386306 - Data Loss if profile on a network drive and running for some time (roaming) - Windows error message "Windows delayed write failed"

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(MailNews Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[Andreas Allacher]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4
Build Identifier: 2.0.0.4

If I store my profiles with the mails on a network drive and have run Thunderbird for some time (don't know how long exactly - could even be a day or longer) without closing Thunderbird and doing anything in Thunderbird itself. If I don't do something in Thunderbird (like downloading new mails) or close Thunderbird I get the message from windows (don't know how it is called in English exactly but should be something like):
"Data Loss on Writing"
Although it seems that Thunderbird then can restore those data after restart BUT it takes some time (depending on how many mails there are)...

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Roame thunderbird profiles to a network drive (or at least the one you use)
2.Start Thunderbird with this roamed Profile
3.Have some messages already in there
4.Let it run for some time (could be days though - most time it is because it is opened over night and not closed) without doing anything
5.Do something in Thunderbird again, e.g. move mails should do it, but best is though to close Thunderbird.
6.Windows will say: "Data Loss on Write"
7.Restarting Thunderbird means that data recovery gets started
Actual Results:  
Explained in steps to reproduce 6 and 7

Expected Results:  
Of course, that there is no data loss and therefore no recovery is needed...

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Andreas, dupe to bug 377242?

Comment 2

[Andreas Allacher]

No, because that one is regarding roaming which is not quite the same... Furthermore: That extension doesn't support all features yet...
I guess to fix this you might need to read a byte or something from Inbox file every 10 minutes or whatsoever...

Comment 3

[Andreas Allacher]

Futhermore, I now tested it with the following trunk version:
version 3.0a1pre (2007093003)

It still exists... First time I tried, I thought it was gone, but there I was wrong (it probably wasn't open long enough the first time). Second time, I tried I ran into that problem again...

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

xref bug 253060, bug 139562

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Andreas, Does this still happen with TB 3 beta*? Can you provide the exact error message?  And, I don't understand "data recovery" from comment 0

* http://en-us.www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/

Comment 6

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

Reporter could answer to comment #5, please?

Comment 7

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

RESO INCO due to lack of response to last comment. If you feel this change was made in error, please respond to this bug with your reasons why.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Andrea seems to be gone but the steps seem clear (and it's dataloss) so reopening.
this should be tested after bug  539389 is fixed

Comment 9

[Matthew Jurgens]

I think the windows message might be popped up from the system tray (Windows XP) in a balloon message saying "Windows Delayed Write Failed. Windows was unable to save all the data for the file FILELOCATION\Inbox.msf. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection."

My Thunderbird profile and data lives on a network share (Samba) and I can recreate this problem by restarting Samba.

You may be able to make TB more resilient to data loss but if it is a Windows function (delayed write) then you may not be able to do anything about it.

Comment 10

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Does this still happen? Is it a Thunderbird problem?
What's the way forward here?

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #10)
> Does this still happen? 

(I would think so - was reproducible according to Matthew)

Matthew?  


(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #10)
> Is it a Thunderbird problem?
no, it would be core or toolkit

> What's the way forward here?
this is very likely a duplicate

Comment 12

[Matthew Jurgens]

This will always be reproducible by dropping the samba share. I don't know if this specific bug report is a TB problem or not. It may be a problem on the server providing the share (since that is one way to recreate it).

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

bug 608462 comment 7 cites a crash that states "Windows delayed write failed"
I found on other but report

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

If this still exists I should think there must be another bug report that covers the cause