272183 - Mail lost after various attempt to download from smtp server

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Cesare Leonardi]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; it-IT; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; it-IT; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0

At work i've switched some Windows 2000 client to Thunderbird particularly
because of the "do not download messages larger than" feature. Due to various
problems with our broadband connection, for some days we have reverted to an
ISDN internet access, shared by all the employees.
All the internet traffic (now and before) passed through a WinProxy machine that
made NAT and antivirus check over http, smtp and pop protocol. Mail clients were
configured with the WinProxy IP as smtp and pop server.

I think that these details are important to describe a problem that i found on
various Windows 2000 PCs with Tunderbird 0.9.
All mail client were(are) set to download only the first 20 KB and so, in many
cases, users had to click to download the rest of the messages. When users
checked for new mail, Thunderbird always downloaded correctly all mail headers
and the first 20 KB, but in various cases (i've noted for attachment > 1 MB)
when they clicked to download the rest, Mozilla's progress bar went back and
forth but after a while it stopped without error and without retrieve the
message. The problem is that after trying other times to retrieve the entire
message the mail itself vanished and sometimes also from the server! In some
other occasion i've made reappear the mail from the server deleting inbox,
inbox.msf and popstate.dat file.

I haven't found a regularity in such behaviour but tipically the mail deletion
happened the second or the third attempt of download. It was happended 4 or 5
times to 3 different person on different PCs during the week of ISDN. The fact
that the operating system was Windows 2000 Professional in all cases, i think is
a coincidence.

For test purposes, i've also tried to use another client (Outlook Express 6) and
it returned a timeout error message. In fact i suspect that, due to the low
bandwith, the mail retrieval was slow and maybe the Winproxy machine didn't send
keepalives to Thunderbid (and to every other mail client) or the intervals
between that were too long. Even if other big messages were correctly retrieved...

After ISDN, nobody has called me for mail vanishing, but, if my hypothesis is
correct, it is only less probable. In fact now we have an ADSL connection and
the available bandwith is bigger.

Sorry for my poor english.
Cheers.

Cesare.

Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Activate the "do not download messages larger than" options (i've used 20 KB);
2. Check for new mail;
3. Try to download a mail with big attachment (more than 1 MB);
4. If mail download hasn't happended and Thunderbird returned silently idle,
retry to download;

Actual Results:  
After some attempt (in my experience two or three times) the mail vanish from
the message pane and sometimes from the server.

Expected Results:  
An error message saying that the server doesn't respond.

Comment 1

[Cesare Leonardi]

I want to add a particular hoping that could be useful: after Thunderbird give
up mail retrieval silently, the connection with the pop server remains open. In
fact i have to wait it to timeout before retry.

Good night.   ;-)

Cesare.

Comment 2

[Cesare Leonardi]

Sorry, i've done a mistake in the subject. The problem is with POP server not SMTP.

However the problem i've explained was happened also this afternoon on another
machine at work: the user tried to download the entire message (the first 20 KB
was already retrieved), Tunderbird failed without error, the user has retried
and the message is disappeared. After i've verified that the mail was on the POP
server yet, i've compacted the inbox folder then quitted Thunderbird and deleted
the popstate.dat. At the next mail check the mail is reappered.

In this case i know that when the user have had this problem the proxy was under
maintenance and so the connection with Thunderbird might be compromised.

I think that Thunderbird doesn't receive any error message and simply wait until
timeout. But that doesn't justify the mail cancellation.

Cheers.

Cesare.

Comment 3

[J.M.Roth]

*download* from *smtp* server?

Comment 4

[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
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If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
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Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
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Comment 5

[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.