity Manager' doesn't pop up, it's something you have to open to see what Thunderbird is currently working on in the background?

Yes, I know that. Anyhow, while sending the 16M message show_send_progress false, I watched the Activity Mgr screen. I didn't see any info about the message getting sent. It did look like it may have flickered some about when the send completed, but not sure. (FWIW, I've never found the activity mgr info very useful.)

  • No there is no pop-up progress box hidden in the background, nor is there a message about how it was unable to copy to Sent hidden in the background either.

Just thought I'd mention it as a possibility. It's happened to me.

  • I'll look at the logging method when I next get in to work either tomorrow or Monday... hopefully I can spot the issue for myself as I'm not sure I'm going to be able to send on such logs (at least not redacted) as obviously this is my workplace email on my workplace computer... at work :).

Hopefully, a moot point if the pref is false.

I said in the previous comment:

I set it false and indeed no progress dialog occurs and there is no option to recover from a failed or hanging send.

That's not completely correct. If the pref is false, all it does it inhibit the progress dialogs. I turned off wifi while the message was getting saved to Sent and the "Save Message" dialog still popped up with the option to save the message to Local Folders.

I did notice that in the "status bar" along the bottom, it does show info like "Sending Message" and "Saving Message". I think the bar graph at the right side of the status bar also shows the progress without any percentage numbers.
So we still may need to do the logging.

Magnus and Calum,
Do you use o365 a lot for email? I thought maybe you said that in another bug. If so, do you ever see a hang sometimes while saving the sent message like is reported by user Lantizia starting at comment 16?
I haven't heard anything more from the original reporter of this bug, BenB. The last thing he reported was he was getting errors saving sent messages back into Inbox and that save to Local Folders was actually working when he clicked "Save"; he was originally looking in Drafts.

Magnus, the o365 test account you got for me a while back seems to have expired again so I can't attempt to duplicate the reported bug: maybe 1 out 100 messages sent causes a hang and there is no "retry" or "save to Local Folder" dialog occurring.

Also, I don't think this is related to bug 1912556 since that is caused by oauth2 and, I think, only on recent dailies/betas.
Thanks.

Flags: needinfo?(mkmelin+mozilla)
Flags: needinfo?(calum.mackay)
  • No I have never set manually mailnews.show_send_progress to false, maybe it's set to true with new profiles? I've been using this profile (upgrading through lots of Thunderbird versions that have existed on Ubuntu 18.04+) for at least about 6 years now.
  • This hasn't got anything to do with the size of email. I frequently get the issue with emails that are purely a small amount of text and no attachments.
  • You realise that I am using SMTPS (smtp.office365.com) and IMAPS (outlook.office365.com) and that both require OAUTH2 now (and have done for a while) and that works just fine yes?

Ultimately I can't see how this is anything to do with O365, or email size, or pop-up boxes. The emails are perfectly sent, it's just that for some reason Thunderbird is choking on the task of just saving it to the designated sent folder. All the whilst you can perfectly check for new email (using IMAP) and even move messages between folders (again using IMAP).

(In reply to Lantizia from comment #26)

  • No I have never set manually mailnews.show_send_progress to false, maybe it's set to true with new profiles? I've been using this profile (upgrading through lots of Thunderbird versions that have existed on Ubuntu 18.04+) for at least about 6 years now.

New profiles definitely set that to true. I guess it's possible when you set up your profile 6 years ago, TB was setting that false. I doubt if that's the case but I haven't looked up the history on that pref.
Did you actually go into Config Editor (a button at the bottom of the "General Settings" page) and check the setting for mailnews.show_send_progress?

  • This hasn't got anything to do with the size of email. I frequently get the issue with emails that are purely a small amount of text and no attachments.

Yes, I realize that. The only reason I mention mail size is that with very small messages sent, the "progress dialog" comes and goes so fast you might not see it. So if you send a large message (e.g., the test message I sent you) you should definitely see the progress dialogs (assuming the pref is set true).

  • You realise that I am using SMTPS (smtp.office365.com) and IMAPS (outlook.office365.com) and that both require OAUTH2 now (and have done for a while) and that works just fine yes?

Sure. I just mentioned it because there was a recent bug that is now fixed that only affected o365 using oauth2 on daily and betas. Just want to make it clear that this is not that bug.

Ultimately I can't see how this is anything to do with O365, or email size, or pop-up boxes. The emails are perfectly sent, it's just that for some reason Thunderbird is choking on the task of just saving it to the designated sent folder. All the whilst you can perfectly check for new email (using IMAP) and even move messages between folders (again using IMAP).

