Open Bug 206247 Opened 22 years ago Updated 2 years ago

sub-subfolders in LocalFolders/Inbox are not displayed

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Database, defect)

Product:
MailNews Core
Component:
Database
Platform:
x86
All
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: e31, Unassigned)

References

Details

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507 As this error apears I was using Mozilla 1.3 final. I upgrade to 1.4b but it does not solve my problem. The Inbox folder shows me all subfolders I have created. But all subfolder in the subfolders (sub-subfolders) are not shown any more. Example: Local folders - Inbox - Family - brother - sister The folders brother and sister are lost since yesterday! )-: Directory listing (not complete): Directory: Inbox.sbd - File: Family (0 Bytes) - File: Family.msf (1492 Bytes) - ... Perhaps it happens because the browser (in combination with Adobe Acrobat 5.1) crashes for a few times. I hope somebody can help me to get my messages back. Also workarounds are welcome, I need my messages! Best Regards from Germany, e31 (-´ Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
Is there a Family.sbd sub-directory? That's where the brother and sister mailboxes would be. A more complete directory listing would help. I can't think of any reason they should disappear, however.
No there is now subfolder. Here is my listing of the Inbox.sbd directory: Directory of D:\My Documents - pdrecker\Mozilla\Mail\Local Folders\Inbox.sbd 17.05.2003 14:39 <DIR> . 17.05.2003 14:39 <DIR> .. 09.04.2003 10:36 0 Familie 19.05.2003 10:17 1.514 Familie.msf 09.04.2003 10:36 0 HGW 19.05.2003 10:17 1.325 HGW.msf 14.05.2003 17:30 762.776 Java 19.05.2003 10:17 11.804 Java.msf 19.05.2003 10:08 332.555 Peter Troy 19.05.2003 10:08 41.266 Peter Troy.msf 09.04.2003 10:27 0 Registrations 19.05.2003 14:16 1.302 Registrations.msf 08.04.2003 20:07 0 Shops 19.05.2003 10:17 1.392 Shops.msf 09.04.2003 10:29 0 UBM 19.05.2003 10:17 1.279 UBM.msf 09.04.2003 10:35 0 UNI Gryps 19.05.2003 10:17 1.485 UNI Gryps.msf 08.04.2003 20:07 1.761 UNI Hagen 19.05.2003 10:17 1.935 UNI Hagen.msf 18 File(s) 1.160.394 bytes I think most of my mails are lost for ever. I'm right? )-: If you are right that Mozilla Mail creates for every sub-subfolder a directory then Mozilla has a very big bug in the (stable?) release 1.3 final. It has deleted all sub-subfolders in the whole Local Folder (Inbox, Sent, ...)! As a developer I can't believe that, e31 (-´
Every parent folder has a .sbd directory. You could look in your trash sub-folder to see if the sub-folders were accidentally dragged to the trash or something like that. Are you saying that you had sub-folders of the Sent folder, and those are also gone now? I can't think of any bug that would selectively delete .sbd directories. It's also odd that you have a lot of empty mailboxes like Shops and Registrations. Were those also just empty place-holder parent folders? I don't know of any bug like that in 1.3 final. Do you have auto-compaction of local mail folders turned on? (If you did, you'd get prompted if you wanted to compact folders every so often). The browser crashing shouldn't cause data loss like this. The only cause I know of for this problem is if you have an imap server and a local mail directory and you set the local directory for the imap server to point to your local mail directory. Do you have an imap server account configured? If you did, though, I'd think you'd have run into problems before...
