547313 - Tags Disappear due to Dovecot's bug when mbox_lazy_writes=yes option, Bypassed by mbox_lazy_writes=no.

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[Nikos]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 3.0.1

Color Tags that marks email as, "Important", "Work", "Personal" etc are disappearing after I put my computer on a sleep mode. This bug came after the Thunderbird 3.0.1 update and is present on my Windows 7 64bit machine.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Nathan Tuggy (:tuggyne)]

Do you have an IMAP account, and if so, is your IMAP server running Dovecot*? If so, this is probably bug 542137 showing up; please mark this bug as a Duplicate of it.

*If you don't know what your IMAP server is running, attach a log following the instructions at https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Logging; you'll want to use imap:5, I think; someone will examine it and tell you what server you're using.

Comment 2

[Nikos]

Yes is an IMAP email account.
My Thunderbird configurations is handling 2 x IMAP and a couple of web-based email accounts. I noticed that the tags only disappear from the IMAP accounts. HTML accounts like Hotmail are working flawlessly.

So it could be related to the bug 542137.

Comment 3

[Nathan Tuggy (:tuggyne)]

Can you attach a log then? (See instructions above, or the other bug for examples.) This way we can sort out whether you're using Dovecot or not.

Comment 4

[Nikos]

My IMAP server runs on Courier. It is not Devecot.
This bug is still present as of the latest release of Thunderbird 3.0.3.

Comment 5

[Nathan Tuggy (:tuggyne)]

Hmm, then I guess we'll need the log attached to make much more headway. Can you use the Add an attachment link above to do that?

Comment 6

[houstontyoung]

I'm also having this problem (tags disappearing when IMAP connection updates my Inbox).  It appeared when I upgraded TB 2.0.0.24 to 3.0.4, on Win XP SP3.  I am attaching a log (it's rather long; sorry!).  I was only tagging things in my "math" email account, in the Inbox and a few other folders.  Strangely, I have one message in "!Hold" and two in Drafts that have remained tagged, even though all the tags in the Inbox disappear.

I'm guessing that after I tag messages, when IMAP updates my Inbox it overwrites the MSF file where the tags are stored.  If my IMAP server doesn't support keywords and TB is storing tags locally, I would think the default behavior would be to preserve any tags in the MSF, even when updated by the server.  But it seems that the server always writes out some or all of the tags when updating.

I will upload a log file, though it's rather large.  I had tagged 6 messages in my Inbox, restarted TB with logging, and after compacting the Inbox two of the tags disappeared.

Oh, and from glancing through the log it appears my IMAP server is Dovecot.  I have asked our techs to take a look at the issue as well.

Comment 7

[houstontyoung]

It would be nice if there were an option in TB to force tags to be stored locally and not allow them to be overwritten, in case the server doesn't support them.

Comment 8

[David :Bienvenu]

In general, the server is supposed to tell us if it supports keywords or not. If it lies to us and tells us that it does, when it doesn't, that causes a problem.

Comment 9

[houstontyoung]

Attachment: IMAP log for [e-mail]

Comment 10

[David :Bienvenu]

Unfortunately, this log doesn't show what the server says when you do a select on the Inbox, which is when the server tells us whether or not it supports keywords. It also doesn't show us trying to store any keywords on the messages...

Comment 11

[houstontyoung]

Okay, will try again...

Comment 12

[houstontyoung]

Attachment: 2nd IMAP log, houstontyoung

Comment 13

[David :Bienvenu]

oh, now this rings a bell - I think this is an issue with a particular version of the dovecot server. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=469828#c3 - turning off some sort of caching on the server is supposed to fix this.

Comment 14

[houstontyoung]

Thanks, I'll ask our techs to take a look at it.  And thanks for the quick reply!

Comment 15

[David :Bienvenu]

No problem, good luck.

Comment 16

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

As bug 469828 is report for Tb 2, I think this bug is better to be duped to bug 542137 which is for Tb 3.0, because external phenomenon is slightly different between Tb2 and Tb3 due to existence of a bug in Tb 2 only.

Comment 17

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Closing as DUP of bug 542137(report for Tb3), for ease of search/tracking.

Comment 18

[Nikos]

How about finally fix this major and annoying issue and stop duplicating?

Comment 19

[Nikolay Shopik]

This is server side configuration issue. mbox_lazy_writes=yes

Comment 20

[Nikos]

No it is not. I am using Thunderbird ever since Thunderbird 1.0 on the same IMAP server NO CHANGES ever made over the years.

Thunderbird 3.0.1 update broke TAGS for me. Everything worked perfectly before 3.0.1

Comment 21

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #20)

Nikos, if your problem was caused by mbox_lazy_writes=yes of Dovecot, please read thru and UNDERSTAND bug 542137. If your problem is irrelevant to mbox_lazy_writes=yes nor mbox_lazy_writes=no of Dovecot, please search bugzilla.mozilla.org well via "Advanced Search", and read and understand bug well if bug of similar external symptom to yours is found, please.

Comment 22

[David :Bienvenu]

Nikos, all versions of TB up until 3.0 had a bug in them where TB would not recognize that you removed a tag from a different machine/e-mail client. Fixing that exposed you to the dovecot bug.

Comment 23

[houstontyoung]

Just to follow up, I talked to the guy in charge of my IMAP server (Dovecot), and at my request he set mbox_lazy_writes=no.  I restarted TB, and now all my tags are sticking, even when I move tagged messages between folders.

Thanks for your help!

Comment 24

[David :Bienvenu]

no problem, thx for letting us know.

Comment 25

[Nikos]

I can report that this bug was fixed after I updated yesterday to the latest Thunderbird release 3.0.5!

All my color tags are working again. I didn't noticed any disappear after 24+ hours of use.