326253 - Strange Message-ID/References loop cause infinite loop (100% cpu)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050702
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050702

I had a folder, whenever I opened it, Mail stopped responding, spinning at 100% CPU. After tracking down what elements in the folder that caused this, I got a quite strange setup. NOTE! This is a real life example! In my example, the headers have been changed to hilight the problem (and to protect the innocent). However, I've actually recieved mails from a (appearently broken, but still...) mailing list which made me unavailable to access that folder.

Since this was my INBOX, I was rather upset, and it took me several hours of hacking the mbox files at my IMAP server to figure out what happened and get it straight. What a "normal user" would have done if this would have happened, I don't know.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Save the attached file as a mbox file on your favourite IMAP server.
2. Click on the folder.


Actual Results:  
Mail stops responding and CPU load go to 100%.

Expected Results:  
The three messages of the folder should have been shown.

The format of this mailbox is:
Msg 1, has msg-id A, and references B.
Msg 2, is completely innocent, but has the same subject as Msg 1 and 3.
Msg 3, has msg-id B, and references A.

Without Msg 2, Mail can break the recursive loop. However, as soon as there's another message between the two with the recursive references -- with the same subject! -- then Mail hangs.

Comment 1

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

Attachment: A mbox file that, when accessed, will cause a hang

Comment 2

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

I detected this problem originally in Thunderbird 1.5 (20051201). I've downloaded the Mozilla suite from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/nightly/latest/mozilla-win32-installer.exe, however, for a "nightly build", it presents itselves as somewhat old. Perhaps it's just me who doesn't understand the versioning scheme.

I doubt it matters, but if it does, my IMAP server is dovecot 0.99.14.

Comment 3

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

Actually, the IMAP has nothing to do with it. An easier way to reproduce is to put the file just in the Local Folders of your profile (perhaps you need to adjust line endings to your platform first).

Comment 4

[David :Bienvenu]

could you elaborate on "...nightly build", it presents itselves as somewhat old." There was a fix checked in for a similar issue not too long ago, but it's hard to tell if you're running a build with that fix or not...

Comment 5

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

I went to this page:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/nightly/latest/
and downloaded mozilla-win32-installer.exe. I did react to that this file had the timestamp: 02-Jul-2005 13:48.
When I start the downloaded Mozilla, and choose About Mozilla, it says:
Mozilla 1.8b2

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050702

In my ears, this sounds like a build from July 2, 2005, and not a nightly build from today.

If this is not the nightly build, can you please tell me where I can find it?

Comment 6

[David :Bienvenu]

try seamonkey, not mozilla, e.g., http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/seamonkey/nightly/latest-trunk/

Comment 7

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

I just managed to find that out...
Yes, the latest version of SeaMonkey did not have this problem. (However, it still got quite confused when I choose Sort by > Threaded -- only showing one of the three messages). However, this is not as bad a problem. You might still want to look into it, though.

But the problem as I reported it is not there, so for that reason you can close the bug.

Finally, the instructions given on http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/bugs are incorrect. They say:
"Before even thinking of filing a bug report for Thunderbird, download the latest Mozilla nightly and try to reproduce the bug using a clean Mozilla profile. Get the latest nightly for Windows, Linux  or Mac OS X."
but they point to the old non-SeaMonkey version of Mozilla I downloaded. If you have any idea on how to report this to someone responsible for that page, I'd appreciate it.

Comment 8

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

=> WFM per reporter's comment 7