274212 - imap server disconnect removes metainformation

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[[e-mail]]

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

If the IMAP server disconnects, and Mozilla Mail can't reconnect within a given
time period (the connection may be slower), all metainformation to this mailbox
will be deleted. This has consequences:

watchlists are gone
labels (personal, important, ...) are gone
sorting informations (descending, threaded, sort by) are gone

Sometimes this does clear out the cache too. Thus next reconnect the whole
mailbox has to be loaded again. For bigger mailboxes this leads to a lot of
additional traffic.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open any IMAP-Mailbox, go to "INBOX"
2. Wait until the Server disconnects --- some do not.
   It could be helpfull, to cut the line.
3. Click on an other Mail to have Mozilla Mail reconnect.
4. If this fails, select an other mail.
5. Mozilla Mail deletes all metainformation to this mailbox,
   the carret in front of this connection is removed.
Actual Results:  
Nothing really fatal. The Mailbox is available on the server. But: for people
like me, downloading all mail again leads to additional traffic. With a limit of
1500 MiByte this exceeds the limit likely, having a mailbox of ~6 MiByte in size.

Expected Results:  
Just tell me, the server couldn't be reached. But not clearing out any
metainformation regarding this mailbox.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

this doesn't happen to me, and I haven't heard any other reports of this - are
you sure your server isn't changing uid validity in some situation?

Comment 2

[[e-mail]]

How could I verify the server being the cause?

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

if you can reproduce this, an imap protocol log of a session where this happens
would be useful - substitute IMAP for "protocol" in these instructions: 
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/mailnews/mail-troubleshoot.html#imap

In order for me to be able to tell if the UID has changed, I'll either need two
protocol logs, one from the previous session, and one from the session where we
threw away the meta data information. Or if you run a 1.8 trunk build, I've
added logging for the uid validity changing situation.

Comment 4

[[e-mail]]

I was unable to reproduce this bug with Mozilla versions higher than 1.7.3. I
assume this fixed. In later versions.

My advice: just upgrade!