Closed Bug 520403 Opened 15 years ago Closed 15 years ago

GMail's "Account exceeded bandwidth limits. (Failure)" error

Categories

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
General
Platform:
x86
Windows XP
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 517466

People

(Reporter: jjantolinez, Unassigned)

References

(Depends on 1 open bug, Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4pre) Gecko/20090915 Lightning/1.0pre Thunderbird/3.0b4 After several hours working online with my GMail email account, TB stops further communication with GMail's IMAP server and - new messages cannot be received and - those not previously shown (message bodies not downloaded by TB) cannot be read Next, TB prompts me for GMail's password. I suppose TB is not able to connect again and interprets the error code as a login failure. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Add a GMail email account to TB 2. Open TB and stay online for several hours Actual Results: - new messages cannot be received and - those not previously shown (message bodies not downloaded by TB) cannot be read Expected Results: Work as usual.
Did this happen during synchronization or indexing of the account(s), e.g., just after upgrading to 3.0b4 or configuring this account?
I have been working pretty well until now. I installed TB 3.0 Beta 4 one day before it was officially released (I got it from nightly builds) but this error started to happen a few days ago. I thought it was due to being connected to GMail's IMAP server for a long time (hours) but I have just launched TB right now and the error occurred from the very beginning. I have changed account setting "Check for new messages every N minutes" from default value (10) to 60 minutes. I do not think it is going to fix the problem but at least modal dialog box is not going to pop so frequently.
Tested with latest nightly build (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4pre) Gecko/20091003 Lightning/1.0pre Shredder/3.0pre). I had not added my GMail account to this Shredder installation and I can see how this error happens from the very beginning, just after setting up my GMail account. Now my GMail account is absolutely unreachable by using TB. Everything works fine using GMail web access.
That's likely because Gmail locks out accounts for some time before allowing IMAP access again (a different e-mail client should give you the same result). The synchronization is independent from the "check every [ ] minutes" setting, so that won't help, unfortunately. Also, the duration of the connection shouldn't be a factor, it's apparently the network activity over a longer period. The exact details of Gmail's algorithm for this are unknown. There is bug 506024 pending to limit the download rate used by Thunderbird during synchronization, which may prevent issues like this one.
Ludo, thanks for adding the dependency for the Gmail tracking bug. I think though that this is a problem on our side rather than an issue in their implementation. While inconvenient, the provider has to be granted the right to put some limits on bandwidth usage, as they put limits on disk usage by quotas. Thus, it's the client's job to ensure that the limit isn't exceeded by routine maintenance actions. I'm wondering if the ISP auto-configuration list could be extended by a download limit field, which - along with a backend developed in bug 506024 - would allow to configure this on a per-provider basis (as known).
Hi, This error has suddenly evaporated. I did nothing to fix it so I am afraid it will happen again in the future.
Thanks for the update. Yes, Gmail lifts that block after about 24 hours, but whenever your network activity exceeds what they consider the limit you may end up getting blocked again for another day. Thus, if it happens again, it would be helpful to know what Thunderbird was doing at that time (e.g., indexing or synchronizing). Maybe leave the Activity Manager (in the Tools menu) open to get some more feedback what it is currently doing (and especially shortly before such a block if it happens again).
I'm confirming this as it has been reported by various users, though it may be resolved by another bug on limiting autosync network impact. In general, some ISP-specific knowledge (comment #5, 2nd part) should be beneficial.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Depends on: 506024
Ever confirmed: true
+1 - I am currently locked out on my GMail account when using IMAP and TB3 b4 (didnt use previous beta). TB3 by default enable full sync for ALL folders !!!!!!! including "All Mail", "Inbox" and "Sent" ... so you can imagine the bandwidth generated, not even speaking of "indexing" which probably also generates traffic. Please by default: deactivate these features or some of them and offer them as optional to avoid a lot of people being locked out too! Thanks
I'm using thunderbird 3.0 beta 4 for 3 weeks. I keep the settings from TB 2 including the mails. So, when i change to TB3 it just should download the new mails. Do some problems, gmail doesn't sync with the old database, and download all the mails again. About 450MB. Today i have this bandwidth limit error. After googling a little it seems that TB "re-download" all the mails continuously. And worse, it store the data in the hard drive. When i check my TB folder, where i should have about 1.5GB (gmail+hotmail accounts) i have 13GB. I'm back to TB2 now.
If you go to Tools>Account Settings>Gmail>Sych & Storage and UNcheck "keep messages for this account on this computer" then the problem will go away after Google resets your bandwidth limit after 24 hrs or so. I found this solution on the web somewhere. I think for some reason Thunderbird tries to download all my Gmail messages when this option is checked, and uses up too much bandwidth. This used to work OK so something broke somewhere...
That default was changed intentionally. When migrating from 2.0 to 3.0, you should see now a migration assistant (nightly builds or release candidates). This allows you to opt out of IMAP synchronization. The other option is to limit the local copies by age in the Synchronization & Storage pane. Users just accepting the defaults will end up with a complete local copy of everything, thus running into issues when an ISP's bandwidth restriction is reached.
On top of that in TB3b4 we had a bug that triggered this behavior. It should be gone in rc1.
Whiteboard: dupme
Default installation should be minimum sync to avoid issues with beginners. More advanced user can select more sync if needed. If default is full sync, there is a risk for many users to be blocked I suspect. My 2c Thanks for the work on this
Default does sync by default.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 15 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
Cleanup *dupeme* whiteboard flag from bugs that are marked as Resolved Duplicate!
Whiteboard: dupme
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