363177 - duplicate email entries in thunderbird inbox

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Sergei Kucherov]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

Opened email (but did not open any attachments) with body from ZoneAlarm info but with sender another site.

Just after deleting this bogus email most all of the 1000+ inbox email messages appear twice (but the total reported is still correct). When delete any one of the seemingly duplicated messages, the other identical message in inbox turns subject line to null and the date received to 1969.

Rebooted, reinstalled same/latest Thunderbird, restored all C: drive from backup earlier today before the problem-- all recovery procedures cause the problem to reappear (after recover C: drive) or persist (reboot, reinstall).

The problem is easily reproduced on my machine and I have never seen it before today. I believe it is due to merely opening the bogus email (but not any attachments). Note that I am running ZoneAlarm, Bitdefender, SpamAssassin, Spybot. None of them caught the seemingly bad email that caused this persistent problem.


Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Sergei Kucherov]

Seeming workaround:
-- copy all inbox messages to new folder CopyInbox
-- remove all inbox messages
-- copy all CopyInbox messages to inbox
-- remove all CopyInbox m
ssages
-- optional: restart Thunderbird

Now observe this behavior (which is the core bug in the display of the inbox):
-- delete one of a pair of seeming duplicate messages
-- the message still in inbox has changed subject to null and receive date to Dec 31 1969 !!
-- *but* this is not an actual problem, since if you next do Empty Trash, the null subject with 1969 date email has restored the correct subject and date !!

This is a 100% reproducible bug, and using the Empty Trash workaround (_possibly_ also need to first copy and copy-back all inbox messages), Thunderbird remains acceptable as an email client.

Comment 2

[Régis Caspar]

*** Bug 363160 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

does deleting inbox.msf and restarting also fix this problem?

Comment 4

[Sergei Kucherov]

The workaround is even easier than I first thought:

Problem restatement:
-- delete one of a pair of duplicate messages in inbox (so it goes to Trash folder)
-- observe message in inbox has empty Subject line, receive Date of 12/31/69 7:00PM, and no text in the message

Simple workaround to restoring inbox messages display:
-- click on any other folder then click on inbox again -- this refreshes the inbox display and the remaining one of the duplicate messages has its proper Subject, Date, and contents. Also restarting Thunderbird has the same effect to properly refresh the display.

I conclude this 100% reproducible bug is in the refresh/display of the inbox messages when a duplicate message is deleted.

Comment 5

[Chris Bruner]

I'm not sure if this is related or not.  I've been having a problem since before 1.5.0.9 (which still has the bug). Same XP, using zonealarm.

I leave messages on the server for a week, because I have multiple computers, and let them each grab a copy of the message. 
Occassionally Thunderbird will retrieve messages that were already retrieved. Usually this seems to happen after a folder has been compressed.

If you don't think this relates, let me know and I'll post a new bug.

Comment 6

[Robin Grindley]

I'm seeing the exact same bug. I built my own 2.0b2 release (version 2 beta 2 (20070116)). Deleting one of the two duplicate messages leaves the 12/31/1969 message, which disappears after switching to another folder and back. 

The duplicate messages happens fairly often (multiple times/day). I switched over from 1.5.0.8 about a week ago, and don't recall ever seeing this happen in the older version. 

Comment 7

[Wayne Woods]

I've just seen this problem today for the first time, in just one email (or rather, some sort of entangled pair :) ). After I delete or move one copy, the other one becomes a dummy email that adopts a 1970 date, and takes on the header and attachments characteristics of whichever email I visited just before clicking on it, but it has no message body at all. After restoring the moved email, both mirror each other again. It doesn't matter which of the two I move or delete.

If I delete one copy, switch folders and then go back to Inbox, the dummy email is gone. If I then ctrl-z to restore the deleted email, it appears with no duplicate. But if I switch folders and back again, the duplicate email problem returns.

I should also note that I recently switched to using ZoneAlarm, as well. Is there anyone seeing this problem who isn't using that app?

If there's any other info I can supply to help, lemme know.

Comment 8

[Wayne Woods]

Oh, also:
(In reply to comment #5)
> Occassionally Thunderbird will retrieve messages that were already retrieved.
> Usually this seems to happen after a folder has been compressed.

Chris, that sounds like bug 240049.

Comment 9

[Chris Bruner]

Thanks Wayne. Looks like they've got mine figured out. (Cause, not cure).

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Chris, now that bug 240049 is fixed, is your problem gone?