307096 - Reoccurring modal dialog prevents fixing broken login

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 189633

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Walter Gildersleeve]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041217
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041217

Over the weekend, my account with a particular web host (Strato.de) was
cancelled.  I hadn't yet changed the mail settings in Mozilla, which including
"check mail on start-up" and "check mail every 1 minute."  Thus, on startup the
mail client attempted to download the messages from the post.strato.de pop3
server.  This failing, the client popped up a modal dialog saying "Sending of
password did not succeed.  Mail server post.strato.de responded: Login
incorrect," which only has an "OK" button.  Clicking the button dismisses the
dialog, but it pops up again *immediately*, not allowing me to change any of my
settings.  I dismissed the dialog dozens of times in a row, it always returning.

(I finally solved the problem by killing Mozilla, and changing the prefs.js
property "mail.server.server1.check_new_mail" to false.)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Get yourself a Strato.de account, and have your Mozilla mail client
automatically download messages from it on startup
2. Let the account expire over the weekend
3. On Monday, start Mozilla--bingo!

But seriously, I've tried reproducing this by destroying an extant account on my
server--I get the aforementioned dialog box maybe twice, and then an "Enter
password" dialog.  (In other words, just what you'd expect.)
Actual Results:  
Modal dialog pops up saying "Sending of password did not succeed.  Mail server
post.strato.de responded: Login incorrect".  Clicking the the "OK" button
dismisses the dialog, which then immediately reappears.

Expected Results:  
Allow me to change the account settings--the typical behavior (ie, showing the
password dialog, as described in "Steps to Reproduce") is correct.

I've kept a copy of the Mozilla profile exhibiting this behavior.  Please
contact me if there's more information I can send you, say a communication log
or something similar.  Is there a way to get Mozilla to display the actually
communication that's going on between it and the server?  I'd like to see what
it's doing.

Comment 1

[Onkar Shinde]

Not reproducible on Mozilla 1.7.11 or SeaMonkey nightly (25th August). Try
upgrading to Mozilla 1.7.11

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

You should upgrade to 1.7.11, but not because it will fix this problem, because 
it won't.

This may be a dupe of bug 189633.  But 189633 comment 11 sees improvement due to 
the patch for bug 270249, which limits the number of retries to five.  However, 
that patch is only in Moz1.8-branch builds (e.g. nightlies preliminary to 
Seamonkey 1.0 and TB 1.5).  If you will try one of these builds and see that it 
fixes (or, more correctly, works around) the problem, then you should mark this 
bug as a dupe of 189633.

xref bug 249240, which is about an opposite problem (failing to reprompt when 
the account exists but the password has changed from the password stored by 
Mozilla).

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Walter Gildersleeve, if you haven't already upgraded to Seamonkey 1.0 (or 
to Thunderbird 1.5), please do so, and state whether this problem has been 
solved, per comment 2; mark this bug as a dupe, if appropriate.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

No response from reporter, duping.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 189633 ***