297413 - can't download messages for offline use

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Backend, defect)

Description

[Mike Shaver (:shaver emeritus)]

When I select File->Offline->Download/Sync Now, I get a "Downloading Mail for
Offline Use" entry in the status bar, but nothing else, and even after 10
minutes the messages aren't here.

If I go offline and select "Download Now", the off/online light immediately goes
out, I see the "Downloading Mail" message, and all my messages have the "the
body of this message has not been downloaded" disease.

I'm using 1.1a1, nothing in the JS console or the OS X console.  It makes me a
sad traveller. =(

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

Hmm, works here. It could be mac-specific, though I hope not.

The dumb questions - you do have some folders selected for offline use, right?
If you generate an imap protocol log of a session where you go offline, does
anything show up in the log? I'm assuming you're using imap. Do you have any
interesting account structure that might be aborting the going offline process?
When we go offline, we download all pop3 mail, and imap folders that are
configured for offline use, as well as newsgroups and send unsent mail, if
you've checked those boxes.

If you select a few imap messages, and do a file | offline | download selected
messages, do they get downloaded?

Comment 2

[Mike Shaver (:shaver emeritus)]

I do have INBOX and Sent selected as being for offline use (I'm sure there's a
good reason that we don't auto-select INBOX for that too, but that's another
bug), and I've used this profile offline quite a few times before, including
with post-1.0 trunk builds.

Unfortunately, when I connected back up to test again, Tbird decided it needed
to redownload all the headers in my INBOX, and it all works again now.  Bleh.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

OK, let me know if you can reproduce this.

The reason we don't auto-select the inbox for offline use is mostly a disk space
issue - it takes disk space to store offline copies of all your inbox messages.
Most users are not offline users...

Comment 4

[Mike Shaver (:shaver emeritus)]

If they're not offline users, why would they be selecting "go offline" or
"download/sync now"?  It seems to me that if I ask to download from the "go
offline" dialog or explicitly in the file menu, I probably want to download
_something_, most likely my INBOX.  If I have nothing selected, then it should
probably tell me that in a variety of ways, perhaps including unchecking and
disabling the "[ ] Mail messages" part of the download/sync dialog, and "pick
folders for offline use" instead of "download now" as the option in the "work
offline" dialog.

Some light testing here seems to indicate that just checking the box on a folder
_does_ download some messages, but not all of them.  That's what I'd expect,
since there's also a "download now" button right next to it.   (That it doesn't
download everything, I mean; that it downloads a handful of messages is a little
baffling.)

Here's what I get for a 10K message folder, when I select it for download use in
the prefs (but don't tell it to download now):

-rwx------   1 shaver  shaver    75823 Jun 13 01:20 mozmail
-rw-r--r--   1 shaver  shaver  4700830 Jun 13 01:20 mozmail.msf
[shaver@Lickable Mail.sbd]$ grep -c X-Mozilla-Status mozmail
50

Given that creating the 4.7-meg summary file is not something I can avoid, the
random 50 message download for another 75K doesn't seem like a showstopper.

Comment 5

[Mike Shaver (:shaver emeritus)]

WTF did I mark that sec-sensitive?  Clearing bogus  flag.

Comment 6

[David :Bienvenu]

yes, that's fair - alternatively, if the user has no pop3 accounts, and no imap
folders configured for offline use, we could tell them that when they do a file
| offline | download and sync now, if download messages is checked, and either
take them to the select folders for offline use dialog, or offer to select the
default imap account's inbox for offline use.

When you select a folder for offline use, we opportunistically store messages
for offline use as you read them. Are the messages in the offline store ones you
read? We also store messages that have been run through the spam filter, since
that also fetches the message bodies, and we might as well store them. I guess
that could be confusing for someone playing as close attention as you are, but
not doing it would/has cause(d) bugs to be filed :-)

Comment 7

[Bartek R.]

I was able to recreate the problem described here on one of my systems. Interestingly, my other Thunderbird installations work just fine. One of them, though, is unable to download offline messages and behaves exactly as Mike described it. One difference: the FIRST of the highlighted messages is always downloaded. The rest is discarded. I use Thunderird 1.5 (20051201).

Comment 8

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Can you reproduce with SeaMonkey v1.1.9 ?
(or Thunderbird v2.0.0.14 ?)
(or Thunderbird v3.0a2pre ?)
Can you reproduce with SeaMonkey v2.0a1pre ?

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I've not had this problem in v3 betas and no response to comment 8, so => incomplete.  But please update the bug if you have the same problem on current v3, or wish to change the status to something other than INCOMPLETE