610639 - More robust POP downloading

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 246335

(MailNews Core :: Networking: POP, enhancement)

Description

[Cedric Knight]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101027 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.12
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.15) Gecko/20101027 Thunderbird/3.0.10

If a RETR command fails on an individual message, the rest of the mailbox is currently not downloaded.  Feature request: refactor the code in nsPop3Protocol.cpp so that Thunderbird downloads and processes all possible messages and give a more helpful warning to the user.

This has been reported as a bug multiple times, but usually marked resolved when it hasn't been (Bug 565171).  The only open report is a good description from 2003 (Bug 227665) which makes it looks as though there was a fix that was never committed.  It continues to cause confusion (eg http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1692345 ), so I am submitting this as an enhancement request rather than a bug report in the hope it will get looked at.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Set up a POP account (eg Yahoo) with a maildir account on the server
2.Delete a mail file from a mail structure such that the message still appears in the index, but RETR results in an error like:
  -ERR problem retrieving message.
3.Allow further mail to come in
4.Download using Thunderbird
Actual Results:  
An error box "The RETR command did not succeed. Error retrieving a message. Mail
server pop.mail.yahoo.com responded: problem retrieving message."

No subsequent messages from the mailbox are downloaded and are not accessible via Thunderbird.  This problem will persist, and viewing later emails is only possible by contacting the mail server provider, deleting the file through webmail, or manually issuing a DELE command.

Expected Results:  
All messages available are downloaded except the one causing the error.  

Thunderbird produces a helpful, unambiguous warning at the end of the POP session, such as 

"There was a problem downloading 1 message out of nnn. The mail server 'pop.mail.yahoo.com' gave the error 'problem retrieving message', possibly because the message was spam and removed from the server.  Please contact the mail server administrator to fix this.  You may be able to use webmail to see the date and subject line of the problem message and delete it."

If the same error occurs on the next download attempt on the same account, add a "Delete 1 problem message(s) without seeing it?" facility.

From a glance at the code, it looks as though the POP3_ERROR_DONE status could be split into per-message failure and per-session failure, or alternatively POP3_RETR_FAILURE should not result in POP3_ERROR_DONE.

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to comment #0)
 
> From a glance at the code, it looks as though the POP3_ERROR_DONE status could
> be split into per-message failure and per-session failure, or alternatively
> POP3_RETR_FAILURE should not result in POP3_ERROR_DONE.

How would you feel about writing and submitting a patch ?

Comment 2

[Cedric Knight]

(In reply to comment #1)
> How would you feel about writing and submitting a patch ?

I'd prefer it if someone else could tale it.  It takes me a long time to understand the source, compile, and test, but an even longer time to get around to it.  I would submit a patch if time permits, but other projects taking priority at the moment.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

This is important to do because sometimes the server gets confused about a particular message, which completely breaks the mailbox. Virus and anti-spam programs that pretend to be the pop3 server can also cause the same problem. I don't have the time to work on this just now, but I do think it's worth doing.

Comment 4

[:Hb]

I got the "The RETR command did not succeed..." message when pulling mail from yahoo every time.  The web surface didn't showed a remaining message.  De facto that mailbox was blocked.  

So I installed Windows Live Mail.  This program somehow overcame the problem, perhaps by simply deleting the single blocking email and made Seamonkeys mail pulling working again.

So the Can't Do Anything resume in bug 565171 is worth to be discussed.

Comment 5

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Removing myslef on all the bugs I'm cced on. Please NI me if you need something on MailNews Core bugs from me.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

A list of issues https://mzl.la/2EojVoE (limited to yahoo)