240307 - Large text attachments cause Thunderbird to hang on reply

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[ccrawford]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Build Identifier: 

Large plain text attachments cause thunderbird to hang, due to displaying the 
attached item in to message's display window. Replying to this message 
(if/when it comes up) causes thunderbird to hang/crash due to very large 
quoted text.



Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Get an email with a large (5mb+) text attachment
2 [review]. Click on email to show in preview pain
3. Watch Thunderbird chug for awhile
4. Reply to message
5. Watch Thunderbird hang on compose window

Actual Results:  
Thunderbird hangs when replying to a message with a large text attachment - 
again, due to the text being included in the message body.

Expected Results:  
Thunderbird should not include _any_ attachment in reply quoted text. (or make 
it a preference, possibly a reply preference)

Marking this as major because it causes crashes/hangs.

Possible fixes:

1) still show text attachments in the body of a message, but when replying do 
not include the text in the reply quote

2) include an option to never show attachments in the body of a message (and 
not to be included in a reply)

Comment 1

[Adam Hauner]

ccrawford: Are you able to reproduce with Thunderbird 0.7.x? Could you provide
TalkBack incident ID in such case?

Comment 2

[ccrawford]

Sorry for being slow on this... when testing with 0.7.2 it won't actually crash
but will simply hang for many minutes before completely drawing the Compose
window (the whole app is hung during this period, including the main
inbox/folders window). If I X out the Compose window before it's done hanging
then Windows asks if I want to close the unresponding program, but it doesn't
activate the crash feedback program. I'm going to install 0.7.3 here in a bit,
so I will try again with that.

Comment 3

[Phil Endecott]

Looks like bug #161775.

Comment 4

[Adam Hauner]

ccrawford: Are you able to reproduce with Thunderbird 1.0 release?

Comment 5

[ccrawford]

(In reply to comment #4)
> ccrawford: Are you able to reproduce with Thunderbird 1.0 release?

Yes. Doesn't crash, but certainly hangs. I've waited up to 10 minutes and ended
up having to kill it.

Comment 6

[Adam Hauner]

My friend confirm this on WinXP, with 10 MB text attachement Thundebird was
really very slow on fast computer while displaying - several minutes to finish.

Comment 7

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

I'm using a trunk build and that can't deal with big attachments at all. I
received several mails with big JPG images (several MB each) and the statusbar
said "downloading message" which took a while. After that it downloaded the
attachments again this time actually displaying them inline. Trying to save the
images just left me with an empty save dialog (no progressbar or other data
displayed). Eventually I had to kill TBird and configure KMail to get the mails
and delete them from the account to make TBird work again.

Comment 8

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Expected Results:  
> Thunderbird should not include _any_ attachment in reply quoted text. (or make 
> it a preference, possibly a reply preference)

This is bug 161775.

Workaround: turn off   View | Display Attachments Inline   before replying.

It would be instructive to determine if a "very large" mail message (without an 
attachment) also hung.

Removing "crash" keyword per comment 2 and comment 5.

Comment 9

[ccrawford]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Workaround: turn off   View | Display Attachments Inline   before replying.

Your workaround is not available in Thunderbird, that I have seen.

Comment 10

[ccrawford]

(In reply to comment #9)
Whoops, sorry, it is available (misread your suggestion). I guess that'd work
except that you have to open the message in order to have that option, which
could take days in and of itself. ;)

Comment 11

[ccrawford]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Workaround: turn off   View | Display Attachments Inline   before replying.

I just tried this and wanted to let everyone know that this actually does not
work. It semes to ignore text documents as attachments and includes them inline
regardless if I have this option selected or not. Version 1.0.2.

Comment 12

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #11)
> It semes to ignore text documents as attachments and includes them
> inline regardless if I have this option selected or not. Version 1.0.2.

You are quite mistaken about this.  (Your comment 10 is also incorrect -- the 
menu option is available in the top-level menu.)

Do you actually mean the attachment is included regardless of the option, or do 
you mean that you see the hang regardless of the option?  Bug 256194 appears to 
report the latter.

Comment 13

[ccrawford]

(In reply to comment #12)
> Do you actually mean the attachment is included regardless of the option, or do 
> you mean that you see the hang regardless of the option?  Bug 256194 appears to 
> report the latter.

I meant that the workaround described in Comment #8 does not work. However, it
appears it *does* work, I was just looking at an email that had the text as part
of the actual message and as an attachment - so I thought it wasn't going away
when I selected that option. Testing with other messages shows that, indeed, it
does remove the text document from being displayed inline. If someone can delete
these last 3 comments it wouldn't hurt! :)

Comment 14

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Can anyone still reproduce this with a recent branch or trunk build? In a case where bug 161775 wouldn't fix it?

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-mozilla1.8/

Comment 15

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #14)
> Can anyone still reproduce this with a recent branch or trunk build?
> In a case where bug 161775 wouldn't fix it?

Just to be clear: Bug 161775 is still open, because it's about all types of attachments.  A patch was checked in (on trunk) at bug 358124 to prevent 
text/plain attachments from being quoted in the reply.

Comment 16

[towsonu2003]

do you still need testing? if so, can you attach a 5mb or so text document? 

PS. I see small hangs when the email that is being replied to is a little longer than 5-6 paragraphs... 

Comment 17

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

Reporter, does the problem still occur in the latest Thunderbird version, as of now 2.0.0.9?

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

(Thunderbird 1.5.0.x has reached end-of-life, as are prior versions 1.0.x and 0.x.)

-- adding myself to cc list

Comment 18

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

Almost two weeks with no new information / comments, with Thunderbird 1.5.0.x having been end-of-life, bug has been resolved incomplete. Please reopen if anyone strongly feels otherwise, providing more information at the same time.

At the time of writing, the latest supported Thunderbird version is 2.0.0.12 and can be downloaded at http://www.getthunderbird.com/