285946 - Mail lost when Downloading when changing folders

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Keith Bissett]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041128 Firefox/1.0 (Debian package 1.0-4)
Build Identifier: version 0.9 (20041124) Debian package 0.9_6

I was downloading 24 new messages.  Messages 1-6 appeared in my inbox. When it
was up to 8 and no more had appeared in my Inbox, I checked my Junk folder to
see if it had gone there.  Thunderbird spent a little while loading the index
for the Junk folder.

Messages 8-24 never downloaded.  When I used "Get Mail" again, they weren't on
the server either.

It was quite likely in the middle of using the mail filter when this happened.

I'm using a POP server, if that matters.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Be downloading your mail.
2. Switch to the Junk folder in the middle of the download.  The index file for
the junk folder loaded, and the Mail filter was probably being applied, which
may or may not be relevant. 
3. Lose the rest of your mail.

Actual Results:  
I lost the remainder of my mail to be downloaded.

Expected Results:  
Downloaded the rest of my mail as expected.

Comment 1

[Fred Schanzenbacher]

I've noticed this problem as well on Thunderbird 1.0.2 running under Windows XP.
Tonight I was able to reproduce the problem 3 times.

My Thunderbird setup is as follows:
-----------------------------------

- Thunderbird 1.0.2/Windows XP. Master password set and required the first time
it is needed (when Thunderbird starts).

- 3 Pop Accounts.  Each of these accounts has a unique E-Mail address associated
with them.
-- 1st/Personal
-- 2nd/Business
-- 3rd/E-Commerce

- Under the Personal account I have a folder set up for a mailing list I
subscribe to. I have a Rule set up to search for a string in the Subject field
of all mails to this account and if the subject contains this string then the
mail is sent to that sub-folder.

- Each of the POP accounts is set to check for new mail at startup and to
automatically download new messages.

Test procedure
--------------

I set up 6 emails and saved them as Templates (this is not a necessary step but
allows for performing the test multiple times without having to re-create the
emails each time).

Mails:

1) To Personal Account, empty email (subject only)
2) To Personal Account, empty email, subject string contains sub-folder sort
rule trigger string (this mail should get sorted to the sub-folder I set up in
my Personal account.
3) To Business Account, empty email (subject only)
4) To E-Commerce Account, empty email (subject only)
5) To Personal Account, empty email (subject only) small attachment (AVI video
file - 96 KB)
6) To Personal Account, empty email (subject only) large attachment (MPG video
file - 2.96 MB)

I sent the mails in the order listed above in rapid succession.

I closed Thunderbird immediately after sending the 6th email.

When my mail checker/Biff client (Renier Crause's Pop Tray - www.poptray.org)
indicated the mails were on my ISP's server I opened Thunderbird and supplied my
master password.  The mails began downloading.

Test Results
------------

- Mail 1 (1st/Personal account - empty email) - OK
- Mail 2 (1st/Personal account - sent to subfolder by 'subject' rule) - OK
- Mail 3 (2nd/Business account) - Mail sent to business account did not arrive
and no longer appeared to be on the ISP's mail server (seems to have disappeared
without ever showing up in any of my inboxes). The message sent to my
3rd/E-Commerce account, however, showed up in the 2nd/Business account's inbox
(incorrectly - see next item)
- Mail 4 (3rd/E-Commerce account) - This mail showed up correctly in the
3rd/E-Commerce account's inbox but it was also 'copied' to the 2nd/Business
account's inbox (incorrectly).
- Mail 5 (1st/Personal account - empty email w/small attachment) - OK
- Mail 6 (1st/Personal account - empty email w/large attachment) - OK

As with the original poster's observations, I switched to check other inboxes
(2nd & 3rd mail account) before the larger attachment email had fully downloaded
in the 1st account.

Also as per the original poster, repeated hits to the 'Get Mail' button did not
seem to retrieve the 'lost' mail to the 2nd account - it was gone for good
without ever having arrived in any of my inboxes.

Comment 2

[Fred Schanzenbacher]

I just tried repeating my earlier test after having turned off the message
sorting rule on the 1st/Personal account. The results were still in error but
they were different:

- Mail 1 (1st/Personal account - empty message) - Missing
- Mail 2 (1st/Personal account - empty message, mailing list subject that would
have been sent to a sub-folder) - OK (showing up in the inbox as expected since
the filter rule was turned off)
- Mail 3 (2nd/Business account - empty message) - Missing
- Mail 4 (3rd/E-Commerce account - empty message) - Appeared in the inbox of the
3rd/E-Commerce account but also appeared in the 1st/Personal account's inbox and
the 2nd/Business account's inbox. It appears to have been sent to those accounts
in place of the mails that were missing.
- Mail 5 (1st/Personal account - small attachment) - OK
- Mail 6 (1st/Personal account - larger attachment) - OK

I think this could rule out the filtering/rules system as the source of the problem.

Comment 3

[Fred Schanzenbacher]

One more observation and then I'll stop pestering everyone about this one, I
promise! 

I believe I've found a workaround for this bug and hopefully this will help
narrow down the source of the problem for the coders to look into.

I tried the test 2 more times; first turning off the 'Check for new mail at
startup' option for all the accounts, then turning off 'Check for new mail at
startup' and 'Automatically download new mail'. In both tests I manaully
retrieved all new mail (using the dropdown arrow next to the 'Get Mail' button
and chosing 'Get All New Messages'). In both tests there was again missing mail
and mail sent to the inbox of the wrong accounts as before.

I then set up a third test with Check At Startup and Automatic Download options
still turned off for all 3 accounts. This time, instead of retrieving all
messages at once I used the Get Mail Button dropdown to retrieve the mail for
each account individually.  I waited for all mail to download into each account
before proceeding to download the next account's mail (i.e. Get mail for 1st
account. When 1st account completely downloaded then get mail for the 2nd
account. When 2nd account completely downloaded then get mail for the 3rd account).

When retrieving mail in this fashion, all of the emails appeared in the proper
inboxes and there was no mis-sorted mail or missing mail (i.e. everything worked
as expected).

I think this narrows the problem down to retrieving multiple emails to multiple
accounts at the same time.

Comment 4

[Keith Bissett]

Unfortunately for that theory, I've had this problem too and I only have the one
mail account.  I believe the mail was downloading automatically (upon opening
Thunderbird) at the time, if that helps.

Comment 5

[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:
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Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 6

[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.