315713 - Unclear error dialog Unable to connect to your IMAP server

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051025 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051025 Firefox/1.5

Sometimes I get an alert that says, "Unable to connect to your IMAP server. You may have exceeded the maximum number of connections to this server. If so,use the Advanced IMAP Server Settings dialog to reduce the number of cached connections." This message is unclear and a poor example of error messages for two reasons.

1. Either the problem is that I've exceeded the maximum number of connections, or it isn't. Don't make me guess. If that is, the problem, tell me. No ifs. i.e. "You have exceeded the maximum number of connections to this server. Use the..." Not " You may have exceeded the maximum number of connections to this server. If so use the..." If that is not the problem, don't tell me it might be. 

2. The Advanced IMAP server settings dialog is very hard to find. It is not in the expected location, at least for a Mac User. There shouls be a button saying something like, "Open Advanced IMAP settings" or some such that opens this dialog so the user doesn't have to hunt around for it.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Fail to connect to an IMAP server




http://cafe.elharo.com/java/errormsg/

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

Don't make you guess?! Tell the server not to make us guess! :-) There is one kind of imap server, the Courier server, that limits the connections per ip address, and when it gets an extra connection, it just drops it. We can't tell this apart from a simple dropped connection, but we put up this message in case it's this kind of server.

Comment 2

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

I'm not an IMAP expert by a long shot. Is there any way in IMAP to tell whether or not you're talking to a Courier server? 

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

No, there's no IMAP protocol way to tell what kind of server you're dealing with. We could look at the server greeting and guess but it would just be a guess.

Comment 4

[Moritz Naumann]

Maybe related: 333661, 298974

Comment 5

[Moritz Naumann]

I was asked to prefix bug IDs by the word 'bug' so that bugzilla is able to link them.

Bugs which maybe related to this one: bug 333661, bug 298974

Comment 6

[Doron]

Attachment: WinPcap logs of the IMAP session causing the problem

The attachment is a binary file that can be opened using Ethereal or Wireshrk

Comment 7

[Doron]

I am getting this problem as well. I spent a bit of time looking at the problem with Wireshark (Ethereal) and I think that what is happenning is that Thunderbird is trying to create a "Sent" Folder using IMAP and the server is refusing to do so for whatever reason. The problem is that the folder already exists but Thunderbird is no responding correctly to this. Probably what should happen is Thunderbird should either detect the folder or ignore the error and try writing to the Sent folder.

Comment 8

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> No, there's no IMAP protocol way to tell what kind of server you're dealing
> with. We could look at the server greeting and guess but it would just be a
> guess.

David are we doing that now ?

Putting this on Bryan's radar to make it more user friendly

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> No, there's no IMAP protocol way to tell what kind of server you're dealing
> with. We could look at the server greeting and guess but it would just be a
> guess.

bienvenu, do you want to build on the "identify server" fix (that landed?) and accept this as ENH?  Or close this wontfix?

Comment 10

[David :Bienvenu]

yeah, wontfix, we're already bending over backward to deal with this Courier issue. The identify server feature is not supposed to be used to change functionality in the client, and I really don't want to do server greeting parsing.

Comment 12

[[:nickname]JN]

This bug is marked as a duplicate of bug 333661. Bug 333661 is marked as a duplicate of this bug. Both bugs are closed. If each is closed because of the duplication, then clearly here we have a vicious circle.

The behaviour at issue is a bug. That is for two reasons. First, the message does give the user or at least the average user, just so long as she has multiple IMAP accounts, to wonder which IMAP account is at issue. Second, the message ends with an ellipsis, suggesting that more text can be revealed somewhere - and yet, so far as I can tell, there is no way (or no easy way . .) to see the extra text. All in all: bad UX.

So, Wayne Mery (if you are still with Thunderbird), will you please re-open this bug?

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to JN from comment #12)

This bug is marked as a duplicate of bug 333661.

You may be misinterpreting something, because this bug was deemed wontfix by the developer in comment 11. Please see also comment 3.

Comment 14

[[:nickname]JN]

Thanks.

I had failed to seem, in the text above, 'Resolution: --- → WONTFIX'.

I fail to understand the warrant for the WONTFIX. Here is why. Surely a developer could, fairly easily, rewrite the text in question in order that it stop confusing users. For, as I explained above, at present the text does confuse - in two ways.