1. The trash folder is empty. 2. The mailboxes like Shops are empty because they are only empty place-holder parent folders. 3. Auto-compaction of local mail folders is not turned on and the compaction was not manually started. 4. I do not use any IMAP connection, only POP3. All my POP3 connections have there own directory on my hard disk and I move all mails manually to the Local Folder. 5. In the last few days I did not change any configuration in mozilla. Is there any recovery tool available? A few mails are very important. Best Regards, e31 (-´
I can confirm this bug. I just upgraded from 1.3 to 1.4 and have "lost" all of my subfolders for my Local Folder. If I look at the hard drive, the files are all in place, but the folders/subfolders do not show up. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Here is an excerpt of what my hard drive shows: % tree . |-- ATT.msf |-- Diving.sbd | |-- CCD | `-- CCD.sbd | |-- cleanup | |-- cleanup 2001 | `-- cleanup 2001.sbd | |-- Admin Registrations.msf | `-- Bulk Registrations.msf |-- Drafts |-- Letters |-- Letters.msf |-- Letters.sbd | |-- HAWAII | `-- HAWAII.msf |-- Receipts.msf |-- Sent |-- Technology |-- Technology.sbd | |-- Emacs | |-- Inbox | |-- Java | |-- Perl Stuff | |-- Samba | `-- Samba.sbd |-- Templates |-- Trash |-- Travel.msf |-- Unsent Messages and yet my view within mail only shows the following folders and sub-folders: |--Inbox |--Unsent |--Drafts |--Templates |--Sent |--Trash |--Letters | |-- HAWAII |--Technology |-- Emacs |-- Inbox |-- Java |-- Perl Stuff |-- Samba Expectation: That a user should be able to: 1. View the Settings for a local folder. 2. That the file system directory pointed to by the Local directory field should be parsed breadth first and that each "Mailbox Folder" within each file system directory be used to populate the mail folder view. 3. That any error's (ie. a permissions issue on a file system sub-directory) be reported.
I don't know what caused the mailboxes to get emptied - the only things I know of that caus this kind of problem are virus checkers, and certain file systems, like ReiserFS, some versions of which have limit on the size of a single file. There was a bug in the installer that caused whole mail directories to get wiped out. This afflicted 1.4 and 1.5 builds between 07/10 and 08/06, roughly. Re Jason's comment, I agree that we should handle sub-directories that have no corresponding mailbox file, e.g., if there's a directory called Parent.sbd, but no file called Parent, we should still show Parent and the mailboxes in the Parent directory.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Has any progress been made on this bug? I've finally convinced one of my co-workers of the merits of Mozilla and right out of the box he's encountered this error. He's imported his e-mail several times so far. Any known or suspected workarounds?
exit mozilla and try moving all the .msf files and panacea.dat outside your mozilla directory. now restart mozilla and see if that helps
that won't help - the problem is that there's no folder named "Diving" in Pascal's example - if there were, we'd notice the sub-folder as well. I looked at this for a bit but haven't found a fix yet. I think we'd need to create a folder called "Diving" in this case, if one didn't exist.
Jason, where is he importing his mail from? what program? Is it import that's broken in his case, or is he losing folders after the import? In his case, is the parent folder empty? Also, did you have messages in the Diving folder before you upgraded? If you create an empty file called Diving and restart mozilla, do you see all the sub-folders?
Product: MailNews → Core
No responce for more than one year... My experience says that 99.99% of this case is "User Error".
Can confirm this behaviour Windows XP: Set up thunderbird (*), set up mail account, downloaded emails from server, made new subfolder as child of Local Folders(*), could not move, copy or drag'n'drop mail to that folder so I closed Thunderbird using the close icon on top right of window border. Reopened Thunderbird to find no mail!!!! All 63 messages just downloaded lost. version 1.0 (20041206) on Windows XP service pack 2, running AVG email scanner. This is version 1.0 downloaded less than an hour ago (7th December 2004 after 1500 GMT ) from http://mozilla.cs.utah.edu/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/1.0/win32/en-US/ Thunderbird%20Setup%201.0.exe I hope the severity of this bug is obvious. I'd call this a complete showstopper, total blocker, just-don't-release-the product-til-this-thing-is- fixed etc etc etc. Who on earth released this build? (*)Also found other bugs to do with relocating mailboxes away from the default path, and resiting the installation directory of Thunderbird to do with dialog box. Will be hunting to see if these bugs are listed elsewhere or will add it. Same bug in different parts of the GUI. BTW: Have been using 0.8 under Linux (SuSE 8.2) quite happily for some time and never experienced this kind of problem. Regards Lesley
Actually just realised this may be a different bug. To make it clear: 1. I set the install location of Thunderbird to F:/Thunderbird during install process. 2. I set the mailbox location to F:/Mail/lesley 3. I set up my mailing details and downloaded my emails. 4. I made a new sub-folder of Local Folders and tried to move, copy, or drag'n'drop one email to that new folder. In steps 1, 2 and 4 I experienced a bug to do with creating a New Folder. I could rename the folder in the directory listing; I could ensure that folder was listed in the filename text field below the directory listing only by entering it myself; I could only get Thunderbird to recognise it was there by closing and restarting the installation process to get the installation process to recognise F:/ Thunderbird instead of F:/New Folder and likewise to get it to recognise F:/ Mail/ and then F:/Mail/lesley instead of F:/New Folder and then F:/Mail/New Folder. Being unable to move copy drag'n'drop successfully I closed Thunderbird down again reopened it to find I had lost *all* my emails from my Inbox. I couldn't even get to lose anything from a sub-folder because I couldn't get anything into a subfolder. How on earth can you release something in that state and call it an email client? Regards Lesley
Just a guess, but I think what you're encountering is that we don't recognize the changing of the mail directory until after you shutdown and restart. Not to diminish the severity of your issues, but I believe the rest of your problems fall out from that.
