552208 - Drafts disappear if saved while offline on IMAP accounts

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 397910

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[ARF]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100216 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.2

When a draft message is created and saved in an IMAP account while Thunderbird is "working offline", upon re-establishing connection to the IMAP server the saved message disappears without trace from the folders.

Side question: Are they still recoverable somehow? I worked quite some time on one of the lost messages...

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Work offline by clicking the offline-icon on the lower left-hand corner
2. Save a draft message: find the message in the drafts folder
3. Re-establish connection by clicking again on the icon
4. Watch as your messages disappear from the drafts foldere
Actual Results:  
Messages disappear without trace

Expected Results:  
Messages created while offline are synced to the IMAP server

Comment 1

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

I could see "lost draft" with Tb 3.0.3(Win-XP), using Gmail IMAP.

Following is bugs of "summay contains offline AND draft".
> bug#       Last changed Status Summary
> bug 64417  2004-11-22    VERI  saving draft while offline needs to go to the offline draft store
> bug 82476  2008-07-31    VERI  Can't save drafts again after getting draft error offline, going back online.
> bug 274800 2005-03-10    RESO  saving to imap stored drafts folder while offline does not work
> bug 397910 2009-09-23    NEW   Message Drafts Not Saved When Composed Offline
> bug 530709 2010-02-01    UNCO  Composing Draft While Offline Results in Dataloss (maybe, sort of)
>(an enhancement request around drfat)
> bug 147519 2008-07-31    NEW   Save as draft to local folder when offline

Phenomenon of bug 397910(The mail server responded:Empty message to APPEND) seems to have changed to phenomenon of bug 530709.
  Some peoples commented WFM. 
  But according to IMP log attached to bug 530709 comment #16;
    Tb looks to try to append draft, but Tb doesn't issue append.
    Possibly lost upon re-sync with "1:* fetch (flags)" just after select. 

New with Tb 3.0.3? (no problem with Tb 3.0.2/3.0.1/3.0.0 and Tb2?)

Next bug is fixed by Tb 3.1b2.
> Bug 534143 offline mode: moving messages to folders, not all actions executed when going online
Can you reproduce problem with latest nightly build?
> Tb 3.1b2pre
> http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-1.9.2/
> Tb trunk(Tb 3.2a1pre)
> http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-central-trunk/

Comment 2

[ARF]

> New with Tb 3.0.3?
Probably not as my build identifier seems to indicate that I am using tb 2.0.2.

> Can you reproduce problem with latest nightly build?
> > Tb 3.1b2pre
> > Tb trunk(Tb 3.2a1pre)
Yes, the problem persists with both builds.

Short addition: the problem seems to occur with all IMAP servers, Gmail among others.

Can nobody confirm this bug report? I would have thought it to be trivial in this case.

For anybody who lost their messages: they are still in the Draft file in your profile directory. Recover them by copying their text fromt the file with a text editor. Also see:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Undelete_a_message

Comment 3

[ARF]

> Probably not as my build identifier seems to indicate that I am using tb 2.0.2. 
This should have read Tb 3.0.2

Comment 4

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Can nobody confirm this bug report?

I could see phenomenon using Gmail IMAP, but I don't get IMAP log yet, I'm not sure yet that Gmail IMAP particularity is not cause of my case. And, as I wrote, some peoples commented WORKSFORME in bug 530709. So, I can't confirm even though I could see same external phenomenon as yours.

Can you get IMAP log with timestamp?
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Logging
> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/nspr/reference/html/prlog.html#25328
> SET NSPR_LOG_MODULES=timestamp,imap:5
Show "Order Received" column(UID of mail) to see UID of mails.
Log after "go back to Work Onlie" is sufficient for initial problem analysis.

By the way, although same Unix Mbox format is used for offline-store of IMAP, X-Mozilla-Status: header is not used for IMAP offline-store. So, mail data will be permanently lost if rebuild-index is executed, because there is no mail data at IMAP server.
("Compact" removes hidden mail in both IMAP folder case and POP3 folder case.)

Comment 5

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

DUPing against bug 530709, mostly because that bug already has an IMAP log in it.

Comment 7

[David von Oheimb]

This bug is not a duplicate of bug 397910 (as that one only applies to unsaved messages),
and it is not a duplicate of bug 530709 (as the lost message does not re-appear after restarting TB). 

Worst, this terrible bug *still exists* in the latest TB 16.0.2., at least on Mac and Linux.
It is very easy to reproduce (quoting from the original post):
1. Work offline by clicking the offline-icon on the lower left-hand corner
2. Save a draft message: find the message in the drafts folder
3. Re-establish connection by clicking again on the icon
4. Watch as your messages disappear from the drafts folder
On my end it recently caused hours of work (writing a complex email) get lost!!

Please, re-open and (tentatively) set the platform to ALL.
Otherwise, I will file a new bug soon.

Comment 8

[David von Oheimb]

Meanwhile found bug 805626 where this *critical data loss* issue was reported and confirmed also by other users. Therefore, no need to file a new bug.