283455 - Thunderbird Hangs while retrieveing POP3 mail with large attachments

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 116443

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[jonathansc]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozillia Thunderbird version 1.0 (20041206)

Running Thunderbird version 1.0 (20041206) on Windows XP SP1 Home edition.
Running McAfee Security Centre including Virus scan v8.0 & SPAM Killer v 5.0.80. 
PC has 512 MB RAM.

When running 'Get Mail' large attachments cause Thunderbird to hang - plus
Firefox can no longer see the Internet. Need to reboot to recover access to
internet. When shutting down to restart Windows is unable to shut down
thunderbird (even if Thunderbird Window is alread closed). Tested this against
Outlook express on same attachment - it downloaded the mail with now problems. 

If use webmail to delete attachment from mail box - then Thunderbird will
retrieve rest of mail with no problems,  

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Get send mail with large attachment to your mail account
2.  Open Thunderbird and run get mail
3. It will hang. 

Actual Results:  
Thunderbird hangs access to the internet from Firefox & IE is lost. 

Expected Results:  
S/w should have download mail with large attachment & allowd virsu checker to
check it.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

that sounds like Mcafee getting in the way of the pop3 download, causing us to
timeout. For 1.0, you need to set the hidden pref mail.pop3_response_timeout to
120 (seconds) or so, in prefs.js or user.js

Comment 2

[jonathansc]

(In reply to comment #1)
> that sounds like Mcafee getting in the way of the pop3 download, causing us to
> timeout. For 1.0, you need to set the hidden pref mail.pop3_response_timeout to
> 120 (seconds) or so, in prefs.js or user.js

prefs.js - says do not edit me
user.js not exist. 

Please nore McAfee does not get in the way of Outlook downloading large files.
No does this explain why lose connection to network as a result

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

go ahead and shut down thunderbird, edit prefs.js, and add the following line:

user_pref("mail.pop3_response_timeout", 120);

and restart thunderbird, and retry.

What the virus checker does is make it look like the network connection timed
out, by causing a very long delay between the time we try to fetch the message,
and when we get the message. Virus checkers sometimes behave differently with
different apps...

Comment 4

[David Waring]

A friend of mine has experienced this exact same problem.

Setting the pop3_response_timeout had no affect.

However I found that disabling the McAfee Privacy Service allowed him to
download his e-mails with no problems. McAfee AV, Firewall and Spamkiller work
fine, it seems to be just the Privacy Service that causes the problem.

I'll be dropping McAfee an email asking why their Privacy Service kills network
connections.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

invalid based on comment 4 and marking so.
jonathansc, please reopen if this doesn't solve your problem.

Comment 6

[jonathansc]

Now running Thunderbird version 1.0.6 (20050716). 

Have updated prefs.js as recomended. Get same problem when accessing POP3 mail
containing 2.8Mb attachment. 

Scarily - if I turn off the McAfee Privacy Service do not get the problem. Not
something I want to do for the kids accounts

Comment 7

[David :Bienvenu]

unfortunately, that means it's a problem with McAfee, and there's not much we
can do about. You could try a 1.1a2 build or 1.5 when it comes out - the timeout
code in that is different, and has a ui for setting the timeout.

Comment 8

[Borden Rhodes]

The exact same problem happens in Ubuntu (no virus scanner).  The problem is definitely with Thunderbird (1.5, btw). I tried opening an e-mail with 10 megs worth of pictures and Thunderbird's memory consumption shot up to nearly 300 megs in memory.  I think there's something wrong with whatever tries to embed attachments into the e-mail view.  Is there any way to shut off attachments from automatically showing when you load an e-mail?  That may be a temporary workaround.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Borden, Your description does not match problem documented by OP = antivirus software. Please look for an open bug that matches your symptoms (I don't find any ATM, long shot may be Bug 308914) or file a new bug (against linux).

FWIW, bug 362612 has a fix for this message for OS/2.

OP problem is antivirus software so duping to bug 116443