and if this is not obvious, switching your local directory back to where it was originally should make the messages and folders re-appear. Changing the local folder directory just changes *where* we look for your stored mail. It doesn't copy all the mail from the old location to the new location.
David Many thanks for your reply. This was a misposting and should have gone into Bug No 193916. However, I feel I do have to respond to your guess ... 1. I stopped and restarted the installation process to get that to recognise F:/Thunderbird. 2. I stopped and restarted to get Thunderbird to recognise F:/Mail and then F:/Mail/lesley. 3. When I stopped and restarted to get Thunderbird to recognise the new sub- folder, I lost *all* 63 emails in my Inbox. Could you tell me precisely how many times I have to stop and restart for Thunderbird on Windows XP to recognise where I want to put my mail boxes? And what I have to do to ensure that Thunderbird doesn't act as an pure out and out email-shredder on Windows XP? I have used Thunderbird on SuSE 8.2 and it has acted well as an email client and not an email shredder. It would have been great to use Thunderbird on XP too but my needs right now are for an email client so I'll simply have to go elsewhere for this platform. From what I can recall from GUI development on Windows, there has to have been a serious attempt to break the folder selection GUI the way it is broken in this release. For a start, the text field does not automatically update with the renamed folder when a new folder is made and renamed in that dialog box. I may be wrong but I think someone has actually had to put in a bit of effort to break that functionality. I also fail to see how and why these operations work well under Linux but not under XP. I never experienced anything like lost subfolders there let alone a lost Inbox. Surely, if the core functionality allows the parameterisation of the installation directory, location of mailboxes, etc etc on Linux then there must be sufficent code reuse to be able to repeat the same functionality on a Windows platform? Regards Lesley
You should only need to shut down once and restart. The code is essentially the same on linux, windows and mac. Is the Inbox file really gone/empty on disk? If you look in your user profile directory and the new mail directory you specified, is it not there?
