702038 - TB generates NNTP requests with bad formatting or in wrong order, so access to news server fails repeatedly

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(MailNews Core :: Networking: NNTP, defect)

Description

[John David Galt]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:8.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/8.0
Build ID: 20111104165243

Steps to reproduce:

I have a news server account set up, but the news server password has not yet been saved (I assume it was deleted by an earlier upgrade).


Actual results:

I get a prompt to enter the password for the news server.  I do so, and check the box "Use Password Manager to remember this password."  (I have already entered Password Manager's master password since the POP account password is saved in it.)

I'm then told that there are no news messages to download, and in 5 minutes, the whole thing repeats again -- TB has not saved the password even though it said it would!


Expected results:

I should only have had to enter the password ONCE, and then it should be saved.

Comment 1

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

> Bug summary : Prompt for news server password does not save the password

Does it mean that "news://... in password manager's DB for the news server" was never generated by Tb even though you typed correct password and requested "save password" at password prompt?
Does it imply that prompted user name was saved as expected?

FYI. According to bug 696995 comment #25, Tb generates entries like next for news;
> Site                                                 Username    Password
> news://news.server.name(news.server.name/#username)  blank area  APNusername
> news://news.server.name(news.server.name/#password)  blank area  APNpassword

Comment 2

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

> (I assume it was deleted by an earlier upgrade)

Does it mean "before upgrade, news server/newsgroups could be accessed without password prompt because password was already saved"?
If so, upgraded to Tb 8 from which version of Tb?

Comment 3

[John David Galt]

Re comment 1: I have no idea if such a string was generated, but nothing was added to the list of saved passwords in Password Manager.  And *no* user name was ever prompted for or saved (I have no idea what name it is stupidly using).

Re comment 2: Selecting a newsgroup in folder pane window shows the number of unread messages in group, but none of them get downloaded.  Upgraded to v8 from v7, when it first offered itself which was about two days after upgrading to v7 from v6.

Comment 4

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Can you get NNTP log with timestamp?
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Logging
> Win example : SET NSPR_LOG_MODULES=timestamp,sync,nntp:5
> See http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4643#section-2.3.3 for authentication in NNTP
Remove/replace personal information from log file, and don't paste log data if data is long, please.

As "sync" is for "no buffered write of log data", you can do next, when username or password is prompted, and after reply to the prompt.
(1) When prompted, copy log file to a .TXT file.
    View log file content by text editor, and see last log.
    You can know about at which step the prompt is shown.
(2) After reply, copy log file to a .TXT file.
    Check Password Manager entry, via Tools/Options/Security/Password. 
    View log file content by text editor, and see logs from the prompt to last.
    You can know about what happens after reply.

By the way, see bug 701474 for password prompt related issues in SMTP.
(a) Even after delete of saved password via UI, previously used correct password is used without password prompt(with any SMTP server).
(b) If password is changed at server, new password is not prompted even though New Password is requested at dialog for next action(server dependent).
(c) Once bad password is entered, password is not prompted again, even though New Password is requested at dialog for next action(server dependent).
Above indicates "Tb keeps password data at somewhere" and "may use it even after login failure" and "may ignore status of password-is-cleared-by-password-manager during a Tb session".
This kind of issues may occur on NNTP too.

Comment 5

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to John David Galt from comment #3)
> And *no* user name was ever prompted for or saved
> (I have no idea what name it is stupidly using).

Do you define news account with Server Name: <username>@news.server.name format?

Comment 6

[John David Galt]

No.

But it seems to be working today.  I don't know what may have changed.

Comment 7

[John David Galt]

In case it may help:

This report may have arisen from confusion because
(a)  The prompt for a news server username and for a news server password are VERY similar in appearance; it's easy to mistake one for the other.
(b)  Neither prompt identifies the news server.  Thus if you have accounts on more than one (for example, my second one is news.mozilla.org), and the prompt arises from TB periodically downloading messages rather than because you just opened the folder of a news server, then it's a complete guess which news server it means.

