767210 - Running out of file handles when using IMAP with large number of folders (eg 1,400). "Unable to open the summary file for xxxx. Perhaps there was an error on disc or the full path is too long."

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, defect)

Description

[Ian Neal]

I have an IMAP account with about 1400 folders and 10s of 1000s of messages across them.
Soon after starting an email client (Thunderbird or SeaMonkey) starting getting following symptoms:
1/ When an email arrives from a new person, email client is unable to automatically add a new entry to collected addresses AB (message about AB being inaccessible or disk is full, etc).
2/ When clicking on a folder within tree get a message about the folder being inaccessible, disk is full, etc.
3/ When trying to move emails between folders it silently fails.

Workaround is to restart the software.

Not seen the issue when using on a 32-bit Windows (2000 and 2003).

Screenshots to follow next time it happens.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Hi Ian.

Questions, because I am curious why you should get so many open folders/databases so quickly: 
* are you run running TB version 13?
* how long have you been running windows 7?
* and before that, how long on prior windows?  is that windows *server* 2000 and 2003?
* do you happen to know which windows file handle limit and what the number is that is being hit by thunderbird ?
* you say "Soon after starting" - roughly how long is that in terms of minutes?
* does it happen with TB in safe mode?
* do you have server side filtering and have TB set to check all folders for new messages?  

comments: 
- iirc, this is more commonly encountered in linux environment.
- i could swear there is a bug report about giving proper feedback about file handles, rather than saying the failure is disk space. but I can't find the bug report. anyone know of such a bug?

that said, Ian, please try TB 15.0a2 from http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/channel/ - it has a fix for bug 723248 which should help. And please report results

Comment 2

[Ian Neal]

Attachment: Screenshot of alert

Screenshot from 14.0 beta using TB, takes longer to happen on TB than it does on SM but still happens.
Once it does happen then things like spell checker stops working too (everything is marked as being misspelt).

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

So comment 0 isn't from trunk?
Does version 15 work better?

Comment 4

[Ian Neal]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #3)
> So comment 0 isn't from trunk?
> Does version 15 work better?

Been testing 15 for a number of days and not hit the problem on that, will also try SM equivalent.

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

part of the fix for bug 723248 is TB-specific, though it would be easy for SM to port the code.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Ian - definitely fixed for you?

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #6)
> Ian - definitely fixed for you?

Ian, do you agree this is fixed in SM and TB?

bug 495911 comment 22 cites another possible example of large numbers of folders causing a different problem and error message

Comment 8

[Ian Neal]

Not seen this error message for a while, but did get symptom 3 in the last month or so. I do restart the client more frequently than I used to. I will try and not restart it for a good while and see if the final symptom has gone.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Ian Neal from comment #8)
> Not seen this error message for a while, but did get symptom 3 in the last
> month or so. I do restart the client more frequently than I used to. I will
> try and not restart it for a good while and see if the final symptom has
> gone.

Ian, what are your long term results?  (100% positive I hope)

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(closing in 14 days, but would prefer feedback)

Comment 11

[Ian Neal]

I've not needed to much moving around of lots of messages until very recently.

I can confirm I no longer get an error message, instead it seems to silently fail.

For example I've been trying to copy 1000s of messages from across 100s of folders IMAP -> Local Folders. It will copy some but not all of them. It seems to work better if I go into each individual IMAP folder prior to attempting the copy.

It could be completely unrelated to the original problem and may be more related to the IMAP server (Exchange 2010).

I might get chance to test further as I will be transferring from Local Folder to IMAP (Dovecot this time), but need to do some sifting before doing that.

Comment 12

[Phoenix]

Resolved per whiteboard and Comment 11