67844 - Mail and news component tries to communicate with news server before doing anything else.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Networking: NNTP, defect)

Description

[tgodouet]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.4.0 i686; en-US; m18) Gecko/20010131
BuildID:    2001013121

When opening the mail and news component, if the news is expanded
(I mean, if the newsgroups are shown), Mozilla tries to 
communicate with the news server (as I can see with a tcpdump -x -s 128 port 53)
before showing the mails of my folders, or doing anything
else until some time (timeout ?).
You must know that I use a dialup server, with a DNS, that I switch off my modem
when I don't want to be connected ; I also access my
mails from an IMAP server on my local network.
But my DNS is still working when my modem is off, which may be the reason of the
timeout.
(Note that I had a similar problem when the option "when mail 
launches, show the start page in the message area" was activated :
Mozilla tries in this case to connect to the Start Page, fails,
shows a popup "Fail to connect to server" and then shows the mails
of my folder and is usable.
(I posted another bug report for that problem, but nothing has
been done yet (for quite a long time :(( ) ).

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
Stop you connection to the internet, letting your DNS server active
Open the Mail/news component
Expand a news server (show its newsgroups)
Close the Mail/news, and open it again (you may have to do it twice
before the bug appears)
Try to list your mail, or to show a mail (from an IMAP server in my case)

Actual Results:  Mozilla's Mail/news component takes quite a long time before
being usable (because it tries to communicate with unjoinable
news server). 

Expected Results:  Mozilla should list correctly the mails in my mailbox, and be
able
to show a message (from an IMAP server in my case) before and while
trying to communicate with the news server.

Comment 1

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Opening a twisty (the diamond/arrow) opens a connection to that news server and
automatically checks the news server for new messages. 
 
From the specs:

http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/threepane/GetMail.html#Get

"* If a Newsgroup is selected,  the "Get Msg" button retrieves new messages for
the selected newsgroup only.
"

I think biff for news was turned off by default now, which may have been what
you saw.  Anyways, the behavior that I think supposed to occur is this:

When you have newsgroups expanded under a server, nothing is supposed to happen
if you don't have "Check for new message every X minutes" selected.

Adding Seth, Ninoschka and Fenella.

Comment 2

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

taking from mscott.

what the user is seeing is this:

we call PerformExpand() on all news server that is expanded on startup.

PerformExpand() is the same thing we call when a user "expands" a server that
was previously "collapsed".

the reason for doing this, is to update the unread counts on start up, if the
newsgroups are visible.

what we should probably do is wait until the inbox for the default account is
loaded, so that we don't slow down the time it takes users to start up and begin
reading mail.  the updating of unread counts should be a lower priority.

not a bug for mscott, one for me or racham.

note to reporter: as a work around, collapse your news servers before you quit.
that way, the next time you start up, you won't contact the news servers.

Comment 3

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Platform/OS: ALL

Comment 4

[tgodouet]

With the release 2001030105, it's even worse :
Mozilla (mail, navigator windows, etc ) just freezes while trying to reach
my news server. It is very annoying ... :((

Comment 5

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

I'm thinking we should piggy back off of the loginAtStartup attribute of the
nsIMsgIncomingServer interface.

for imap and pop servers, we have a check box in the account manager for "check
for new mail at startup".

we currently hide that ui for nntp servers.

instead, we could make it so it isn't hidden for news, but it says something like:

"update unread counts at startup"

if the current server is a nntp server.

then, in msgMail3PaneWindow.js line 400, we change the js to check if
server.loginAtStartup is true.

the only question is do we make that true or false (by default) for nntp servers?

racham, what do you think?

Comment 6

[tgodouet]

The main problem is not that Mozilla checks for new messages,
but that while Mozilla is doing that, user can't do anything with Mail/News 
component (i.e. read a message from a IMAP4 server).
Can't Mozilla do 2 tasks simultaneously ?

Comment 7

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

I think that would require us to be multi-threaded (I'm sure we're not there yet.)

Comment 8

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 9

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

May be related to bug 378428...

Comment 10

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

After picking up some brief knowledge on tc and looking at wireshark logs, I have found that NNTP servers are not necessarily the first things to be contacted.

Therefore, closing WFM.