556080 - Cannot unsubscribe IMAP folders where my access was revoked

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[Philippp]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; 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; de; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100227 Thunderbird/3.0.3

Checkboxes in subscribe dialog are hidden for folders that have been subscribed but for which the user does not have access privileges any longer.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Alice grants editor privileges to some of his IMAP folders
2. Bob subscribes to these folders (initially needs to use webmail, to get the folders appear in TBs subscription dialog, as stated in problem 2 in bug #554312)
3. Alice revokes privileges for Bob
4. Bob cannot access the folders any longer; ha wants to unsubscribe from them, but...
Actual Results:  
...there are no checkboxes next to said folders, so he cannot uncheck anything.

Expected Results:  
Bob should be able to unsubscribe these folders.
Or (suggestion): The folders should be unsubscribed automatically as soon as Bob presses OK in the subscription dialog (i.e. the non-displayed checkboxes should have the explicit meaning of "unchecked" instead of "do nothing").

This does not occur if the folders have been deleted by Alice (instead of just revoking Bobs access rights).

Comment 1

[Philippp]

Attachment: Screenshot: Unsubscribe dialog with missing checkboxes to unsubscribe folders where I do not have permissions any longer (Archives, Deleted Items, Drafts, Sent Items). There is no way of unsubscribing these.

Comment 2

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Ok you can't unsubscribe, is it annoying you (do you get pop ups error messages ) ? (I'm trying to understand what you would get from unsubscribing from these folders )?

Can you delete these folders ?

Comment 3

[Philippp]

The folders are still visible in the tree (which is expected behaviour), but since I do not have access rights on them, I get errors when I click on them.
Obviously, they have become useless to me, and waste space on my screen - so the only reasonable thing would be to unsubscribe, to get rid of them.

It is currently not a very big deal for me (sorry I forgot to set it to "minor"), (luckily we do not change access privileges every day), but it basically can be annoying for business users in workgroups. (A workaround would be to unsubscribe before the owner of the folders revokes my rights, which is probably unrealistic, or to use webmail to unsubscribe (if the local server has that).)

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

should we confirm this?

Comment 5

[rsx11m]

If that's still reproducible in 12.0.1 or later, but I don't have an IMAP server set up so that I could test this case. The other question is if it's a front-end or back-end issue, but moving to MailNews Core anyway as it's definitely IMAP specific.

Comment 6

[David :Bienvenu]

if the server tells us that you can't select/open the folder, I don't think we would do anything when you clicked on the folder. It's also a bit evil to leave you subscribed to folders that you can't unsubscribe to - LSUB shouldn't return those folders, IMO.

Comment 7

[Philippp]

I have another client with a Kerio IMAP server; if I have time maybe next week, I can install TB and see if I can still reproduce the problem over there (though I cannot guarantee that my TB settings will be the same as in the original environment - but maybe the default config of TB is more significant/helpful anyway?)...

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Does https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/option-to-hide-unused-or-non-subscribable-imap-folders/idc-p/123173#M63928 sound like the same issue?

(I've CC some proton users)

Comment 9

[gene smith]

I have a test folder called BMO with full imap access/privileges so I can do anything in TB with this folder. With my local dovecot imap server (used for testing only) on folder BMO I removed all the permissions on BMO so it does not LIST and can't be subscribed and can't be opened, deleted or renamed. That leaves folder BMO visible (but grayed) in TB and, when accessed, no messages appear. So what we have is a mailbox BMO that doesn't exist (from TBs viewpoint) but is still exists and is subscribed at the server so it appears gray in TB. This is similar to what reporter above shows in the attachment and also similar to what the link in comment 8 shows for proton server.
Now I can invoke the TB "subscribe" dialog and it shows BMO as not subscribed since LSUB will show folder BMO even if LIST doesn't show it. It will be gray in subscribe dialog. I can go to subscribe dialog and unsubscribe BMO and the gray BMO folder goes away in TB.

Anyhow, this bug and comment 8 link are the same issue, it appears to me. I'm not sure why the reporter of this bug (from 16 years ago) doesn't see checkboxes for the gray folders in the attachment. I'm not sure about the comment 8 link regarding proton mail and they imply that the "system" folder don't have checkbox in the subscribe dialog. A possibility is the proton server doesn't allow unsubscribe on the system folders which would be a server bug (unsubscribe shouldn't require any special permission).
For the proton mail case, I would probably need an IMAP:4 log showing the LIST that occur during startup and folder discovery. Also the log should record the activity when subscribe dialog is triggered by the user. So basically do this:
Start TB with logging enabled, e.g., MOZ_LOG=IMAP:4,timestamp,sync MOZ_LOG_FILE=~/tblog
Then open the subscription dialog. Then shutdown TB and attach the log tblog.moz_log

Another possibility is the proton mail "system" folders are flagged "NoSelect". This means they are folders that have no messages but just act as containers for selectable subfolders and in TB are gray. I can't tell without the log. NoSelect folders don't have a subscribe checkbox, not sure why. However you can delete them and you may see a "folder doesn't exist error" from server as I do with dovecot. However TB goes ahead and, on delete, unsubscribes them and they go away. So deleting the proton "system" folders will (probably) force an unsubscribe and hide them and not cause any issues.
Note: An example of a NoSelect system folder in gmail is the [Gmail] folder which is a special case in TB and now this NoSelect folder is hidden since most standard and selectable gmail folders are under it. However, it still appears in the subscribe dialog with no checkbox.