276787 - Mail performance slow, degrades when training.dat grows large (Junk Mail Controls)

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Billy Newsom]

My training.dat file sits at about 24MB currently.  So every time I mark
something as Junk Mail, my browser freezes up for a good amount of time. 
Meanwhile, I click on some other open windows, hoping to find something I can do
while I wait for Mozilla to respond again!

Discussion:
I have been a Mozilla user since the 0.9 days, and I have come across what has
become for me my first major performance issue.  My e-mail accounts have rather
proliferated due to the current level of Spam on the Internet.  Spam filtering
of any kind tends to be useful if it doesn't detract from my typical day.  But
as the Bayesian filter file has grown, so has my waiting period for each and
every moment of filtering.

Perhaps we could do some of this Bayesian filtering in a backround process
thread that would enable the rest of Mozilla to respond normally to clicks and
window switches and drag-and-drops?  Just for reference, I can currently click a
message's Junk icon and wait about three seconds for Mozilla to respond to
clicks.  But there are other times in which my hard drive seems to be set on
fire, and I know that the delay is much greater.  Perhaps there are times in
which there is congestion at the IMAP server, but I know that since my hard
drive sings during this time, the problem is likely on the local machine.

Example bad case scenario:
When I get Spam in my main Inbox, I typically turn on its Junk Status with a
mouse click, then immediately move it to another IMAP folder.  Lately, I have to
wait a long time before I can perform the move, as my hard drive goes wild.

Example solution:
Is there some sort of way to cap or to notify the user when his training.dat
files grows to some performance-degrading limit of around 5, 10, or 15 MB?  I
would like to cap it just like I want to cap my Internet Cache, which by the way
is still only about 40 to 75MB on most of the machines I use.  My mail folder
exceeded 100MB a long time ago.  I know that I can simply turn off the Junk
filtering, but not everyone will catch on to the fact that their Bayesian filter
is the cause of their performance problem, nor will everyone know how to trim
down the filter file once it is too large, which may be impossible.

Since decreasing the size of the training file may be impossible now, can it
still be capped or set to read-only or something?  In other words, it's probably
too late for most people once they have this problem, but there could be a
pro-active stance by the Mozilla team to have safeguards in place so that no
one's filter file grows to this point again?  This can become sort of a
self-inflicted, spam-triggered, denial of service!  If anyone needs a copy of a
large (but useful) training.dat file, I can send it to them or provide a link!

Comment 1

[Billy Newsom]

By the way, three seconds is the time it takes when the training file is
perfectly in the disk cache.  Well, I just did a time trial after I hadn't done
any mail stuff for awhile (heavy browsing).  This time, it took 44 seconds for
Mozilla to return to its useable state!  All I did was select a message's Junk
Status icon and waited until my next clicked item responded.  This is Windows
2000, SP4, on an 800MHz Pentium III, 256MB memory.  Mozilla 1.7, Gecko/20040616.
 Mozilla.exe is using 116,296KB according to Windows Task Manager.  I have about
45 total tabs open in the browser.

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
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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.

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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.