278516 - After VPN network reconnection, placing messages in IMAP/SSL folders fail sending mail

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Peter Dedecker]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041228 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (X11/20050107)

Maybe this bug is related to bug 163951 or bug 123063, but I don't know.

At our university network, I have to make an internet connection through
VPN/PPTP.  I use VPNC under Gentoo Linux for that, but because rekeying isn't
fully implemented, I loose connection about every 8 hours.  When this happens
and I want to send an e-mail, I see TB is looking for my smtp host.  Then I
reconnect my VPN connection and the mail is immediatly sent, but the mail can't
be copied to my sent-mail folder.  TB keeps trying to connect to my imap-server
(wich can't be a problem normally).  When I click "cancel", TB keeps busy and I
can't do anything in my IMAP-folders, but I can still recieve messages from
newsgroups, so only the IMAP-connection hangs down.  I can't stop TB and I have
to kill the process.  This only happens when the VPN connection is lost but vpnc
is still active so TB tries to lookup my smtp server.  When I manually put VPN
down and up again, there's no problem.  When it's down (because I've putted it
down), TB says it can't find the SMTP server.

A friend of mine has a similar problem under windows.  He also needs VPN to send
mail to an smtp-server.  Sometimes he forgets to put VPN on and starts TB first.
 He can recieve e-mail through his IMAP/SSL folders (from the same server as I
do) and when he wants to send an e-mail, he makes connection by VPN.  The mail
is sent succesfully, but can't be copied to his sent-folder, without crash.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Start TB
2.Wait till internet connection goes down with the vpnc process still running
3.Send an e-mail that must be copied to sent-mail folder
4.Put VPN connection back on
Actual Results:  
Mail is sent succesfully, but TB hangs while copying message to sent-mail and
crashes when you click "cancel".

Expected Results:  
Send e-mail and copy message to an IMAP/SSL folder.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

there are lots of dups of similar problems. If you toggle the offline button
after the vpn goes down, do things start working again?

Comment 2

[Joris Debonnet]

(In reply to comment #1)
> there are lots of dups of similar problems. If you toggle the offline button
> after the vpn goes down, do things start working again?


I have almost exactly the same problem. So I tried your suggestion; I sent an
email and put the VPN connection on (which it needs to send the email; the smtp
server is only then accessible). So it sends the message succesfully, but then
keeps saying "Copying message to Sent folder". 

So I clicked the 'go offline' button in the bottom left of TB. And clicked it
again. And I tried out about every possible combination of setting up /
disconnecting the VPN, telling TB to go offline and get back online, but the
little message with "Copying message to Sent folder" is still there now, after
15 minutes.. :)

It is of course possible to make sure that the VPN is on, -before- you send the
message, but if you don't, it's too late of course since the message -is- sent
but you don't have a copy of it. 


It also occured to me that I can browse all the IMAP folders of this particular
IMAP account (and actually see changes), -except- for the "sent" folder, while
it's trying to copy that email to "sent". (with the VPN on) The status bar
doesn't even say anything (like the usual 'connecting'.. 'sending authentication
info'... etc), I just keep getting the "hourglass" mouse icon when I hover over
the messages in the "Sent" folder. 

So I clicked on Cancel now. Browsing "sent" still doesn't work though. 

So I shut down and restart TB (with the VPN still on). This time I can browse
the "sent" folder, and can see that the email indeed did not get copied. 


Perhaps I misunderstood your suggestion about the offline button though?

Sygmoral

Comment 3

[Peter Dedecker]

Hi,

Long time no see...

Now I'm using Ubuntu Linux, with Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 and vpnc 0.4.0 and I can't reproduce the problem anymore.  One reason is because vpnc works better and the interface (and route) is put down when the connection is broken.  Vpnc is also more stable now.  If the connection is put back on again, I only have to click a folder in thunderbird (except the inbox) to let it connect to the server again, afterwich I can check my e-mail again.  I don't have to restart or kill Thunderbird anymore.

If I read this again, I remember that I did find out to put TB in offline mode (without downloading the message) before restarting the VPN.  But now, this isn't necessary anymore.

Peter

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

WFM per reporter