365949 - duplicate mail messages can't be deleted correctly

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[John T]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2pre) Gecko/20070103 SeaMonkey/1.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2pre) Gecko/20070103 SeaMonkey/1.1

Mail messages that are exact duplicates sometimes are downloaded, and I would like to delete the duplicates. When I try to do so, the header for the deleted msg disappears from the msg list, but a mostly blank header appears with an incorrect date and a size indicated to be 1K. This blank header can be deleted too, but I'm concerned about the integrity of the resulting mailbox file. When the msf file is deleted and then rebuilt, the mailbox file seems OK---haven't found problems YET. But deleting a duplicate should work just like deleting or moving any other message, cleanly.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Download a duplicate email message from a pop server, for example by setting messages to be left on the server, downloading, and then setting messages to be deleted on downloading. 
2. Delete one of the duplicate messages or move (file) it into another mailbox.
3. 
Actual Results:  
A nearly blank and entirely incorrect header appears in the message list, with a size indicated to be 1K.

Expected Results:  
The deleted or moved duplicate message header should completely disappear from the mailbox message list, with the msf file for the mailbox being updated correctly.

Apparently there have been some file-handling changes in the past six months. Here is a short list of bug reports that might be related to this report.

bug #364606---my first bug report about flawed deletions, requirement of duplicate msgs not recognized
bug #361730---file handling bug---large mail files
bug #354272---enhancement request to eliminate dupes---addon suggested
bug #364189---frequent mail folder corruptions (msf problems)
bug #360252---matching 'message-id' and 'references' headers cause message not to be listed---dupe of 360409
bug #360409---mails with messed up references seem to disappear
bug #347810---Incorrect determination and report of "Truncated" on short emails Mail pref allow 9999K (mail size setting problem)
bug #356407---After installing Seamonkey 1.0.5 a few days ago, it turns out that I cannot send, reply, reply to all, or forward a message.
bug #358488---Mail Check problem: Multiple download of same mail 
bug #365649---mail not downloaded---Moz 1.7.13 good, Seamonkey 1.0x buggy
Bug #357619 – No notification for new emails is sent if you delete a .msf file and never visit that folder since then
Bug #363008 – "Rebuild index" results in doubled message count

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

are you in a view other than flat sorted by date? I don't see this problem myself, though I sometimes get the duplicate problem...

Comment 2

[John T]

No. I show 2 panes, the mailbox list and message list, with no preview pane. The msgs are flat and sorted by date.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

are you deleting the messages from the message list, or from the stand-alone message window, after you've read the message?

Comment 4

[John T]

From the msg list.

Comment 5

[John T]

I saw this one or two days ago in SM 1.0.8. If some pop mail is received, but the transmission times out so the messages are still on the server, the received messages will appear as headers, no doubt with msf file entries. When another "get messages" operation is performed, duplicate header entries appear. It's unclear to me whether these are multiple copies of messages or just multiple headers and msf file entries pointing to the same message. Deleting these multiple messages cause problems. Deleting a duplicate message in the message list window seems to cause a header with a blank subject line to appear. I found that the way to fix this is to delete the msf file so it's rebuilt, and without multiple msf entries pointing to the same message. Then they can be safely deleted.

Deleting each message from the server as it's successfully received might fix the problem of duplicate messages. Only the programmers would know why more than one msf entry would be made that points to the same message in the inbox.

The timing out of pop mail delivery was due to another problem that arose in my linux dialer/ppp software.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

does it also fail using a trunk build?

Comment 7

[John T]

I don't know. I can't run trunk builds anymore due to the newer libraries required.

Comment 8

[Wayne Woods]

This looks like a dupe of bug 363177.

A few commenters there also report they're using ZoneAlarm. Are people here also using that product?

Comment 9

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Can you reproduce with SeaMonkey v1.1.9 ?

Comment 10

[Wolfgang Preuss]

Problem (duplicate mails) occurs in my environment quite often still with
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20090228 SeaMonkey/2.0b1pre
(I'm using ZoneAlarm Security Suite Version 8.0.108.000.)
Today I remarked that at the moment when the two duplicate mails appeared in
my SeaMonkey IMAP Inbox *another mail disappeared from the list!!*
Deleting one of the duplicate mails left a mail without subject and dated
1.1.1970 (but with the content of the other deleted mail).
Looking via webmail in our central mail system (horde Imp H3 4.0.4) I find the
'lost' mail without problems.
Then I selected all mails in my SeaMonkey IMAP inbox and copied them to
a local folder. Afterwards the formerly 'lost' mail reappeared in
SeaMonkeys IMAP inbox, and the duplicate mail (without subject,
dated 1.1.1970) was gone (I suppose that the index was rebuilt).
I fear that I have lost several mails in the past by this behaviour ...

Comment 11

[Milan Kerslager]

I have the same problem since some update early this year. Some messages in my IMAP inbox are duplicated even they are not (checked locally by mutt). Duplication hides next message in folder. When trying to delete on of the duplicate message, the Subject:, From: and Date: changes to be empty.

The problem is the same on my Windows XP box and in my Fedora 10 or 11 too (both 64bit). If I try to use another client (webmail, Evolution) via IMAP, there is no inbox corruption so I'm not able to blame IMAP server (dovecot on RHEL5). I also tryed to use older dovecot with no change.

This serious bug has been introduced into 2.0.0.x version early this year (both Windows and Linux versions) and is present in current 3 beta (as of Fedora 11).

Comment 12

[Milan Kerslager]

I have no antivirus present on my systems. So don't blabe Zonealarm too.

Comment 13

[Iain]

I am having similar problems to this.

I use TB to download both my G-Mail and Hotmail accounts by POP and I've been finding that recently a lot of my e-mails in my G-Mail inbox are being duplicated.

What happens is that they're downloaded just fine from the server, which then causes G-Mail to move the messages from the Inbox to the 'All Mail' folder - so I can 100% guarantee this is not the messages being downloaded from the server again.
Everything at this point is fine, the messages are there in my inbox and I can read them etc just fine.

However, when I navigate to another folder (say my Hotmail inbox which is kept separate from my G-Mail one) and then switch back to the G-Mail inbox, quite often a large number of recently received messages will have magically duplicated themselves.
It only happens when I view a different folder then go back to the G-Mail inbox, I can send and receive a number of times whilst viewing the G-Mail inbox and no duplicates appear but when I navigate away and back again, there they are.

And I don't use ZoneAlarm.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

anyone still see this in version 2?

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

this issues should be gone. but no response, so => incmplete