273764 - Work done in offline mode reappears in inbox when going back online

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Backend, defect)

Description

[bob.bridges]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910

When working in offline mode messages that were filed out of inbox into local
folders or deleted reappear back in inbox when going back online and Inbox
resyncs with server. When we check the local folders or trash the messages that
were filed or deleted are there. It's like the changes to the inbox don't update
the server or the server overwrites the changes back to what the server has in
the inbox.  We're using Imap mail and doing offline/sync on Inbox before going
offline.  Then when we go back online the server changes the inbox back to it's
previous state and all the mail reappears that was filed or deleted.

Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Go offline and sync inbox
2.file some messages and delete some
3.Go back online and the messages that were filed or deleted reappears in Inbox.

Actual Results:  
The messages that were filed or deleted reappears in Inbox so had to go back and
redo all of the work on the inbox messages that had already been handled

Expected Results:  
When the client went back online the Inbox should have resynced the changes with
the messages in the Inbox on the Server.  The messages that had been filed or
deleted should have been removed from the servers inbox.  It appears the server
syncs online one way or over writes the imap copy of the inbox.  Maybe it's not
even looking at what was done offline and just shows what the server has in the
inbox.

Of all the people for this to happen to it's the presedent of our company so
it's important that I try to give him an explaination.  He was a previuos
Netscape 4.7 communicator user and it work fine for him then but not properly
under Mozilla.  Our Server is a Sun running Solaris 9 and the Sun Web Java
Directory and Messaging (Old Name Iplanet Directory 5.x and Messaging 5.x)

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

you might try a newer version of mozilla (1.8a5) and see if it's fixed. I fixed
some problems in this area. The fix helped some people, but not others. You
probably don't want to install an alpha build on your president's desktop, but
that's the story...

Comment 2

[bob.bridges]

(In reply to comment #1)
> you might try a newer version of mozilla (1.8a5) and see if it's fixed. I fixed
> some problems in this area. The fix helped some people, but not others. You
> probably don't want to install an alpha build on your president's desktop, but
> that's the story...

Could those fixes you did be applied to the new Thunderbird release that just
came out?

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

they are in thunderbird 1.0 as well. Does thunderbird have the same problem?

Comment 4

[bob.bridges]

(In reply to comment #3)
> they are in thunderbird 1.0 as well. Does thunderbird have the same problem?

We'll have to test it on his system.  I went from Mozilla 1.6 and upgraded to
Thunderbird 1.0 today to see what the upgrade was like. I tried to get it to
fail in the same way but couldn't on my system but I couldn't on the old version
either. I don't have any local mail folders as they're all on the server.  The
president has a lot of mail in local folders.  When I did the install of
Thunderbird it asked me if I wanted to convert my mail folders and it took a
little while for the convert to finish.  Is the Mozilla 1.7.3 local mail folders
in a different format then Thunderbird?  If so this will take a long time to run
the convert.  I'll need to schedule a window with the president to do this so I
won't have an answer right away.  Thanks, Bob

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

>Is the Mozilla 1.7.3 local mail folders in a different format then Thunderbird

No, but the thunderbird profile is stored in a different location, so we have to
copy the local files, address book, etc, into a different directory. That's what
most of the time spent in migration is.

Does your boss label messages while offline? There's some circumstantial
evidence that could cause this problem.

Comment 6

[bob.bridges]

(In reply to comment #5)
> >Is the Mozilla 1.7.3 local mail folders in a different format then Thunderbird
> 
> No, but the thunderbird profile is stored in a different location, so we have to
> copy the local files, address book, etc, into a different directory. That's what
> most of the time spent in migration is.
> 
> Does your boss label messages while offline? There's some circumstantial
> evidence that could cause this problem.

Just copying the files won't be as bad as converting all of the messages so I'll
just need to make sure he has enough disk space available.  I don'tr think he
labels his messages but I'll check with him.  I think it's just filing and
deleting the messages that's a problem.  I'll let you know what happens.

Comment 7

[bob.bridges]

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6)
Gecko/20040113
> Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3)
Gecko/20040910
> 
> When working in offline mode messages that were filed out of inbox into local
> folders or deleted reappear back in inbox when going back online and Inbox
> resyncs with server. When we check the local folders or trash the messages that
> were filed or deleted are there. It's like the changes to the inbox don't update
> the server or the server overwrites the changes back to what the server has in
> the inbox.  We're using Imap mail and doing offline/sync on Inbox before going
> offline.  Then when we go back online the server changes the inbox back to it's
> previous state and all the mail reappears that was filed or deleted.
> 
> Reproducible: Sometimes
> Steps to Reproduce:
> 1.Go offline and sync inbox
> 2.file some messages and delete some
> 3.Go back online and the messages that were filed or deleted reappears in Inbox.
> 
> Actual Results:  
> The messages that were filed or deleted reappears in Inbox so had to go back and
> redo all of the work on the inbox messages that had already been handled
> 
> Expected Results:  
> When the client went back online the Inbox should have resynced the changes with
> the messages in the Inbox on the Server.  The messages that had been filed or
> deleted should have been removed from the servers inbox.  It appears the server
> syncs online one way or over writes the imap copy of the inbox.  Maybe it's not
> even looking at what was done offline and just shows what the server has in the
> inbox.
> 
> Of all the people for this to happen to it's the presedent of our company so
> it's important that I try to give him an explaination.  He was a previuos
> Netscape 4.7 communicator user and it work fine for him then but not properly
> under Mozilla.  Our Server is a Sun running Solaris 9 and the Sun Web Java
> Directory and Messaging (Old Name Iplanet Directory 5.x and Messaging 5.x)

(In reply to comment #6)
> (In reply to comment #5)
> > >Is the Mozilla 1.7.3 local mail folders in a different format then Thunderbird
> > 
> > No, but the thunderbird profile is stored in a different location, so we have to
> > copy the local files, address book, etc, into a different directory. That's what
> > most of the time spent in migration is.
> > 
> > Does your boss label messages while offline? There's some circumstantial
> > evidence that could cause this problem.
> 
> Just copying the files won't be as bad as converting all of the messages so I'll
> just need to make sure he has enough disk space available.  I don'tr think he
> labels his messages but I'll check with him.  I think it's just filing and
> deleting the messages that's a problem.  I'll let you know what happens.

Well we finally got the President of the company to let us upgrade his mail to
Thunderbird.  He wanted to give a little more time for Thunderbird to be out and
wanted us to try to do more testing on others systems before we upgraded him. 
We tried everything on other systems but couldn't recreate the problem.  I
upgraded him on Wednesday and set with him for a little while going online and
offline to see if the problem would show up.  Everything appeared to work
normally.  Then last night he went off line for about 30 or 40 minutes while
still connected to our network in the office and processed a bunch of mail,
maybe 100 plus messages.  Some was deleted into the trash and the rest was filed
into local folders.  When he came back on line the problem reaccured and the
mail he just worked on reappeared in his inbox even though mail he deleted was
in the trash and the mail he filed was in the local folders.  It's almost like
the length of time he's offline or the amount of messages he's going through
puts it in this state.  This morning we tried to get it to fail with a small
number of messages but it worked like normal.  He and my Bss are at their wit's
end over this problem so I don't know what else I can do to resolve this without
having him go to Outlook which I really don't want to do.  Any ideas?

Comment 8

[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 9

[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 10

[dem107]

This is still a problem with Thunderbird 1.5 on Windows XP.