268938 - Re-organizing Mail Folders needs to become more robust -- It is possible to drop lots of mail into a black hole

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[David A. Cobb]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041108 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041108 Firefox/1.0

Sadly, the root cause of discovering this problem is a combination of a noisy
mouse and a loose nut holding the mouse; however, while noone can make the
software damn-fool proof, it should not be so easy to blow your foot off at the
knee.

When a branch of the folder tree is moved around, a sequence of file-moves is
run.  At certain places this process can go horribly wrong.  Recently, my mouse
chattered [electrically speaking] and told the program to move a large branch
into a spot to which they could not be completely moved.  Possibly, this would
have caused a cycle in the directory tree -- since I wasn't planning to drop
stuff wherever it was I am not sure where.  

Thunderbird went and appeared to consider doing as asked.  Somewhere in the
process it failed -- not surprising.  What is not acceptable is that it wound up
tossing all my mailbox files into a black hole.  Really, they are just totally
gone: not even in the RECYCLER.  This makes me very angry!  The mouse has been
taken out and shot, but that doesn't really help.  

The following algorithm would be much more robust, IMNSHO.
Starting at the base of the branch being moved, create the destination folder
(.sbd) and the zero-length mailbox file that apparently allows the program to
see the folder.  If the summary (.msf) are important, create empty ones. 
Recurse through the From branch.  Off the top of my head, I think remembering
only the base of the destination branch is sufficient.

OOPS: something went wrong [cannot create a destination file/directory for
whatever reason] -- remove the destination branch, leaving the From branch where
it was, intact.  

Most of what can go wrong has now been done.  Whatever sequence is most
convenient for the actual copies should work.  I suppose the safest would be a
depth-first traversal of the From branch.

If, and only if, the entire branch moved safely should the From branch be deleted.  


Reproducible: Didn't try
Steps to Reproduce:
1.  I can't risk my entire mailstore by reproducing this - I might succeed.
It will take some time to create a dummy environment where I can experiment.

Comment 1

[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:
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Comment 2

[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.