597907 - when thunderbird user folder is an offline folder, upgrading to 3.1.4 version hangs Thunderbird

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Olivier Caillau]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; fr; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 3.1.4

I am in a Windows folder-sharing config:
 PC1 is the master, exporting Application-Data 'Profile' folder. It runs 3.1.4.
 PC2 is the client; it is a laptop that maps the 'Profile' folder onto the drive 'Z'. It has Thunderbird on it, but the previous version. 

After upgrading the client PC (PC2) with Thunderbird 3.1.4, Thunderbird never starts: it gets stuck (scripts never stop). 


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
I am in a Windows folder-sharing config:
 PC1 is the master, exporting my Application-Data 'Profile' folder. The Upgrade to 3.1.4 worked well on it.
 PC2 is the client; it is a laptop that maps the 'Profile' folder onto the drive 'Z'. It also has Thunderbird on it, but with the previous version. I synchronize it with the master when i want to go away and keep all my emails. When I come back, I re-synchronize it with the master. This has worked well for several years.

Today, having the client PC offline (not on my home network), but connected to the Internet, I upgraded the client PC (PC2) with Thunderbird 3.1.4.
Actual Results:  
 Since then, I cannot manage to start Thunderbird properly: it never displays its interface, even if it is started (as I see it in the process list). After one or two minutes, the PC says that Thunderbird has a script that does not stop running. Whether I answer with 'stop' or 'continue', I NEVER see Thunderbird: it is always stuck. After 6 or 7 script warning messages, I am obliged to KILL the process.

Expected Results:  
I would have expected Thunderbird to display its interface.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

And PC1 continues to work fine?
What exactly is this "export" process?  do you copy the profile directory?

Comment 2

[Olivier Caillau]

(In reply to comment #1)
> And PC1 continues to work fine?
> What exactly is this "export" process?  do you copy the profile directory?

When I upgraded PC1 one or two months ago, it went fine.
What I call the 'export' process is the file-sharing feature on WindowsXP. You declare a folder to be shared, so it can be mapped as a drive from another computer. With WindowsXP-Professional, the client PC can map a remote folder as a drive and declare it as available offline. In that case, the system on the client PC copies the folder and its contents in a special system area, and makes this folder/drive appear as if the remote PC was still available on the network.

The Thunderbird program on my client PC is not located on this mapped drive but in C:\Program Files. As a result, the Thunderbird versions may not be the same on PC1 and PC2, even if the user data are on the shared drive.
It has worked fine sofar.

Here is a precision: before yesterday, PC2 was running a Thunderbird version that did not have the tabs implemented. As a result, I guess it was a version earlier than or equal to 3.0.
 
Olivier

Comment 3

[Olivier Caillau]

I managed to restore a normal behaviour on PC2 after de-installing version 3.1.4 and re-installing 2.0.0.24 (it did not work with 3.0.8 either).
This means that I was running 2.0.0.24 on PC2 and 3.1.8 on PC1.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

hmm, so this works in version 2.

Oliver, have you been able to determine what is going wrong?

Comment 5

[Olivier Caillau]

No, I have not. 
Since then, I re-installed completely Thunderbird onto the shared drive (this means that the program is not located any more under C:/Program Files, but under the shared directory, the same directory as where the profiles, containing the emails, were located.

Since this re-installation of the program on the shared directory, I manage, as with version 2.0.0.24, to start Thunderbird from the PC2 having replicated the drive and disconnected it (using it as an offline drive).
But it is not working completely: it is fine as long as I read emails or download new emails, yes, but it hangs if I try to create a new email, or if I try to forward an existing one.
By "hanging", I mean Thunderbird is not responsing any more, even after 1 hour, and Windows cannot kill it. In such a case, to recover, I am obliged to switch PC2 off and on, with the power-off button !

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Oliver, does problem go away if you rename in your profile global-messages-db.sqlite to global-messages-db-save.sqlite with thunderbird shut down?

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

please reopen ifyou can still reproduce with version 10