271877 - GUI 'Moving Folder' does not complete

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 281002

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[David A. Cobb]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a5) Gecko/20041121 Firefox/0.9.1+
Build Identifier: Thunderbird Trunk version 0.6+ (20041121) -- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a5) Gecko/20041121 Firefox/0.9.1+

Trying to re-arrange parts of my Local Folders archive, I find that most or all
folder moves fail to complete.  The result is that some pieces are left in the
old location, some are created in the new location.  Fixing it requires to go
into the archive directly from outside Thunderbird and moving things about by
hand.  

It appears that this occurs when the object being moved is a real 'Folder' --
i.e. "*.sbd" which contains non-empty terminal real mailboxes ( no-extension
files with non-zero length ).

I find that Thunderbird has created ".sbd" directories corresponding to the
terminal mailboxes where there was none originally, then silently failed.  
Whatever didn't get moved before the failure stays where it was.  

Because of the "abnormal" state in which the folders are left, even trying to
move the unmoved terminal mailboxes individually using the GUI drag'n'drop now
fails.  



Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set up a folder hierarchy in Local Folders; say:
I
I/A
I/A/b
I/A/b/t1
I/A/b/t2
II

2. Using the drag'n'drop in the folders tree panel, drag "A" and drop it into "II"
3.  Wait patiently until you thing the disk is quiescent ['cause there is no
indication that T-Bird is working or finished]

Actual Results:  
I
I/A
I/A/b

I/A/b/t2
II
II/A
II/A/b


Expected Results:  
I

II/A
II/A/b
II/A/b/t1
II/A/b/t2

Comment 1

[Graham Klyne]

I have experienced something very like this with my new installation of
Thunderbird 1.06.  Moving folder trees sometimes results in duplication of
folders in old and new location; loss of folders - removed from old location,
not appearing in new location, some folders moived, some not.

The folder structure was imported from Eudora 5.1, after a cleanup using Eudora
Rescue.  The total imported email archive was about 1.3Gb, and took about 6
hours to import, so reproducing the problem isn't really an option for me. 
Operating system is Windows XP, tablet edition, SP1.

Comment 2

[David :Bienvenu]

I believe this is fixed on the trunk - this sounds like the symptom described
here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=281002#c3 and fixed by the
fix for bug 281002

Comment 3

[William Bonnet]

Hi,

Yes it should fixed. I had a look at the patch and this should not happen.

The symptoms you described are what happened before the patch was applied. Now
if the copy fail there is a "rollback". Source folder is no longer deleted until
all the destination files are successfully written. Then, source is recursivly
deleted. But only after ALL the files are written.

Please can you double check your thunderbird version ?

If you use version 1.0.2 (or more), and if the problem still exist, then i would
bet on a bug in the copy function. The algorith has been fixed to handle copy
failure, but if the copy function fails and return a success code, then my patch
cannot work.

Can you check please the two following points :

1/ After the copy failed, were all the target directory created but empty ? 
2/ Was your hard drive almost full or full ? 

I would bet on the following bug...

Since you are moving a lot of data (1.3Gb), and since the move algorithm is a
"copy all to destination then delete source" algorithm, you need enough space to
store twice your data.

If during the copy you filled your hard drive, and if there is a bug under
windows that makes the copy function fail when there no more space (thus make it
return a success code instead of an error code), this could be the answer.

I'll check it as soon as i get back my internet connection at home (mid august).
Sorry not before :(

Kind regards

Comment 4

[Graham Klyne]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Please can you double check your thunderbird version ?

From the "about" box:  version 1.0.6 (20050716)

> Can you check please the two following points :
> 
> 1/ After the copy failed, were all the target directory created but empty ? 

I was trying to copy many directories, nested 3-4 deep.  As far as I can recall,
there were no instances of partially copied folders:  either the folders were
copied completely (not including sub-folders), or were not copied at all.

As I remember it, what did happen is that the copy seemed to stop inexplicably
part way through the sub-folders.  The commonest outcome was that some folders
were moved and some were not.  I was repeatedly unable to move the folders that
failed, even when I tried to move them individually, though I was able to select
all the messages and move them to a folder in the new location.  But in some
cases, when trying to move a very large tree, the original folders that had not
been copied had been removed from their original locations.

Now that I've restored the original folders from the backup copy, I could have
another attempt sometime and try to be more specific about the outcome.

> 2/ Was your hard drive almost full or full ? 

No -- I have just upgraded the hard drive in my laptop precisely so I had enough
disk capacity to convert my old Eudora mail to Thunderbird.

The drive partition on which I keep my mail currently shows 3.73Gb free, of
which 1.4Gb is my current Thunderbird mail directory tree, 1.34Gb is my old
Eudora mail folders after conversion with Eudora Rescue, and 1.39Gb is my
unconverted Eudora mail folder.  The total partition size is now 10Gb (was
previously 4Gb).

> > I would bet on the following bug...
> 
> Since you are moving a lot of data (1.3Gb), and since the move algorithm is a
> "copy all to destination then delete source" algorithm, you need enough space to
> store twice your data.

I think I have easily that amount of space (see above).

If I can confirm my old Eudora mail backups are safe and sound, I could try
deleting the "just in case" online copies before copying -- that should give me
at leat 4x mail directories size in free space, instead of just over 2x at present.

> If during the copy you filled your hard drive, and if there is a bug under
> windows that makes the copy function fail when there no more space (thus make it
> return a success code instead of an error code), this could be the answer.
> 
> I'll check it as soon as i get back my internet connection at home (mid august).
> Sorry not before :(

Well, this isn't urgent for me... I'm refraining from further re-arranging my
folders until the bug is fixed.  (I would just use explorer to re-arrange the
directories, but I'd like mail filters to be updated too.)

#g

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Graham, William, is this still a problem?

Comment 6

[Graham Klyne]

You ask if it's still a problem for me...

To be honest, I haven't dared to risk doing bulk folder moves again because of the previous problem, being unsure if the bug fix noted was before or after the Thunderbird version I was using, and not wanting to have to clean up the mess again.

If you think it has bee fixed since 1.0.6, and when I get some time to ensure I have exact backups available, I could have another try.  I'm now using Thunderbird 1.5.0.2.

#g

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 281002 ***