363039 - Quick navigation/deletes triggers alert "mail server is not an IMAP4 mail server" error popup inappropriately

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[Jason Haar]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061107 Fedora/1.5.0.8-1.fc6 Firefox/1.5.0.8
Build Identifier: TB 1.5.0.8

I run TB-1.5.0.8 at work and at home. When accessing over the LAN, rapidly deleting mail messages via hitting the Del key always works fine. 

However, at home connecting to the same work IMAP (Courier-IMAP) server, deleting mail becomes a bit of a chore. Hitting the Del key too quickly in a row (i.e. Del->Del->Del) causes TB to throw up the error popup

mail server XXX is not an IMAP4 mail server

It seems obvious to me that this is a latency-related issue. The buffering up of the Del key hits is struggling against the 50-60ms latency to the IMAP server and it's getting its knickers in a twist (technical term ;-)


Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
Should either buffer the keystrokes, or start reporting an error beep that it's key buffer is full?

Comment 1

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

The same happens to me with SeaMonkey 1.1b

Comment 2

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

I have two imap servers which are both running cyrus IMAP in some different versions and I only can reproduce it easily with one of them. The network speed is the same for both but one has much slower hardware than the other which might cause this. So it could depend on the speed the imap server can serve requests.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

an imap protocol log might be interesting:

http://www.mozilla.org/quality/mailnews/mail-troubleshoot.html#imap

Comment 4

[Jason Haar]

I've got an imap protocol log as mentioned above. There is no obvious error I can see in it that explains the "not an IMAP server" error I saw. Certainly that popup doesn't show in the protocol log.

Anyone from Mozilla want it? I don't really want to paste it to this site... 

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

sure, send it to me, thx.

Comment 6

[David :Bienvenu]

From the log, it looks like all the connections were killed (NS_ERROR_ABORT), either by the server, the imap code, the ssl layer, or the networking code. My guess is by the server...in any case, when we tried to reconnect, it looks like we didn't get a capability back the first time, and thus thought it wasn't an imap server. The server may have been in a bad state, or we may have failed to propagate an error. 

Comment 7

[Master Abi]

I upgraded to TB 2 RC1. Connecting to a Merak Mail server with IMAP. After deleting messages I too get 'mail server XXX is not an IMAP4 mail server'. Then TB becomes unstable. I have to restart TB. I am using Windows XP SP2.

This did not happen with TB 1.5. This popup occurred when I was also downloading a large file, so latency should definitely be factored in when solving this. I can reproduce this every time when latency is high.    

Comment 8

[rsx11m]

I have observed a similar problem when just browsing through the mail list using the B and F key shortcuts, with both the current versions of Thunderbird 2.0.0.0 (Windows/20070326) as well as SeaMonkey 1.1.1 under Linux (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3; Gecko/20070325 SUSE/1.1.1-37.2 SeaMonkey/1.1.1) and Windows XP SP2(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2; Gecko/20070222 SeaMonkey/1.1.1). It appears more frequently on the slower machines (slower CPU or graphics).

This probably doesn't justify its own bug report since it appears to be the same cause, but it should be noted that this doesn't just happen when deleting = more general problem. IMAP server is Linux-based, don't know the exact type & version.

Comment 9

[Christian Schmidt]

I get the same error message when rapidly marking a lot of messages read using the shortcut key N, e.g. when moving through messages from a mailing list.

I am using using TB 2.0 and Cyrus 2.3.8.

I have some logs from TB and Cyrus, that I can send by email.

Comment 10

[Camilo Mesias]

I am seeing this, and other problems when running Thunderbird on CentOS in a virtual machine (vmware) hosted on Windows XP. The connection to the mail server is through an ssh tunnel.

This scenario reproduces the "Mail server localhost is not an IMAP4 mail server" frequently, and I suspect lag introduced by the virtual machine.

I had previously accessed the same server through a tunnel from a native Linux PC and did not see the same errors.

Comment 11

[rsx11m]

Also observed with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008032801 SeaMonkey/2.0a1pre, thus adjusting flags respectively. As this is a more general timing issue than just for deleting messages too quickly, I've generalized the bug summary accordingly.

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

hmm, just saw this with 3 quick deletes on wsm0 account.
never seen before, and I do LOTS of deletes
log file coming up.

is bug 408861 related?

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: imap log including 3 deletes that trigger alert, all deletes were successful

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

version 3.0a2pre (2008062703)

Comment 15

[Jesse Thompson]

Have seen this problem for a while (since at least 1.5ish.)  Not fixed yet as of 2.0.0.14.

Server is Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2

Triggered by repeatedly pressing 'n' and 'm' (quickly marking a mailing list thread as read.)

Comment 16

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Duplicate of (the fixed) bug 408861?

Anyone still see this on trunk?
http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-trunk/

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

saw it last week, but I could swear to what version I was running.

Comment 18

[rsx11m]

With SeaMonkey/2.0a1pre (Windows; 20080826002249) and Shredder/3.0b1pre (Windows; 20080827031724) nightlies, I do no longer get the error message when quickly browsing through the messages using the B and F shortcuts. However, I still see substantial closing and reopening of connections to the IMAP server, and when stopping at a message, it sometimes appears to loop in the "Downloading" status for this message even after displaying it (this stops when switching to another message).

Thus, there still seem to be some timing issues not entirely resolved.

Comment 19

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

rsx11m, do we need a new bug for comment 18?

Comment 20

[rsx11m]

I can still reproduce comment #18 with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1b5pre) Gecko/20090507 SeaMonkey/2.0b1pre. Navigating quickly closes existing and opens new IMAP connections, and when I stop it's catching up with the queue of download requests on the remaining open connnection.

Looking at the patch for bug 408861, it seems to just suppress the message popping up rather than addressing the underlying issue, thus I'd say this bug here is still valid as for the cause but may need a summary adjustment.

On the other hand, there is David's comment #6, indicating that a shutdown may have been requested by the server. Not being familiar enough with the protocol, can't tell whether or not this is supposed to happen.