I tend to agree, probably not o365 specific. But since you are the only one reporting this problem (AFAIK) and you are using o365, we can't rule it out as o365 specific.

It may have to do with why you don't see progress dialogs. If the pref "mailnews.show_send_progress" is true and you don't see progress dialogs, then when a save to Sent fails (a 1% probability, as you estimate) you may not be getting the dialog asking you to "retry" or "save to local folders" either. So we really need to resolve this first.

(In reply to gene smith from comment #27)

  • Yes I checked it in the config editor (not my first rodeo in there or about:config on Firefox).

I think even if I made a new profile... I'd purposefully set this to false, after now having this conversation.

The idea of some pop-up every time I send an email sounds AWFUL! I just want to Ctrl+Enter my email and go on to do other things immediately in other applications, without worrying about the status of it sending. Obviously a pop-up is useful if it DIDN'T send :) I do remember this kind of pop-up rarely occurring during those 6 years (and I'd just click 'Retry' and bingo it'd be copied correctly second time around)... but not in recent memory though.

So perhaps, as you say, that was broken at some point (in a past version that I upgraded to, pre-102.11.0 as that had the issue too) for people that have this set to false? Maybe Thunderbird it thinks it's generated a pop-up and is waiting for my response... when there isn't one!

I've been working on TB since about 2016/17 and have always seen a quick non-obtrusive popup when sending a email. I didn't even know til now that pref existed to turn it off.
I don't know if you are at your "work" computer right now, but when you are, please make sure the pref is turned on (true). Then restart TB to make sure the pref is seen and cached. Then send a large message to someone (several MB, to yourself is OK) and check if you see a progress dialogs. If you don't, we need to determine why. (I haven't seen any bugs about the send progress dialogs not showing.)
If the progress dialog doesn't show up then the retry/save on failure dialog may not be showing either; that's the reason for this exercise.
If you do see the progress dialogs, when the "save to send" progress is showing and before it reaches 100%, turn off your network connection and see if the retry/save dialog pops up. (It won't pop up immediately since there are some retries and timeouts that occur first.)

Any chance this is set true: mailnews.sendInBackground ??
Re: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/TestPlans/SendInBackground
I don't know the status of this or if it really works or if it might block the retry/save dialog. It mentions something about doing "Send Later" which may explain why you are seeing things in "Outbox". It also mentions about a message going to "Activity Mgr".

I did some bugzilla searches mostly on "sendInBackground" and I found this from about a year ago:
bug 859265 comment 1
It sound a lot like what you describe.

Also, I tried setting sendInBackground and when I disconnect my network while saving to Sent, I still get a retry/save pop-up. However, no matter what I do it (like retry with the network back on) it hangs and never sends the message. I can try to send other messages and they go to Local Folder's Outbox but are never sent until I shutdown and restart. But the first message that I attempted to send is complete lost and never sent.
I also see in Activity Manager a progress bar for sending the first message that shows no info, the bar just moves back and forth. I also see two entries about sending the message that are just text and not a progress bargraph.

So you must have mailnews.sendInBackground set true since that's the only way I see anything about sending in Act. Mgr. But don't know why you see no error pop-up.
Any chance you see the problem when you have more than one message composed and ready to send and then you quickly go though them and trigger the sends so they get queued to Outbox? (I haven't tested if this would prevent the error popup from occurring.)

See Also: → 859265

(In reply to gene smith from comment #25)

Magnus and Calum,
Do you use o365 a lot for email? I thought maybe you said that in another bug. If so, do you ever see a hang sometimes while saving the sent message like is reported by user Lantizia starting at comment 16?

I use O365 daily (not by choice) but, as you say in comment #17, I have turned off "place a copy in", since the SMTP server already creates a copy for me. Unlike Lantizia, I find this works reliably (for me). So I wouldn't see the issue.

I also use TB daily with non-O365 servers, where I have "place a copy in: Sent" enabled, and that also works reliably.

Flags: needinfo?(calum.mackay)

So you must have mailnews.sendInBackground set true

FYI, this pref is false in my profile.

However, as stated in comment 13, for me, the problem was that copying an email to another folder failed silently.

I consider the lack of error message as a bug in and of itself, independent from the actual failure.

Flags: needinfo?(ben.bucksch)

Haven't had an issue with the O365 account I use regularly (and I do have it set to save a copy).

Flags: needinfo?(mkmelin+mozilla)
Summary: Copy sent to folder is hanging → Copy sent to folder is hanging with mailnews.sendInBackground false

Regarding summary change, my theory is that user Lantizia has mailnews.sendInBackground set TRUE and that is causing the problem. But haven't heard back yay or nay on that yet.

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