272728 - XML attachments freeze Thunderbird

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Milind Rao]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3

Even a fairly small XML attachment freezes Thunderbird (0.9).  The CPU pegs at
100%.  I received a mail with 4 XML files.  They were 58 KB, 606 KB, 13 KB and 6
KB.  Merely clicking on the mail with the attachments took about 3 minutes to
display the message in the message window.  In the meanwhile, I couldn't use TB
and barely use the computer.  Anything to do with the message would cause a
problem.  Such as Compacting a folder.  I finally had to kill the app after
waiting for about 5 minutes.

This is quite likely a Mozilla bug.  Mozilla also takes an inordinately long
time to display even moderate sized XML files.  Apparently the problem is
pretty-print.  That bug has no takers and as far as I'm concerned, Mozilla is
useless for viewing XML files.  I have set IE to be the default viewer for XML
files.  This and Flash are the only two times I fire up IE now.

While I can use IE as a workaround for XML files, I can do nothing in TB.  This
is a much more severe problem in TB, since merely clicking on any message whose
content I may have not be aware of will just hang TB.

I did try to add a userpref 
user_pref("mail.inline_attachments", false);
but that didn't help.  

I think if I can turn off inline attachments, that would be an acceptable
workaround although it was nice to view HTML attachments inline.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Send yourself a message with an XML file of about 600 KB
2.On receiving the message, click on it.

Actual Results:  
Thunderbird hung for about 3 minutes.

Expected Results:  
Diaplayed the message

Comment 1

[Milind Rao]

Some more info

1. My Sent mbox file is 58 MB.  If after sending myself the mail, I click on the
message, it takes about 3-4 seconds and displays the message.  My Inbox mbox
file is 166 MB.  It takes about 3-4 minutes to display the message.  But I'm not
sure if the file size is the issue.  I emtied teh Trash and compacted the
folder.  I right clicked and deleted the message from the inbox.  It still took
3-4 minutes to view it from the Trash folder which had only that 750 KB message.

2. There is something erratic about this.  I tried sending one XML file, 2 XML
files and 4 XML files along with 2 small text attachments and in two cases it
responded fairly quickly.  But the same message after shutting down and
restarting TB, hung the app on a later try.

3. While the user prefernce didn't work, I discovered the "View.Display
Attachments Inline" menu option.  Unselecting this works.  No more problem.  So
I have downgraded the severity from Critical to Normal.  Since I'd really like
to have the view inline option enabled.

Comment 2

[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:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 3

[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.

Comment 4

[Graeme Coates]

We have observed this behaviour in our office as well on version 1.0.7 on XP SP1 when inline attachments is on.

This occurred when an attachment was sent with the following structure:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SymantecEncryptedXML><SymantecData> BC6381830AF5746...[snipped out long string of hex]...736BAF425C</SymantecXMLSignature></SymantecEncryptedXML>

(The attachment was ~2.5MB size and is a Symantec Client Security XML policy file. I've deliberately shortened it for this comment - not sure that I can attach the file either due to its contents)

There is a Talkback ID submitted when we had to kill the process off as it was sitting at 100% CPU for a few minutes - the ID is TB10765649Y. 

However, this doesn't seem to be entirely reproduceable - my own installation of 1.0.6 and 1.0.7 don't seem to suffer from this issue and (partially) displays the XML string after a few seconds. The only obvious difference between the two installs is that one uses a local store directory, the other is on a networked drive (standard Windows SMB share).

Again, if inline attachments is off then the problem doesn't appear. I'm thinking this could be a rendering issue of some sort. I can't reopen this bug myself - I need the reporter/assignee to do it for me. 

Comment 5

[Ray Booysen]

Please try a newer version than the 1.0.x series.

1.5beta2 or newer.

Thanks :)