553853 - Previously synchronized IMAP folders are not shown if Thunderbird cannot log in to the IMAP server. .msf files are missing

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[Dmitriy Kuminov]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3pre) Gecko/20100316 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Namoroka/3.6.3pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.10pre) Gecko/20100318 Shredder/3.0.5pre

I have an IMAP account that I no longer use (and don't have access to the IMAP server anymore). This account has a bunch of locally synchronized folders. 

After upgrading from Thunderbird 2 to Thunderbird 3 I found that I don't see these folders in the folder tree and therefore cannot access them. The only folder shown under the account's node is Inbox but it looks empty. I checked the profile directory and found that Thunderbird 3 deleted all .msf files but Inbox.msf which contents looks like for the brand new empty folder (i.e. no index data in there). The files containing the message bodies (e.g. the ones without the .msf extension) are still there.

Switching to off line mode prevents Thunderbird from connecting to the IMAP server but other than that it doesn't change anything: I still cannot get access to the folders.

In my understanding, this completely defeats the whole purpose of the off line synchronization because exactly the same problem would've been arisen for all my working IMAP accounts if I happened to update to Thunderbird 3 when I'm off line. This looks like a major issue to me.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

David could this be an edge case for Autosync ?

Comment 2

[Dmitriy Kuminov]

If you mean "Keep messages for this account on this computer", then it may be it -- at least I have it ON for all my IMAP accounts including those ones.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

The offline cache is supposed to be a mirror of what's on your imap server, folders and messages. Failure to connect to the server shouldn't remove the locally cached folders, and in general it doesn't. But it sounds like you ran into a case where it does. If at some point you were able to logon, but the server told us that none of the folders were still there, then we would delete the local cache.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

hi dmik. what's your current status with this issue?

Comment 5

[Dmitriy Kuminov]

Hi Wayne. I tried it now with Thunderbird 3.1.6 and couldn't reproduce it. However I don't have that IMAP account anymore and I tried that with Google by submitting a wrong password. It couldn't connect but Thunderbird allowed me to read all cached mails after dismissing the password re-entry dialog. I don't know if it's just a different IMAP server that handles wrong logins in a different way or something has been fixed in Thunderbird indeed.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

dmik, thanks for the feedback. I guess we'll close this worksforme for now, unless bienvenu disagrees. And if you see the problem again, please obtain an imapautosync:5 log per https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Logging

(In reply to comment #3)
> The offline cache is supposed to be a mirror of what's on your imap server,
> folders and messages. Failure to connect to the server shouldn't remove the
> locally cached folders, and in general it doesn't. But it sounds like you ran
> into a case where it does. If at some point you were able to logon, but the
> server told us that none of the folders were still there, then we would delete
> the local cache.