360961 - folder names containing ':' (colon) get number/letter combination names

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Daniel Pierre McClenaghan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061025 Firefox/1.5.0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061025 Firefox/1.5.0.8

I am an art appraiser. I have very many folders with subfolders. The subfolders are reverting to lines of encryption, ie instead of a file being labelled JohnSmith it will change to a45bd72a6. This is the second time this has happened to me.  

Reproducible: Sometimes




I am not a software writer. I have no idea why this happens so I have no way of knowing what preventative measures I should take or even if it is possible to forestall this.

This is very important for me since it wipes out my client data base.

Thank you
Daniel Pierre McClenaghan

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

are you using any non alpha-numeric characters in your folder names? That could potentially account for the problem, if the .msf file gets invalidated for some reason. 

Comment 2

[Daniel Pierre McClenaghan]

(In reply to comment #1)
> are you using any non alpha-numeric characters in your folder names? That could
> potentially account for the problem, if the .msf file gets invalidated for some
> reason. 
> 
I label my folders & subfolders thus: Chicagoartists:  subfolder Smith: Stanley:
Stevens: etc etc
If the use of a colon could kick off a cascade of ecrypption why not all the time  & all of the folders instead of occasionly & some of the folders?

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

yes, the colon is the problem - that's not a legal character in filenames, so we have to create a unique name - we use a number, which is not a decision I'm particularly happy with, though it's not supposed to get exposed to the user. As to why it sometimes happens that the actual file name is shown in the ui, I'm not really sure - we store the "pretty" name in a couple places, the .msf file for the folder, and panacea.dat - I think they'd both have to get deleted/corrupted for the problem to show up. 

Comment 4

[Daniel Pierre McClenaghan]

(In reply to comment #3)
> yes, the colon is the problem - that's not a legal character in filenames, so
> we have to create a unique name - we use a number, which is not a decision I'm
> particularly happy with, though it's not supposed to get exposed to the user.
> As to why it sometimes happens that the actual file name is shown in the ui,
> I'm not really sure - we store the "pretty" name in a couple places, the .msf
> file for the folder, and panacea.dat - I think they'd both have to get
> deleted/corrupted for the problem to show up. 
> 
So if I remove all the colons on all the folders, subfolders & subsub folders etc the problem will not return?
And if the colons are the "tripwire" for the reverting to encryption why only sometimes to some folders & not all the time to all folders?

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

yes, as long as you don't use any other characters that are illegal in file names, the problem should not recur.

I don't know why this problem is happening to some folders and not others, if they all have ':' in the name. 

Comment 6

[Daniel Pierre McClenaghan]

(In reply to comment #5)
> yes, as long as you don't use any other characters that are illegal in file
> names, the problem should not recur.
> 
> I don't know why this problem is happening to some folders and not others, if
> they all have ':' in the name. 
> 
Possibly some electrons are more independent, alpha electrons as leaders opposed to the beta executive branch & the gamma slaves!!
The trouble is that I have about 5 or 600 folders & the posssibility is that unless I clean out the entire setup at one time I might crash it totally since there will be colon free groups cohabiting with those that are colon enhanced. Possible??

Comment 7

[David :Bienvenu]

You'll probably want to backup your profile - but renaming your folders one by one shouldn't cause problems. 

Comment 8

[Daniel Pierre McClenaghan]

(In reply to comment #7)
> You'll probably want to backup your profile - but renaming your folders one by
> one shouldn't cause problems.

Renaming 600 folders is going to take some time..........

Thank you for your help & I hope that the problem is solved.
DMcC
> 

Comment 9

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(For bug summary)
> folder names containing ':' (colon) get number/letter combination names

As David explained, your folder name contains illegal file name character. And file name of number/letter combination(HEXA string) for it is current design, and it is working well as designed. So this bug is INVALID.

However, there are at least next two issues in current design.
 1. If .msf file is deleted manually, after restart, mail folder name becomes
    "number/letter combination".
 2. User can not guess original mail folder name from file name of the
    "number/letter combination", and get confused like you.
Issue 1 won't occur when "Rebuild Index" in properties of mail folder(since Tb 2.0.). So it can be said "already FIXED", although general user still may deletes .msf because some messages say "Delete .msf and restart Tb" when some errors.
For issue 2, Bug 275770 is already requested.

I think you can chose close as INVALID or DUP.
    

Comment 10

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

No response for more than three years...
Closing as INVALID.