Comment 8

[John David Galt]

I closed this prematurely; it is happening again.  Over and over again.  I've confirmed the password with the ISP, so it is correct.

Comment 9

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

If authentication fails for whatever reason (this can often include transient authentication failures, e.g., too many connections), the password is forgotten.

Comment 10

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to John David Galt from comment #8)
> it is happening again.  Over and over again. I've confirmed the password with the ISP, so it is correct.

"Password suddenly prompted again" itself is bug 437930.
However, it sounds for me that "over and over gain" implies "username and/or password was prompted even after first correct username/pasword entry to prompt".
John David Galt(bug opener), is my guess right?

> Neither prompt identifies the news server

IIRC, bug for it is already opened.

> the prompt arises from TB periodically downloading messages rather than
> because you just opened the folder of a news server,
> then it's a complete guess which news server it means.

Do you enable automatic new news article check of all news accounts?
If so, next may be a non-confusing operation when password is prompted again without any information for correct server guessing.
- Reply "Cancel" to any username prompt(News only) and any non-POP3/non-IMAP
  password prompt.
- Click a newsgroup of all news accounts sequentially,
  and enter username/password before next "new news article check" cycle starts.

Comment 11

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Reopening per your comment of bug 437930 comment #23, for problem stated in bug 437930 comment #17 which is never "password was somehow prompted again although correct password was already saved" itself.

Comment 12

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

FYI. Bugs which is open, component=netwoking:nntp, summary has "password". 
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&list_id=1706855&short_desc=password&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&component=Networking%3A%20NNTP&resolution=---

Comment 13

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Last "---" of url was not linkified. Copy string and paste to URLbar, please.

Comment 14

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(Your post to bug 437930 comment #17)

What makes this worse in TB 8.0 is that the timing of the NNTP requests TB sends out appears to be hosed.

When I open the news server folder now, I first get a popup
  /!\  A News (NNTP) error occurred: Enter password
Then I'm prompted to enter the password.  Later I may be asked for a user name, or I may just be told
  /!\  A News (NNTP) error occurred: Request aborted by user
So it sounds as if somebody is committing NNTP changes to production versions of TB without enough testing.

(report in bug 437930 comment #19 by Martin H. Eastburn at 2011-11-14 03:19:21 PST)

the next run were buggy.  I was able to fix it by forcing (a number of times) a new username and new password just for the news group.  The tool now contains both
usernme with password for my email - and a username and a password on separate lines, not like it was before.  But it is finally working.  After that, both Firefox and Thunderbird when to REV 8.0 and that rev functioned as it should - taking the parameters for multiple username / passwords and keeping them with itself.  The computer has been shut down (not often) since and it still functions.

Comment 15

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Setting dependency to bug 437930 because general issue of "password is somehow forgotten" is processed in that bug.

Comment 16

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

There is a way to reduce confusion when prompted for news : Define news account with servername=<username>@server.name format.
I think username is not prompted any time. Is it right?

Comment 17

[John David Galt]

Changing the server name to [e-mail] only causes Thunderbird to sit there endlessly with "Looking up [e-mail]..." on the message bar.  It never prompts for a username or password because it simply *doesn't work.*

Comment 18

[John David Galt]

Martin H. Eastburn's report of eventual success disagrees with my experience.

The problem seems to occur even on news servers that don't ask for a username or password (news.mozilla.org), though in those cases it doesn't result in repeated prompts but just an inability to access the news server.  I can view the list of messages but then I get a pop-up "Connection to news server news.mozilla.org timed out."

Comment 19

[Rich Gray (:rbgray)]

I went through a lot of the same, infuriating crap this month in SeaMonkey on a Mac, so this is mailnews core, all/all.  After various gyrations, manually entering user & password (assuming I was responding to the proper account!) resulted in 
>   /!\  A News (NNTP) error occurred: Request aborted by user
which is strange.  Sorry I don't have a good handle on what was going on or sequence of events.  I had to turn off other news accounts until I could get back connected to my main account at Individual.net.  I don't know what set it off or what "healed" it.  It seems that multiple groups on news.mozilla.org & individual.net lost their sequence numbers and started over.  Some sort of NNTP glitches.  I'm not even sure which version of SM I was running at the time (they go so fast!)  I'm currently running 
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:8.0) Gecko/20111107 Firefox/8.0 SeaMonkey/2.5.

