233264 - staled(?) connection to imap servers when changing local IP due to dhcp update, ...

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[Patrick Cernko]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040204 Debian/1.6-1

Whenever the local host IP changes, e.g. due to:

* the DHCP server in the lan renew it to a different one
* you close you dialup connection and dial in again
* you put your (mobile) host into another LAN

A connection to the already used IMAP servers is not possible.

There is obviously a valid network connection of the host (you can ping the
server) and it is also reachable via the same IP as before (there is a bug in
the db describing a problem, when the host is now reachable via another IP due
to a now possible LAN- instead of WAN-connection).

MailNews simple does not detect the change happened and all I can see, when I
click on a message, which was not downloaded before, is the
hourglass-Mouse-Pointer, a animated Mozilla-Icon (signaling network traffic if I
am right) and the status bar message "Loading message...".

A change to "offline-mode" and back to "online-mode" again also does not help.
The only solution I had in the past, was to shutdown the hole mozilla (including
browser,...) and restart it.

I think the problem is that mozilla tries to use its old TCP connection, which
will not work any more due to the IP change! I don't know, why it cannot
determine the the connection is broken!

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Read a mail from a IMAP server.
2. Leave MailNews open.
3. Force a change of the local IP, I did it by:
   ifdown eth0 # wired 100MBit Ethernet
   ifup eth1   # wireless 11MBit Ethernet
   alternatively, you may hang up modem connection and redial in (make sure, to
validate, that your provider gave you a _different_ IP address when redialing in!)
4. Back to MailNews: Try to select another message, which was not yet downloaded
from the IMAP server, you read your mail in 1.
Actual Results:  
First: nothing
After a few minutes of waiting: "Alert: could not connect to IMAP server ..."
(multiple times), even after that a connection was not possible, I did not see
the text of a newly selected message.

Expected Results:  
First: downloading and displaying the mail body (reconnecting to server silently
in the background)

I don't think it is a buildconfig- or platform-specific problem, if you want, I
could make a test on windows also.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

if going offline and online again does not help, then the problem is not that
Mozilla is re-using a stale tcp connection, because going offline makes us
release all our tcp connections. My guess is either the problem is in the core
neworking code, or in linux itself...

Comment 2

[Kimmo Surakka]

This happens in MacOS X, too (at least with Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac
OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040316). Only difference is that after the
local IP changes and MailNews tries to connect to IMAP server, the whole
application freezes.

Comment 3

[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 4

[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.