271632 - Saved searches ("Virtual Folders") are lost between restarts - problem with contents of virtualFolders.dat file

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Joe McCabe]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a5) Gecko/20041123 Firefox/0.9.1+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a5) Gecko/20041123 Firefox/0.9.1+

When creating saved searches as subdirectories of real folders (on an IMAP
server) the virtualFolders.dat file is updated with the rules as expected:

-rw-rw-r--    1 dzm      dzm          1164 Nov 24 15:08 virtualFolders.dat

Exiting and launching ThunderBird, however, seems to lose the rules. A strace of
the behavior seems to indicate that ThunderBird is not reading the entire file:

7340  open("/home/dzm/.thunderbird/189nypdk.default/virtualFolders.dat",
O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 20
7340  read(20, "version=1\n", 1024)     = 10
7340  read(20, "", 1)                   = 0
7340  close(20)                         = 0

This /seems/ to tell me that ThunderBird is reading only the version=1 line from
the file, then closing the file.

Upon exit the file with the rules is over-writen with now empty rules:

-rw-rw-r--    1 dzm      dzm            10 Nov 24 15:19 virtualFolders.dat


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Define a saved search rule and save it as a sub-folder
2. Save it and exit ThunderBird
3. Launch ThunderBird

Saved searches are gone from UI. The next exit of TBird will wipe the
virtualFolders.dat file away.



This does not get lost:

uri=imap://jm95915@mail/01

This does get lost:

uri=imap://jm95915@mail/00_Me/Days/01

Comment 1

[Anders Betnér]

I'm using Thunderbird 1.0.2 on winxp sp2 and I have all my search folders at the
top level in the folder hierarchy. Every now and the virtualFolders.dat is
truncated as described above. It seems like it gets truncated and saved when
thunderbird starts. If I quit TB and restore a backup the folders are there again.

I've been trying to pin down when this happens, but so far it seems random. I
have use two different imap accounts and booth of them have virtual folders.

Comment 2

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: proposed fix

sort when search is done...

Comment 3

[chris hofmann]

Comment on attachment 182296 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

a=chofmann

Comment 4

[David :Bienvenu]

sorry, that patch is for the problem where the sort order is lost, not the whole
virtual folder...

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

do you see any errors on the js console when this happens? Are you using imap
subscription (account settings | server settings | advanced)? It's on by default.

Comment 6

[David :Bienvenu]

When you shut down, is the parent folder of the virtual folder expanded or
collapsed when you shut down? I'm seeing that the virtual folder does get
deleted if the parent folder is collapsed at shutdown, but I'm not seeing all
the other virtual folders get deleted.

Comment 7

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: proposed fix

when adding a virtual folder, make sure its ancestors are rooted, for the case
of imap server with a collapsed hierarchy.

Comment 8

[chris hofmann]

Comment on attachment 182507 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

a=chofmann

Comment 9

[Joe McCabe]

(In reply to comment #6)
> When you shut down, is the parent folder of the virtual folder expanded or
> collapsed when you shut down?

Hmm. Haven't explored this in a while, so don't recall. I suspect that the
parent folder was in an expanded state, but don't know for certain.

Need me to experiment a bit?

Comment 10

[David :Bienvenu]

well, you could try a recent trunk build and tell me if the problem still
happens. thx!

Comment 11

[Joe McCabe]

Umm. Well this is exciting.

Using 20050517 (built around 8:00am Pacific) I created a saved search into a
empty folder previously used to hold my saved searches. This was made difficult
because the "New Saved Search" dialogue refuses to populate the rules frame (Or
window? What is that section called?).

Anyway - Created a new rule into an empty folder. Saved it, left the parent
folder expanded, and quit TBird. Launched TBird. The saved folder is present,
and so are the six saved folders that have been deleted more a month ago (I had
bandwidth problems and stopped using the feature). These six additional features
were _deleted_ previously, by me.

It seems that TBird somehow decided to copy the saved folders out of my backups
stored in my TBird directory (names like virtualFolders.dat_20050415).

It seems to really, really want to find the folders now. :)

[Time passes as I move the backups out of the way]

At this moment I am not able to reproduce the vanishing vF behavior.

Comment 12

[Henrik Gemal]

I just lost my virtualFolders.dat file today. recreated it from a backup. But
there are some condition that causes this bug.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

see this on TB trunk

steps:
1. create folder and shut down with account expanded

actual results:
folder doesn't appear on startup if account expanded prior to shutdown.
folder will appear after collapse and expand.

folder isn't "lost" - it can be seen in virtualfolders.dat - and can be proven also by attempting to create a second virtual folder of same name, it will say it already exists

many js errors of the form 
Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIBoxObject.getProperty]"  nsresult: "0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame :: chrome://global/content/bindings/textbox.xml ::  :: line 102"  data: no]
that might be an add-on

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Henrik comment #12
> I just lost my virtualFolders.dat file today. recreated it from a backup. But
> there are some condition that causes this bug.

Henrik, might this have been bug 292229?

if you no longer see problem then this can be closed WFM per comment 11


(In reply to comment #13)
> steps:
> 1. create folder and shut down with account expanded
> actual results:
> folder doesn't appear on startup if account expanded prior to shutdown.

was bug 364519 


> many js errors of the form 
> Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code:
> 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIBoxObject.getProperty]"  nsresult:
> "0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame ::
> chrome://global/content/bindings/textbox.xml ::  :: line 102"  data: no]

this was bug 359773

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

closing FIXED based on comment 11.
Henrik's file loss should be a different sort of problem.
(ignore first part of comment 13 - VF's not appearing after start on trunk is bug 364519)