455680 - Filters on custom headers are not working for messages that are not downloaded

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 184490

(MailNews Core :: Filters, defect)

Description

[Giacomo Di Ciocco]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_4; it-it) AppleWebKit/525.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Safari/525.20.1
Build Identifier: From 2 to 3.0a2

Our server adds X-Original-To header which corresponds to the alias address to who was originally sent the message; this allows reliable filtering of messages destinated to alias addresses, this doesnt work with thunderbird > 1.5

Regards,
Giacomo.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
There is a test account:

IMAP server: mail.nemail.it
Login/Email: [e-mail]
Password: debug

Alias address: [e-mail]

If you send a message to [e-mail] you will receive it on [e-mail]; at this point the message will have an additional header called X-Original-To, making a filter based on this header will allow you to do reliable filtering of messages destinated to the alias address.

We have succesfully used it until thunderbird 2.0, it was working on 1.5, it is not working in 3 beta.

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Is that an after-the-fact filter action (you hit "run now"), or an automatic. (xref bug 184490)

Comment 2

[Giacomo Di Ciocco]

I create the filter from Tools -> Message filters, I add the custom header and the rule "if custom-header is/contains [e-mail]" move the message into a defined folder.

The application always ignores the filter, both clicking on "run now" or simply making the filter and waiting for filter-able messages to arrive.

Regards,
Giacomo.

Comment 3

[Günter Rote]

Just as a confirmation:
I've had the same(?) problem that filters with CUSTOM HEADERS
don't do anything (and was therfore looking through bugzilla).
(I tried several custom headers. The last one I tested is:
If "Message-ID:" header contains "acquatec", then tag message as special.
which should apply to one message in my folder.)
It works after I copy the message to a local folder, but not on an IMAP
folder. (I ran the filter manually in both cases, for testing.)
A Filter with the "From" tag works with the IMAP folder.
I am using Version 2.0.0.21 (20090302) on Windows.

I wonder if ANYBODY has successfully run a custom-header filter with an
IMAP folder?
regards : Günter

Comment 4

[Günter Rote]

Update on previous comment.
It works after I download the folder (either manually
by "download now" or by the folder setting "download for offline use")

Comment 5

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Günter: see comment 1. Though who knows if your problem is the same as this bug...

Also, can you try a beta?
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-central/
http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/

Comment 6

[Günter Rote]

Additional remarks:
On my office computer (version 1.0.2 (20070113)) on Linux
everything (at least those filters ;-) works fine.
This seems to indicate that my problem is the same bug
as described by Giacomo.

I have always run the filter manually.
(extras-> filters ->
"run selected filter on folder now" or (extras ->
run filter on folder)
I have not yet tested it on the beta version but I will
try.

It might have something to do with downloading
and *storing* message headers in Thunderbird with the IMAP protocol?
(about which I know nothing.)
-- Günter

The bug should be easy to reproduce, for anybody
who has access to an IMAP account.

1)
Take a folder that is not downloaded for off-line reading.
(Folder -> right-click-> properties ->off-line), e.g. the folder
for spam would be a typical candidate.
2)
Look at the source of some mail in that folder
and select one of the non-standard headers
(e.g. User-Agent or X-Mailer or Message-ID)
the last one is preferable since it might
select a unique message.
3)
Create a filter based on that header.
It is best to select some innocent action,
that can be easily undone,
like "mark message as read" or change priority
4)
Run filter on folder manually
(either from Filter menu, or
when folder is opened by
Extras -> run filters
5)
Check whether the state of the message has changed.

[FYI, The background of my problem is that I want to do some fine-tuning
of the server-side spam classifiction, putting "possible" spam
in a different folder (being more frequently looked at)
than "very probable" spam, based on Spam-assassin's
Headers. I used to do this on the server, but this is no longer
going to be supported on our mail-servers.

Comment 7

[Günter Rote]

Update:
It works (most of the time) for fresh incoming mail that is not yet in the folder. (Strangely, it failed for certain conditions on the "From" tag, which is probably a different problem.)
Therefore, I have so far not felt the urge to upgrade and try the beta version, sorry.

Comment 8

[mlap]

the same here,
it works most of the time for fresh incoming mails

but if you use search (CTRL+SHIFT+f)then the messages where found.
strange.

tested with thunderbird V 2.0.0.23 on Windows XP SP3 (home)

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

can someone seeing this definitively say whether bug 184490 is related? (again, comment 1)

Comment 10

[Günter Rote]

(In reply to comment #9)
> can someone seeing this definitively say whether bug 184490 is related? (again,
> comment 1)

Yes, in my opinion, the description of bug 184490 is very much to the point,
at least for the bug that originally bothered me.

I noticed another point.
I have a filter that is an OR ("any of the
following") of very many conditions on the From field.
Sometimes I add a new condition to this filter.
Then, when I hit "run now" it works fine and does the desired action (move the message out of my sight).

But sometimes I noticed that those conditions were already present in the filter before! (from some previous messages that I get from the same source.)
I first hit "run now", nothing happens, then I add another condition that is identical to one that is already there, I hit "run now" again, and it works.
(maybe just once for this time, I don't know.)

Perhaps I should file another bug report on this.

(I have another suspicion about the reason for this bug, reading a remark at
the end of the original description bug 184490.
Maybe the program is processing the filter as if it were an AND instead of an OR, for some reason?)