Closed Bug 456993 Opened 16 years ago Closed 14 years ago

TB hangs when print dialog open during mail server timeout

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

PowerPC
macOS
defect
Not set
critical

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 476541

People

(Reporter: realgrouchy, Unassigned)

Details

(Keywords: hang, Whiteboard: [needs trunk test])

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14
Build Identifier: 2.0.0.14 (OS X 10.5.5 Intel)

My internet is currently up, by my mail server is down. While it was automatically checking for mail, I tried to print a message. It finished while I was in the print dialog, but the "connection timed out" alert didn't appear until I hit the "print" button. That alert appeared and the "Saving / Processing page" dialog appeared, but neither would do anything. Most other functionality was disabled. Details below.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

Note: Printing works fine so long as the server request doesn't complete while the print dialog is open.

1. With mail server down (I have no idea how you would test this; configuring an invalid server name might work, but I don't have time to test that), click "Get Mail" button. It will take a while as it looks for the server.

2. While it's doing that, click on a message in the inbox and print it.

3. Leave the print dialog open for a while until enough time has passed for Thunderbird to realize it can't connect to the server. No alert will pop up for that.

4. Click "Print" in the print dialog (I initially discovered this while printing to a PDF--I have CS3--but a regular print will do the trick).

Note: The bug will NOT occur if at this step:
(a) The "Cancel" button is pressed on the print dialog
(b) The "Print" button is pressed before TB is finished looking for the server
(c) Printing is done when TB is not trying to retrieve messages

RESULTS:

5. Simultaneously: 
(a) An Alert box with the TB logo will drop down from the top bar of the TB window, saying "*Alert* / Connection to server [servername] timed out." and an "OK" button. Clicking the button does nothing.


(b) A Print progress dialog box will pop up with the title "Print" in the header, the text "Printing Page", a progress bar which remains blank, and a "Cancel" button.
- Clicking the "Cancel" button changes the text to "Printing Page: Canceling" and the progress bar goes stripey and wavey.

(c) The TB window will not move.

6. All menu functions are disabled, except for "Preferences" (which does nothing), the "hide" features (which work normally, "About Thunderbird" (which brings up the About dialog box, though I cannot move it, and the red "close" button does not do anything), and "quit thunderbird"

WORKAROUND:

7. Mysteriously, clicking Thunderbird > Quit Thunderbird causes the dialogs to go away. Thunderbird stays open.



Note: submitting bug as "critical" because the description of "critical" includes "The software...hangs", though there is a workaround (going to quit thunderbird), which is also the most obvious way to try to resolve the problem.
sounds familiar but I can't put my finger on it.
realgrouchy, can  you try an early release? 
 http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/
backup your profile first
 http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_FAQs_:_Backing_Up_and_Restoring

>7. Mysteriously, clicking Thunderbird > Quit Thunderbird causes the dialogs to
go away. Thunderbird stays open.

do you mean that thunderbird still appears in the process tab of taskmanager?
Keywords: hang
Thanks for looking at it, Wayne.

> do you mean that thunderbird still appears in the process tab of taskmanager?

Is there a taskmanager in OSX? Either way, what I meant was that when I clicked "Thunderbird > Quit Thunderbird", instead of the program closing, the dialogs disappeared, as if I had selected a menu option called "Close all mysterious dialogs and return to normal". I was able to continue using TB as normal (except, of course, my mailserver was down).

> realgrouchy, can you try an early release? 

I'm hesitant to do so, partly because it's my work computer and I don't want to jeopardize any of my files/etc., but also because I'm not sure how to reproduce the condition of the mail server being down. 

Maybe if I get bored one day after clocking out I can try some things, but don't hold your breath.
ludo, something you can test?
(In reply to comment #3)
> ludo, something you can test?

The difficult part will be to have the mail server down - But I'll have a look.
realgrouchy possible for you to test 3.0 beta? 
 ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/nightly/2009-10-21-06-comm-1.9.1/
and if it fails that, trunk
 ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/nightly/2009-10-21-16-comm-central-trunk/

it would be a great help. you would want to back up your profile before using these. the beta is pretty stable. however, UI is much changed, and problems can occur.  so best to be safe.

ludo perhaps can advise what to do when it hangs
Whiteboard: [needs trunk test]
Version: unspecified → 2.0
Kill the application and capture the thing apple wants to receive and paste it here.
Luckily or unluckily, I can't spontaneously create a mail server timeout, as suggested by ludo in comment #4 (and I haven't had any since the initial bug), so I wouldn't be able to recreate the bug at will. (Also, since I use TB for work, I can't risk the threat to data integrity by using a beta version)

Sorry about that. I always seem to find the really weird bugs.
Probably this helps for reproducing:
For me, a similar problem happens due to a possible bug in TB when you try to print a message (from an IMAP server) which has not been fully downloaded yet (due to the size limit 50kB). TB hangs, seemingly because it tries to get something from the server. You can close the print dialog using the X-button, but then TB does not fully work (some activity is blocked). When you close TB, thunderbird.exe remains in task manager.

See also my bug report https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=544748
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 14 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
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