270268 - Thunderbird is hitting the server 1000+ times per minute

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 270249

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[amy]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 0.9

I am a student living on campus at Penn State University, main campus. I have
been using Thunderbird to check my Penn State (@psu.edu) E-mail since mid
September. From my end, it seems to be working fine, and I find it much easier
to use than their Webmail.psu.edu. Apparently, Thunderbird is causing some
problems for the server, but I am not sure if it is Penn State's fault of
Thunderbird's fault. 
I got a phone call a few weeks ago from Penn State Security, and they informed
me that Thunderbird was going out to the server 100-1,000 or more times per
minute. At that time, I had Thunderbird 0.7.3. Going out to the server this many
times was making it so that other people on campus could not check their
@psu.edu E-mail online. Apparently, there were a few other people on campus that
were having the same problem. I have the options set to check for new messages
every 2 minutes. I downloaded TB 0.9, to see if that would fix the problem, and
it seemed to, but then, last night, I got the following E-mail:

>Unfortunately, your computer was abusing the POP server again. To stop the
>activity, the Postmaster has blackholed your connection.

>Here is an excerpt from the logs:

>Nov 15 00:01:39 f07g05.cac.psu.edu From seawolf: popper: -ERR adp5001 must
wait 2 seconds before checking mail again.
>Nov 15 00:01:39 f07g05.cac.psu.edu From seawolf: popper: -ERR adp5001 must
wait 2 seconds before checking mail again.
>Nov 15 00:01:39 f07g05.cac.psu.edu From seawolf: popper: -ERR adp5001 must
wait 2 seconds before checking mail again.
>Nov 15 00:01:39 f07g05.cac.psu.edu From seawolf: popper: -ERR adp5001 must
wait 2 seconds before checking mail again.
>Nov 15 00:01:39 f07g05.cac.psu.edu From seawolf: popper: -ERR adp5001 must
wait 2 seconds before checking mail again.
>Nov 15 00:01:39 f07g05.cac.psu.edu From seawolf: popper: -ERR adp5001 must
wait 2 seconds before checking mail again.
>Nov 15 00:01:39 f07g05.cac.psu.edu From seawolf: popper: -ERR adp5001 must
wait 2 seconds before checking mail again.
>Nov 15 00:01:39 f07g05.cac.psu.edu From seawolf: popper: -ERR adp5001 must
wait 2 seconds before checking mail again.
>Nov 15 00:01:40 f07g05.cac.psu.edu From seawolf: popper: User adp5001 from
**.**.**.*** 0 0 1
<<**.**.**.*** represents my ISP>>

>Your connection will remain blackholed until the problem can resolved.

Apparently, since I installed TB 0.9, there wasn't a problem until last night.
Does that log appear to be TB's fault or Penn State's? If it is PSU's fault, any
suggestions of what I could tell them to do to fix it? It looks to me like that
"seawolf" computer might be somewhat responsible for the repeated checkings, as
if "seawolf" is encouraging TB to check back too often, but maybe it's TB...
I just did a virus scan (Symantic) last night, and I did Spybot and Ad-Aware
this morning, but maybe there is something on my computer that they don't
find... I updated each right before I used it, but I did hear from someone that
they had to find a virus that was causing them different problems (they don't
even use TB) by going through the list of Running Processes in Task Manager and
deleting the bad one, but I don't even know how I would go about looking for a
virus or something on my own... I don't know what is good and what is bad.
Ignorance is not always bliss.

Do you have any suggestions as to what I can do or what Penn State can do to fix
this problem? Or is this a Thunderbird Bug that could be fixed for a future TB
version?

Thank you very much for your help... I hope I am contacting the right place... I
have been communicating with a few people on your Thunderbird Bugs forum... That
conversation is titled: Mail checks about 1,000 times per minute :(

AMY

Reproducible: Didn't try
Steps to Reproduce:
I don't know how to reproduce the problem... it seems pretty random... Security
just notified me to let me know that they were blocking Thunderbird from the
server and that I would not be able to use TB again until the problem was fixed.
Actual Results:  
N/A

Expected Results:  
TB should have behaved itself and not gone absolutely nuts when communicating
with "seafox"

The problem does not occur if I disconnect from the internet by blocking
internet traffic using Zone Alarm or pulling the internet cable, but I am not
sure if just telling TB to not check automatically for messages would fix the
problem. 

The problem has occured using both Thunderbird 0.7.3 and Thunderbird 0.9

Comment 1

[OstGote!]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 270249 ***