I'll try to use the debugging info in the above next time this happens.  Just wanted to chime in that this is happening in SeaMonkey too.

Comment 20

[John David Galt]

My band-aid workaround is just to turn off periodic checking for messages on news accounts (Tools -> Account Settings -> [news account] -> Server Settings -> Check for new messages every [n] minutes), which has eliminated the messages (but not, I assume, the underlying problem).

Comment 22

[Markus Grob]

Attachment: Log from wireshark while trying to log in.

I tried to fetch news, but mozilla asked for a username and a password (was stored before in the manager) twice and then I get the errormessage "not in a newsgroup".
This happens not every time and sometimes it is fixed by restarting SM a couple of times.
A sideeffect is, that some groups are set to unread, after it works again and that the username and the password is asked for about every group I have.

Comment 23

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

The short answer as to what is going on is that the connection is being reused but without going through the login state. I haven't yet had enough time to go through the code to figure out when a new connection could be opened without doing this, though.

Comment 24

[Jens Hatlak (:InvisibleSmiley)]

(Not sure whether to put this here or on bug 437930, but I guess all interested parties monitor both anyway.)

Since the whole "news user/pass is forgotten" regression started with SM 2.5 (TB 8.0), I checked the comm-central pushlog of the time frame 2011-07-01 to 2011-09-31 and found this:

http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/b3944d5783fc
(Bug 226890 part 8: Only initialize m_nntpServer once)

Looks suspicious to me (includes NNTP changes related to user/pass), but unfortunately I don't know enough about the back-end to dig deeper. HTH

Comment 25

[Hartmut Figge]

This time it occured on news,gmane.org, a newsserver which dosen't require username or password. The symptoms were, that every time i selected one of the nine NGs i had subscribed there, SM wished to dwonload all messages, limited to the preset 500 messages.

I am using View->Threads->Thrads with Unread and all seemed to be fine after manually confirming to the download. After doing so to some of the 9 NGs, going back to one of them resulted in SM wishing to download all messages again. That holds for all NGs on gmane regardless of that the download may have be done a few times already.

After restarting SM  the spook had gone. And i regretted to not have tried to read one or more of the messages. Next time i will remember, hopefully, but will i be given the possibilty? ;)

Current SM 2.9a1.

Comment 26

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

(In reply to Jens Hatlak (:InvisibleSmiley) from comment #24)
> (Not sure whether to put this here or on bug 437930, but I guess all
> interested parties monitor both anyway.)
> 
> Since the whole "news user/pass is forgotten" regression started with SM 2.5
> (TB 8.0), I checked the comm-central pushlog of the time frame 2011-07-01 to
> 2011-09-31 and found this:
> 
> http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/b3944d5783fc
> (Bug 226890 part 8: Only initialize m_nntpServer once)
> 
> Looks suspicious to me (includes NNTP changes related to user/pass), but
> unfortunately I don't know enough about the back-end to dig deeper. HTH

All that patch does is remove the double lookup of a server, as part of the unification of NNTP URI parsing. The change you think is related to user/pass is not actually related to anything to do with authentication code; it is merely part of the process for going from the internal URI back to an actual server object, since usernames (which NNTP code completely ignores) is part of the unique identifier for a server internally.

Comment 27

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

Actually, I've pretty much confirmed that this has the same causes internally as bug 695309, so I might as well go ahead and mark it as a dupe now.

Comment 28

[John David Galt]

Maybe the causes are the same, but I think this one describes the effects better.

Comment 29

[John David Galt]

This is still happening for me in TB 17.0.2, and makes it impossible to read news.mozilla.org.  Bug 695309 comment 93 suggested I un-dupe it.

Comment 30

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

John,
Do you still see this when using a current version?