471527 - Favorites, sort order lost & offline content deleted when IMAP temporarily disconnected

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 213827

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Jeffrey C. Jacobs]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120121 Firefox/3.0.5
Build Identifier: version 2.0.0.18 (20081105)

The Firefox web browser (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120121 Firefox/3.0.5) crashed when I was trying to type this the first time and all I recovered was the following sentences (one wonders if there isn't something built into the browser that otherwise runs for days but as soon as you try and file a bug report, it crashes and looses all of your report, hoping that such a crash will scare off potential bug reporters):

---
is lost.  The purpose of off-line folders should be to prevent this from happening since the IMAP server is literally off-line for the minute or so when the new IP is being resolved.  And, when the IMAP server has literally hundreds of folders, finding all the previously marked favourites is nightmarish even once, never mind the numerous times I've suffered it.

It should be noted that with this setup, the IMAP server is mapped to 127.0.0.1 so that it is o
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I believe the first part was supposed to say something about the IMAP server having a Dynamic IP and that only through DNS lookup could that IP be resolved, and that the IP changes multiple times a day so that the IMAP would be temporarily disconnected.  When disconnected, Thunderbird thinks its okay to deleted all off-line content and forget which folders are marked as favorites.  Further, when reconnected, it does not reapply the favorites marker to the original favorites folders and all favorites are lost.  In addition, the information of which folders are marked for off-line content is also lost as well as the previous sort order for each IMAP folder.

The rest of the message was supposed to read that because the IMAP server is port-mapped to the localhost, Thunderbird remains oblivious to the need for a DNS lookup when the IP Address expires since it would not know how to detect this situation or resolve it.  Instead, I manually provide the port map to the correct address (via SSH tunnel) and then just set my IMAP server to 127.0.0.1.  This is how you set up a stable IMAP server on a dynamic IP.  But, as I indicated, when the IP changes, the Tunnel locks up, Thunderbird pops up a bunch of complaining dialogs and when you click through them all, poof your favorites and off-line folders are gone forever and you have to spend 10 minutes reconnecting them AGAIN.  This is mind numbing by itself, but to have to do it repeatedly AND have the web browser crash when you're trying to report it is just enough to make you cry.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Map a remote IMAP server via ssh tunnel to the localhost.
2. Set up an account in Thunderbird for an IMAP server on the localhost.
3. Mark some of the IMAP server folders for off-line content, mark as favorites, and change the folder sort order.
4. Change the IP Address of the IMAP server via a DHCP refresh request (normally this step would be done by an ISP without the customers permission).
5. Click "okay" on all the dialogs presented by Thunderbird regarding the disconnection of the IMAP server.
6. Close the now locked up ssh tunnel and reestablish a new tunnel using the same domain name which will now resolve to the new IP Address.
7. Observe the "Favorite Folders" list; observe the "Selected Folders for Offline use..." under the "Offline & Disk Space" section of your localhost IMAP account under the "Account Settings..." menu item under the "Tools" menu.  Observer the sort order of the IMAP folders.
Actual Results:  
At step 5, the favorites from the IMAP server are no longer in the "Favorite Folders" list and there are no folders checked for off-line use listed in the "Selected Folders for Offline use..." dialog.  At this time, all off-line content from the IMAP server is deleted.  At step 7, the favorites and off-line folder list remains devoid of any folders from the IMAP server that were previously checked.  The "Favorite Folders" list also has none of the favorite folders from the IMAP server that it had previous and all folder sort order defaults to reverse-date instead of the originally selected sort order.

Expected Results:  
At step 5, all off-line content should remain that was associated with the IMAP server, and any folder that was marked as a "Favorite Folder" that is also selected for off-line content should remain in the "Favorite Folders" list.
At step 7, any folder on the IMAP server that was not originally marked for off-line content should remain not marked for off-line content.  Also, all folders that had a specific sort order before being disconnected should have their original, user-selected sort order restored when revisited.  Finally, any "Favorite Folders" that were NOT originally marked for off-line use should be restored as "Favorite Folders".

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

This was fixed in bug 213827, for thunderbird3.