539638 - Indexing didn't stop after disable and restarting thunderbird (thunderbird didn't actually shut down)

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Preferences, defect)

Description

[Chris Evans]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20091221 Firefox/3.5.7 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: TB 3.0

This is reported in the discussion forum and I have been asked to file a bug here and done so.  It lasted some hours, so was reproducible then, but after a coincidental system reboot, TB started indexing again and now stops and starts as you'd expect.  I have kept my profile.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Was simple: reset indexing in options, general, restart TB, no indexing
2.Now not the case.  Can't think of anything that changed but clearly somethind did.
3.

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Wayne are there two bugs for this or am I getting confused by private emails ?

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Chris, please provide a link to the forum thread
ludo, perhaps yes.  But, due to the odd wording, I'm rather unclear exactly what chris thinks the problem is. Perhaps chris could rephrase into full sentences - one cents per idea?  Is TC=thunderbird?

Comment 3

[Chris Evans]

Ouch.  You don't encourage us to submit.

Yes, TC in subject line is typo for TB = Thunderbird.  Sorry.

Problem was:
1) I upgraded to TB3.0, it started indexing my huge collection of folders, it gobbled CPU and practically hung the computer, so I turned indexing off in options
2) I restarted TB, it didn't stop indexing, no change at all -- to me = bug.
3) I restarted computer (coincidentally), restarted TB -- indexing off.  Happy Chris.
4) I reset TB to index again: restarted TB -- indexing on.  Happy Chris.
5) I later discovered that if there's any TB window still open after closing the main TB window, such as a draft Email, the restart doesn't action the change in indexing status.  This _MAY_ have been what happened the first time though I don't remember having a secondary TB window open.  To me, that's a bug, or, with (6, following) it's a bug.
6) That alerted me to the fact that you sometimes get a warning about a TB instance running if you try to restart it too fast but at other times it doesn't seem to notice or alert that there is another TB thread, a whole window in fact, open and just restarts (I assume that the surviving thread remains a sort of TB master thread hence the fact that the options, or the indexing one at least, are not rechecked and changed.  To me, that's a bug too, though not well described by my submission I agree.
7) Incidentally, in TB3.0 the throttling supposed to be in the indexing and sensitivity to the machine and TB being used for other things clearly wasn't working.  That may be fixed in 3.0.1, I don't know as I gradually coaxed TB3.0 through all my folders.  Completely separate bug and reported by many others I think, I hope it is fixed as it was a serious problem.
8) Do you have a formal alpha & beta testing volunteer service that kicks in before release?  When did an beta last lose significant Email either in incoming queues or on disc?  How often does that happen?  If answer to last two questions is that the betas may be unstable on lots of user experience and other bugs but very rarely contain destructive bugs then I'd join a formal beta testing and regularly report good, clearly worded bugs and wishes.  It does feel as if the 3.0 release was seriously undertested in real world use even if Gloda has huge (largely unfulfilled) promise.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

awesome! more good information - beating you over the head was worth it, hope it didn't hurt too much :)

didn't mean to discourage you, but reading reams of bugs lowers one's acceptance of hard to read descriptions.

#6 is known
#5 is normal behavior - close main window by clicking "red X" is not "quit application", does leave all other windows open, and explains #2 & #3

#8 yes, 2 years of alpha and a year of beta. see http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing on how to participate. Some people participated all 3 years, some only the last year or two.  Overall, many thousands of testers ... Some code areas do have their problems. That's not surprising given 3 years of code changes. But there were very few dataloss situations - I myself experienced none (but 4 failed hard drives during the period)

finally ...

#7 no performance fixes for gloda in 3.0.1  but there are isolated, definitely not nice problems reported https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?type1-0-0=nowordssubstr;keywords=perf;keywords_type=allwords;field0-0-0=short_desc;type0-0-1=substring;field0-0-1=component;resolution=---;query_format=advanced;value1-0-0=desktop%20filter;type0-0-0=anywordssubstr;value0-0-0=index%20gloda%20;field1-0-0=short_desc;product=MailNews%20Core;product=Thunderbird

I'd like to suggest we close this bug INVALID (thunderbird never shut down). And push on to fixed those gloda bugs :)
Thoughts?

p.s. I'm still interested in the link to the forum discussion

Comment 5

[Chris Evans]

Head better for kind massaging in your Email.  You were right: apologies.

#5 & #6: I think it is worth working on the "restart while still open" issue.  I can't help feeling that it would help.  One oddity at the moment is that TB has moved to a tabbed display (which I don't much like personally) but it is a bit arbitrary as some things (opening an eml attachment) open as new windows as does addressbook, all new messages, searches done with ctrl-shift-f as opposed to the new search box, I'm sure there are others.  I'd prefer all to have new windows or all to have tabs (with choice).  But now I'm wishlisting maybe.

#8: interesting, I have browsed a lot of that now and am intrigued, it feels very "flat", sort of anyone can comment and I think it is good (we wouldn't be having this conversation if it weren't) but I can see a real danger that it is making a real sense of direction in the development of TB hard to achieve.  (That's my perception of things.)  I'll ponder, may join.

#7: thanks.  I'm hoping for radical improvement in the search dialogue with date range to come on this in due course, that'll be very valuable.

p.s. - sorry, my turn, didn't understand this.  Hm, can't seem to find the original message in the forum now.  Odd.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Chris, 
do you still see this using v3.1?

>Hm, can't seem to find the original message in the forum now
if you posted in the forum thread, then you can find it by using advanced search - http://forums.mozillazine.org/search.php - and putting in your forum userid -

xref Bug 550770

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

if thunderbird didn't shut down, then perhaps the settings didn't get saved.

no response to comment 6, so => incomplete. if you disagree and still see the problem using the most recent version of thunderbird, please comment in the bug