268000 - Cannot connect to imap server

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Randy Hall]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10.1
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 0.9 (20041103) on win32

Thunderbird 0.9 fails to connect to an IMAP server on my Win2K PC,
while 0.8 works just fine.  When 0.9 first attempts to connect, I
quickly get an Alert popup which says:
  Could not connect to mail server <my-mail-server.com>; the connection was refused.
I have no problems pinging or otherwise connecting to this same
server using other mail clients including Thunderbird 0.8.

Someone suggested I enable logging and see if that showed anything.
There is one subtle difference between the 0.8 and 0.9 logs.

The logs begin the same ...
0[234540]: 2658598:<my-mail-server.com>:NA:SetupWithUrl: clearing
IMAP_CONNECTION_IS_OPEN
1196[264ced0]: ImapThreadMainLoop entering [this=2658598]
1196[264ced0]: 2658598:<my-mail-server.com>:NA:ProcessCurrentURL: entering
1196[264ced0]:
2658598:<my-mail-server.com>:NA:ProcessCurrentURL:imap://<[e-mail]>:143/select%3E/INBOX:
= currentUrl

Here is the first difference ...
0.8 (works):
1996[2795ae8]: ReadNextLine [stream=277e190 nb=111 needmore=0]
0.9 (fails):
1196[264ced0]: ReadNextLine [stream=2647310 nb=0 needmore=1]

Notice the nb and needmore values are different. I have no idea what this might
indicate.
It is at this point that I connect successfully in 0.8 and get an alert that my
connection failed in 0.9.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Unfortunately, I could not reproduce this on another PC.
2. I have uninstalled/reinstalled 0.9 at least 6 times, including
installing it from a copy someone else downloaded.  I also verified
that the copy I installed from worked on another machine.
3. Others have reported similar problems in the MozillaZine formums.
Actual Results:  
I have never succeeded in connecting via 0.9 on my PC.

Expected Results:  
After starting from scratch, I would expect it should connect.

I've been using Thunderbird since about 0.5.
When I attempted to upgrade from 0.8 to 0.9,
I could no longer connect to my IMAP server.
I even completely uninstalled, removed my profile,
purged references to thunderbird in my registry,
rebooted my PC, and started from scratch.
Still, 0.8 will work, 0.9 will not.

I'm running Windows 2000 Pro at work, and
connecting to the corporate IMAP server.

I have no problems connecting with 0.8 or
with other mail clients.  Even if I use the
same profile from 0.8 to 0.9, it still will
not connect.  FWIW, I was able to make 0.9
work on another Win2K PC on the same network.
Very frustrating!

Comment 1

[Randy Hall]

Today I decided to try 1.0.  I started out having the same problem.
For some reason, I thought to tinker with my firewall client today.
I had disabled my firewall a few months ago because it was causing
problems with another program.  In fact, I was no longer even loading
it after reboots when I first reported this bug.
I decided to try starting it up again and see what would happen.
Voila!  Now I can connect.  Sigh.  After I connected successfully,
I again disabled the firewall, and even rebooted without restarting
it, and I am still able to connect.

I still don't really understand how the firewall could prevent
Thunderbird from connecting when it wasn't even started, but it
certainly seems to have done something.

The firewall is Symantec Client Firewall 5.1.0.0

So this seems to not be a problem in Thunderbird, at least
in my case.  I'm going to resolve this as "INVALID".