337341 - Notify user when imap (network/server) connection is lost

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[Bjoern Voigt]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.2) Gecko/20060404 SeaMonkey/1.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.2) Gecko/20060404 SeaMonkey/1.0.1

A broken IMAP server can cause endless loops and hangs in Thunderbird and Seamonkey. The problem happens if the IMAP server disconnects IMAP connections after "LOGIN"-commands. Thunderbird and Seamonkey (Mail/News) try to reconnect the broken server very fast (multiple times per second on fast networks). During reconnection attempts Thunderbird/Seamonkey are nearly unresponsible. After pressing the "Stop" button Thunderbird/Seamonkey hangs completely. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install a broken IMAP server. In my case the IMAP server (Courier-IMAP) accepted the "LOGIN" command but crashed after the first "SELECT" command with a segmentation fault. In my case the server crashed because I switches his FAM library without recompilation (SGI FAM to Gamin).
2. Create an IMAP account for the broken server in Thunderbird/Seamonkey.
3. Connect with this account in Thunderbird/Seamonkey.

Actual Results:  
At first Thunderbird/Seamonkey reconnects very fast. After pressing the "Stop" button the program hangs. 

Expected Results:  
The program should give one descriptive error message which says, that the IMAP server has disconnected. As an alternative the reconnection attempts could be counted (for instance up to 5) and delayed (for instance 1 per second).

Packages: 
- Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 on Windows XP or
- Seamonkey 1.0.1
- courier-imap-4.1.0 on FreeBSD 6.1 with FAM suppport (tested with a broken setup/compilation)

Comment 1

[Bjoern Voigt]

This problem still persists on Seamonkey 1.1.4. Thunderbird 2.x is untested.

Comment 2

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Bjoern Sorry for the delay before someone took notice of your bug. Could you see if this is still the case with thunderbird 3b3 (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/) ?

If it is could you read https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Logging and attach a imap log to this bug ?

Comment 3

[Bjoern Voigt]

Attachment: IMAP log for Thunderbird 3b3

Comment 4

[Bjoern Voigt]

Thunderbird 3b3 does not run into an endless loop. It also does not display an error about the fact, that the IMAP server closed the connection during the IMAP-SELECT command. But this may be acceptable. I attach the IMAP log file anyway.

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

So this bug is basically WFM, other than the fact that we don't tell the user the server dropped the connection. The error we get is NS_BASE_STREAM_CLOSED, which is not one we retry on.

Comment 6

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Removing myslef on all the bugs I'm cced on. Please NI me if you need something on MailNews Core bugs from me.