David In response to your further suggestions and sheer desparation, I commited a search on my D: drive for 'Mail' and 'Inbox'. Just to verify there is nothing there. OK 'Mail' showed some stuff for MSN Messenger, the sendmail.dll etc etc and 'Inbox' showed something in a Java demo directory I'd forgotten was taking up space but that's about it. And, just to repeat the situation... I stopped and restarted the installation process once to get Thunderbird to recognise the installation directory I wanted to use. I stopped and restarted the mailbox set up procedure twice ... once to get Thunderbird to recognise that I wanted to use F:/Mail and then a second time to get Thunderbird to recognise that I wanted to use F:/Mail/lesley. Therefore the default mail location should have been F:/Mail/lesley. Directory listings show the Inbox there as empty. There is no Inbox in F:/Mail. When I stopped and restarted Thunderbird for the third time, to get it to recognise a subfolder, I had nothing in my Inbox. Zilch. Zaroo. I lost *all* my mail. And just to repeat, the only Thunderbird set up in D:/Documents and Settings/... . I have is the Desktop and Start Menu shortcuts (which correctly point to the relavent F:/Thunderbird/thunderbird.exe with relevant arguments) . I wanted my mail on a FAT32 partition it so I configured Thunderbird to use it. I stopped and started Thunderbird twice to get it to recognise the new location I required it to use. If it hadn't appeared to successfully recognise the new location I would have stopped using it because I need the mail to be on that FAT32 drive. And yes the subfolder .sbd directory, epynomous filename and .msf file are all in F:/Mail/lesley Regards Lesley
Some more questions - do you have a virus checker on your PC? Some virus checkers have been know to completely blow away mail folders. I don't quite get this comment: >When I stopped and restarted Thunderbird for the third time, to get it to >recognise a subfolder the sub-folder wasn't recognized (i.e., displayed in the UI), after you created it? Or are you saying you renamed it on disk, using windows, and then had to restart for tbird to see the name change? If you're messing around with the file system while thunderbird is running, you might cause some strange things to happen - obviously we should handle that, but if that's what you're doing, that would be a clue... >And yes the subfolder .sbd directory, epynomous filename and .msf file are all >in F:/Mail/lesley Does this mean the following files exist? Inbox (empty) Inbox.sbd Inbox.sbd/sub-folder Inbox.sbd/sub-folder.msf
Right .... After getting through the installation process, setting up my email account and downloading my mail (sadly without preventing deletion at the server end) I made the subfolder Mates as a subfolder of Local Folders from within Thunderbird. That subfolder appeared in the Thunderbird UI ok and was listed in the left hand pane ok but I could not drag'n'drop, move or copy mail items to it. Figuring this was part and parcel of an apparent inability of Thunderbird to recognise changes to installation directories and changes to default mail folder locations, I closed and restarted Thunderbird. When I reopened it I had no mail in my Inbox folder. Nothing, zilch, zaroo. Here is the listing of my F:/Mail and F:/Mail/lesley folders Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp. D:\Documents and Settings\Me>F: F:\>cd mail F:\Mail>dir Volume in drive F is FIDDLYDOODU Volume Serial Number is 4834-8138 Directory of F:\Mail 07/12/2004 15:21 <DIR> . 07/12/2004 15:21 <DIR> .. 07/12/2004 15:21 <DIR> lesley 0 File(s) 0 bytes 3 Dir(s) 369,319,936 bytes free F:\Mail>cd lesley F:\Mail\lesley>dir Volume in drive F is FIDDLYDOODU Volume Serial Number is 4834-8138 Directory of F:\Mail\lesley 07/12/2004 15:21 <DIR> . 07/12/2004 15:21 <DIR> .. 07/12/2004 15:25 <DIR> Mates.sbd 07/12/2004 15:26 1,545 Mates.msf 07/12/2004 15:25 0 Mates 07/12/2004 15:26 0 Inbox 07/12/2004 15:26 0 Trash 07/12/2004 15:26 0 Sent 07/12/2004 15:26 0 Drafts 07/12/2004 15:26 0 Unsent Messages 07/12/2004 15:26 <DIR> Inbox.sbd 07/12/2004 15:48 1,357 Inbox.msf 07/12/2004 15:26 <DIR> Trash.sbd 07/12/2004 15:32 1,433 Trash.msf 07/12/2004 15:26 <DIR> Sent.sbd 07/12/2004 15:32 1,476 Sent.msf 07/12/2004 15:26 <DIR> Drafts.sbd 07/12/2004 15:32 1,478 Drafts.msf 07/12/2004 15:26 <DIR> Unsent Messages.sbd 07/12/2004 15:32 1,443 Unsent Messages.msf 07/12/2004 15:32 1,239 Templates.msf 07/12/2004 15:32 1,236 Junk.msf 14 File(s) 11,207 bytes 8 Dir(s) 369,319,936 bytes free F:\Mail\lesley> All changes to file locations, renaming of New Folders etc that were necessary have been done using the dialog boxes available in Thunderbird. I used the Windows API dialog box to change the default installation when installing. That's what Thunderbird uses in the installation process and when selecting a different location for the mail boxes.