364911 - 1.5.0.9 sends emails that are not received

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[BobK100]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.9) Gecko/20061206 Firefox/1.5.0.9
Build Identifier: Thunderbird version 1.5.0.9

The problem is that emails CONTAINING IMAGES INLINE are never received, or (depending on the addressee's ISP) are received as text only. In neither case are delivery failure notices received. Thus, Thunderbird users are unknowingly sending emails that are never received!

The problem goes away when you uninstall 1.5.0.9 and install 1.5.0.8.

However, a new problem is presented. I installed 1.5.0.8 yesterday, and today I received this notice:

"Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 Ready to Install"

"Thunderbird has just completed downloading an important update and must now be restarted so that the update can be installed."

When I chose not to restart Thunderbird I received this:

"The update you just downloaded will be installed the next time you start Thunderbird." 

A user more knowledgeable than I reports:

"I have reproduced exactly the problem you are seeing. If I use Thunderbird and send the inline image mail from one of my Comcast email addresses to another of my Comcast addresses it is never delivered. If I do exactly the same thing using Outlook Express the message is instantly delivered.

I also find that using Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 these messages are not delivered if I send them through my GMail account and they are not delivered if I send them through my Fastmail account.

I have just un-installed Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 and re-installed 1.5.0.8.

If I use Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 and send the inline image mail from one of my Comcast email addresses to another of my Comcast addresses it is delivered instantly.

To be fair to Thunderbird - I have compared the messages created in the two different versions. The only difference between them is the User Agent line which contains the name and version of the mail client and that simply reflects the updated version of Thunderbird.

By reverting to Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 all my inline images tests between Comcast, GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo and Fastmail have been just about instantly delivered with a 100% completion rate.

I can see nothing wrong with the messages being created by Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 - they are identical to those created by Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 apart from the User Agent line containing the updated version number of Thunderbird. In all cases these messages are being accepted by SMTP servers and then apparently thrown away. I have received no delivery failure notices for the many inline image test message I have sent in the last 24 hours using Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 but it seems that some of the major email server systems do not like the format of these new messages when carrying the User Agent line of Thunderbird 1.5.0.9."


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Send email containing jpg or gif image
2.Wait
3.Receive nothing, or depending on addressee's ISP, receive text only.  Receive no delivery failure notice.




This problem was discussed at length at MozillaZine Thunderbird Support Forum under the thread titled "Can't send email with jpg or gif inline."

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=502302

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

if the only thing that's different is the user agent, then it sounds like the isp's are blocking the user agent because they didn't know that 1.5.0.9 had been released. There's not much we can do about it except try to convince the isp's to fix their servers.

Comment 2

[BobK100]

(In reply to comment #1)
> if the only thing that's different is the user agent, then it sounds like the
> isp's are blocking the user agent because they didn't know that 1.5.0.9 had
> been released. There's not much we can do about it except try to convince the
> isp's to fix their servers.
> 

Please do so!  1.5.0.9 users are unaware their emails containing images are not being received.  This is a serious problem, especially for business correspondence.(In reply to comment #1)
> if the only thing that's different is the user agent, then it sounds like the
> isp's are blocking the user agent because they didn't know that 1.5.0.9 had
> been released. There's not much we can do about it except try to convince the
> isp's to fix their servers.
> 

Comment 3

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

Thunderbird 1.5.0.x is no longer supported.

Please comment if the issue still occurs in the latest supported Thunderbird 2.0.0.x or trunk nightlies.

Comment 4

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

No additional useful information since last comment -> resolving incomplete.

Please comment if the issue still occurs in the latest supported 2.0.0.14 / trunk nightlies.