231924 - Close panacea.dat file after each use.

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(MailNews Core :: Database, defect)

Description

[:aceman]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031216 Firebird/0.7+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031216 Firebird/0.7+

The file mentioned in the summary is open for a very long time while Mozilla is
running, even though it may not be used often. If Mozilla or the OS crashes (or
the computer locks up even on a ultra stable OS), this file may get corrupted.
When this happens, data in this file is lost (partly because Mozilla recreates
corrupt files from scratch). And users may not able to access their profile
(data) anymore.

The point of this bug is a request to close the file after each usage. Ideally
the file should be closed immediatelly, when the operation is done. For
performance, it would be better to close it only after several seconds, but that
may be difficult to code. Maybe it can be left on the OS cache to handle the
frequent opening and closing of the file.

We can try it now in the 1.7 alpha stage.

See bug 231606 for further details on the general problem.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

the fix for bug 221797 should handle this, at least on win98, and is checked in.
 Mozilla Mail uses this particular file every time you make any change to a
folder (e.g., reading a message, deleting a message, retrieving new mail) so
this file is a poor candiate for closing.

Comment 2

[:aceman]

Yes, I found that bug AFTER I filed these, see the meta bug.

It looks like it was checked into 1.6 therefore I will have chance to test it.
Then I will close the bugs it fixes.

> Mozilla Mail uses this particular file every time you make any change to a
>folder (e.g., reading a message, deleting a message, retrieving new mail) so
>this file is a poor candiate for closing.

That's why I proposed the timeout. Another solution could be to cache the
changes in memory until some time (minutes or number of changes) and then open
the file, write them, close it.

Comment 3

[:aceman]

I have done some tests in bug 231606, which seem to indicate that it is no
longer necessary to really close the file.

I will not close this bug so far, but will change it to minor until I can be
sure the current implementation is really safe.

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.