(*) As an update to this I have found the mail in the default location of D;/ Documents and Settings/.../Application Data/Thunderbird and am relieved they are there. Quite why my original search on the D drive for 'Mail', 'Inbox' and subsequently 'Thunderbird' didn't return that directory, I don't know. I think I need to understand more about the Local Folders versus account folders. Ho hum... ok so it's not an email shredder. I think I am going to save my emails somewhere safe then uninstall and re-install Thunderbird and repeat the operations. Thanks for your time on this David. Regards Lesley (*)I don't know if you use a Windoze install or not, but when you ask to install in a different directory other than the default, or when you ask to use a different mail folder location other than the default, both present a browse button. When you hit that browse button you get a dialog box which contains, amongst other things, a directory tree, a text field in which to enter a filename, and three buttons (Make New Folder, OK and Cancel). The essence is that, despite different starting directories, and possibly different strings, that dialog box is the same. I don't know about Linux window managers but the Windows window manager provides an API to this kind of operation. (A possible MFC class I might use to implement such a thing is CFileDialog. I'm only referring to books at this stage, I don't have an MS development setup on this machine to test that proposition. ) The sub-bug I have encountered is that, when making a new folder, that new folder appears as New Folder in the file text field box and in the directory tree. When renaming the 'New Folder' to something else (e.g. 'Mates', 'fredbloggs' or whatever you want), via the directory tree in the dialog window, the change to the name does not appear in the file text field and, while changing installation directory and while setting up the new mailbox location all I got was F:/New Folder. I had to stop and restart Thunderbird and then reselect the directories I wanted to use. I'll go through it all a second time and let you know the results.
OK I removed Thunderbird using Control Panel->Add or Remove Programs. Installation directory not left empty so renamed it to Thunderbird.old.(*) Reinstalled Thunderbird and it recalled my old settings and had 126 emails so quit, uninstalled using Control Panel->Add or Remove Programs and then deleted D:/Documents and Settings/.../Application Data/Thunderbird to fully remove previous install. Re installed and got correct installation. This time, I changed the name of installation folder to Thunderbird while the New Folder leaf in the directory tree was activated and open to be changed. The name change was not reflected in the text field but was successfully reflected in the rest of the isntallation process. (If you miss changing it while that leaf is open to be changed, then the name change is not reflected back into the installation process.) I selected Custom install, and added the Quality Feedback Agent. This time I delinked my user account from Local Folders and have set my user account to point to F:/Mail/lesley. Having copied the contents of the previous default folder into that directory I now have 63 emails sitting there quite happily. Currently seems to be ok. May reinstall later using completely new mail folder locations again. I think the significant change is I have delinked user account from local folders. Drag and drop seems to work ok. Relieved to have email back! Application Data seems to be a hidden folder on D: which may have affected previous search results. Regards Lesley (*) 1. The installation directory, F:/Thunderbird was not left empty. Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp. D:\Documents and Settings\Me>F: F:\>cd thunderbird.old F:\Thunderbird.old>dir Volume in drive F is FIDDLYDOODU Volume Serial Number is 4834-8138 Directory of F:\Thunderbird.old 07/12/2004 15:12 <DIR> . 07/12/2004 15:12 <DIR> .. 07/12/2004 15:14 3,071 install_wizard.log 07/12/2004 15:14 <DIR> !uninstall 07/12/2004 15:14 24 defaults.ini 07/12/2004 15:14 <DIR> extensions 07/12/2004 15:14 24 components.ini 07/12/2004 15:14 <DIR> chrome 3 File(s) 3,119 bytes 5 Dir(s) 381,095,936 bytes free F:\Thunderbird.old>
QA Contact: esther → database
Product: Core → MailNews Core
Davidb, in comment 6 wrote "we should handle sub-directories that have no corresponding mailbox file, e.g., if there's a directory called Parent.sbd, but no file called Parent, we should still show Parent and the mailboxes in the Parent directory." does problem still exist?
Severity: critical → major
I'm pretty sure it does - we should also not require that the directory have the .sbd extension, I think, though we have to be careful not to include indexer directories, like .mozmsgs, if they're in the same dirs as the mailbox files.
Assignee: dbienvenu → nobody
See Also: → 657195
Severity: major → normal
OS: Windows XP → All
Severity: normal → S3
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