Closed Bug 233816 Opened 20 years ago Closed 16 years ago

IMAP Mail folders lost when server connection is lost

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

x86
Windows XP
defect
Not set
major

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 213827

People

(Reporter: navneetkarnani, Assigned: Bienvenu)

References

Details

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

I have several imap accounts and POP3 accounts configured. 

Some times, when i am checking mail, it gives me a message:

Server xxx has gone away. It may be disconnected

And then all the folders in my IMAP acocunt disappear. 

The work around for this is to close Thunderbird and start it again. But then,
all my downloaded mails are lost. So i have to fetch all the mails in all the
folders again. I cannot use the offline feature because this happens frequently
and i cannot afford to download all of 100 mb of mails all the time.

I think it might be happening because i click Get Mail on this account twice
within a very short time. but not sure since this has happened at othertimes too.

Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.
Forgot to mention. This is with Thunderbird 0.5
I can confirm exactly the same thing in Thunderbird 0.5 on WXP with the Offline
extension. Happened so far twice, immediately after changing from off-line to
on-line state. Volume of mail was ~160MB
I have a similiar behaviour.  If I close a window/shut down TB while network
activity is being performed, TB appears (randomly) to lose the memory of the
messages for the open folder.  I have TB configured to download messages
(because I use stuff offline)

This is most noticeable in my INBOX (as it's the most open folder) and I always
keep my INBOX small (~100 emails, < 3 Mb)

It is more reproduceable on a dial-up connection, on my broadband (Cable) it
"almost never occurs", whereas on dial-up it will occur 1-2 per day (unless I'm
really careful).

I now use the Windows Task Manager to check for network activity before shutting
down TB, and that seems to have a great correlation with not losing synch
between my local folders and my server.

This has happened with all versions of Mozilla Mail using IMAP, and all versions
of TB.  (I switched to TB because I hoped the codebase would have fixed this
problem, it's the only thing that makes me keep looking for new IMAP clients)
Exactly the same thing on my TB. (0.73) It is very annonying.
(In reply to comment #4)
> Exactly the same thing on my TB. (0.73) It is very annonying.

Update: The same on 0.8
can you try a newer .8 build? I checked in a fix on 09/16 that as a side effect
might help this problem, 
(In reply to comment #6)

> can you try a newer .8 build? I checked in a fix on 09/16 that as a side effect
> might help this problem, 

No, the same problem.

This is driving me nuts.
I have had the same problem since starting to use Thunderbird (with 0.4 i think)

I still experience this problem using Thunderbird version 1.0 (20041206) on
Windows XP Service Pack 2.

I use SSH tunnels to connect to some of my IMAP accounts, and if the ssh
connection goes down while thunderbird is online, I lose all my downloaded mail
in ALL folders for the account.

It seems that I get the warning dialog once - 
"Could not connect to mail server localhost; the connection was refused."
If I dismiss this dialog, and go offline right away, I can save my mail, but: -

(SOMETIMES!!, not always) If I click on a mailbox in this account again, all
folders are removed, and all or some of the .msf files in profile_dir for this
mailaccount are deleted. sometimes, i have discovered through testing, I am able
to dismiss the connection refused dialog several times before the offline
folders get deleted.

I then have to close and reopen thunderbird before it will attempt to login to
this server again:
 Right clicking the accountname and selecting "Get messages for this account"
appears to do nothing.
 The subscribe dialog will sit with "Please Wait..." seemingly forever

What's more, NONE of what I describe above has 100% reproducibility.

Sometimes, only the .msf files for the folder I was trying to access are
deleted, although they are all usually deleted on closing and reopening TB.

One time, on closing and opening TB, it moved sent-mail to sent-mail-1, created
a new sent-mail, then after accessing the server and retrieve the list fo
folders, it deleted sent-mail-1.


I see this as just part of bizarre IMAP functionality on slow connections. I
rarely have trouble with IMAP on a LAN.

I agree with Jon Eaves, I noticed this behaviour in Mozilla too, and I wish it
could be fixed, yet this bug is still UNCONFIRMED. why?

Still, apart from the nasty surprises with IMAP functionality on slow
connections - Thunderbird keeps getting better, thank you!

Keith.


*** Bug 309930 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I'm still experiencing those dificulties on macosx. I'm using version 1.5 Beta 1
(20050908). I think that there is just some function in imap which if cannot
connect to server just erases those mail folders. This is very annoying, because
I travel quite a lot, and sometimes on the airport you connect to some network
which is disabled for you, and it's gone. I would like to have TB to switch to
offline mode when some connection problems occurs. This would be the safest
thing to keep your data...
dup of bug 213827?
When going online, using IMAP, occasionally if the server is accepting login, but the folder server is down, then Thunderbird deletes all local IMAP folders.

Have been unable to restore folders other than through resubscribing and then redownloading.

Currently using Thunderbird 1.0.6 (20050716)
there have been fixes in this area, so I would recommend 1.5 over 1.06 But it sounds like it still happens to some 1.5 users.
Assignee: mscott → bienvenu
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
This certainly still happens with 1.5.0.7.  I use an IMAP account where I have to open up an SSH tunnel before connecting with Thunderbird.  If I forget to open the tunnel before checking the account, I get a connection refused and then Thunderbird throws away every message.  When I restart, the folders are back, but no messages, and I have to re-downlown them all.
QA Contact: front-end
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 16 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
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