541256 - Loss of email on imap and POP accounts last 7 days on upgrade both Inbox and Sent

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Steve Hemingway]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20091221 Firefox/3.5.7 GTB6
Build Identifier: TB 2 to 3.01 upgrade

On upgrading 20/1/2010 TB2 to TB3 on a client PC with several POP email accounts and 1 IMAP account referencing same account as 1 POP account. All accounts as I recall were set to retain messages on server for 7 days unless deleted on client. After upgrade (not noticed until following day, but probably occurred on upgrade) all retention settings were lost as well as email in inbox and sent folders (at least)on all accounts. Re-build index ineffective in recovering mail. IMAP account empty.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Unable to restore system and server mail to reproduce
2.Will try if get time to set up testbed 
3

Comment 1

[Steve Hemingway]

Addendum

Lost email in inbox and sent folders ONLY last 7 days older mail retained

Comment 2

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

Steve, what you see into account settings-->server settings-->"leave messages on server"?

Could be a dupe #531088? Do you agree?

Comment 3

[Steve Hemingway]

I don't think it is a dupe of #531088; that seems more concerned about right and wrongs of doing things and did not report loss on client side nor last 7 days but prior to last 14 days.

This bug is near instant in effect or at least within 10 hours when it was noticed. The leave messages on server for 7 days was reset on upgrade to defaults from the settings which said leave on server for 7 days, along with deleting the last 7 days mail (inbox and sent) on all accounts, both server and client side. Hence really a bug than a desire for different functionality.

It is as if the 'or until I delete them' is misfired during the upgrade and then folders synced with the loss. But the sent folder being treated the same really confuses me for explanation.

Steve

Comment 4

[Ron Rickman]

I had a similar problem just tonight.  When retrieving new email I got a familiar message -- 'do you want to compact now' -- and I responded, yes.   And poof -- my inbox went blank.  Never to be seen again.  All of my old unfiled emails (100 or so) and the 20 or so new ones in the inbox (only those in the inbox) disappeared.  I tried all of the 'delete the msf files and restart' suggestions. Newer emails that have downloaded since, show up but the ones that were present during that one time compacting session are GONE!!!

I recently upgraded - I believe within the last day or so --  to the newest Thunderbird release.  I'm running Windows XP, only one user, getting email from a pop3 server -  Windows Live -- , where I leave a copy of all messages until I delete them.  Fortunately some of the messages that were lost from Thunderbird are still on the server, - but not all.  The issue is, of course, what is Thunderbird doing to --randomly!????? -- lose a batch of emails.  From multiple screams and notes accross the internet, this isn't an isolated problem and seems to be occuring in the latest release.  The loss of emails occurred either during or immediately after the compaction process.  I will watch for all further comments about this issue.

Comment 5

[Richard McLennan]

I am having the same problem -- or at least it looks to be the same.  Upgraded to Tbird 3.0.5 on June 18.  Ever since, most of the email is downloaded to my inbox, is read, the stuff I don't need to keep deleted, and then within a few hours. the emails I want to keep disappear.  Between the 18th of June, and the present, I have only been able to retain about 10 emails, even though I should have kept about 4o, and I did that by forwarding to a hotmail account.  The emails are also disappearing from an opera browser email program.  I did not compact mailboxes. It should be obvious I have neither program set to remove the emails from the server, delete them automatically, or even empty trash files on exiting (or any other time -- NOTHING is to be deleted unless I do it MANUALLY.

Comment 6

[[e-mail]]

Same problem. For the first time I let T'bird update automatically when I received the update available notice. Usually I wait until end of day and download and manually install the latest version.

This time my "Do not Delete any emails" from the Disk Space screen was unset, and I didn't realize it for 9 days, when I found all of my archived emails gone, as well as my Sent emails. From backups I was able to recover, but lost the 9 days of Sent mails. I had no freezes, power outages or any unusual events. From now on I'll know better than to proceed with a newer version without checking all of my options settings first.

Comment 7

[Andrew]

Please check if the folders, which contain your mail files are encrypted.
If so, then perhaps they disintegrated because this is a new common defect in Mozilla, rather than just in SeaMonkey 2.2, which I have discovered recently.
See here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674742

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

reporter writes "Have not experienced the problem since TB3 so expect the problem resolved through upgrades, but is a particularly unusual setup to have imap and pop on same account."

Comment 9

[Andrew]

The problem of Steve Hemingway in comment #c0 seems to be 2 bugs in 1.
The first bug lost all his settings.
The second bug 674742 destroyed his messages. They contained headers for retrieval from server. So he can't get his mail from server, although they are still there.

The easiest way to recover them fro server is to set up a new account in Mozilla. Renaming the existing account also helps: this resets the account, which then forgets past communication with server, and shows old messages as new.
You can't of course get messages from server, if you deleted them from it already, as you received them complete (not as mere headers).

The bug of encryption was introduced on May 25, 2010. That's earlier than the problem arose.

But as I describe in bug 674742, its action is not restricted to encrypted folders, and files. It waits just for any error. Then it destroys mail.
If compaction is set up to be automatic, it does so automatically.
That is why data in 2 folders is lost.

What's worse: automatic compaction is the default. When users upgrade Mozilla, and loose settings (another bug), then automatic compaction becomes active, and destroys data without asking, or even letting the user know.

All other reports here seem to be the result of the same bug.

Comment 10

[Andrew]

Lost settings may also be the result of one or another constituent bus within bug 674742.