782356 - changing pop mail server name/address causes all mail to be redownloaded

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 843506

(MailNews Core :: Networking: POP, defect)

Description

[[:jberkus] Josh Berkus]

Today I had reason to change the server address of an old mailserver on which I have 40K messages stored, from mail.whatever.tld to imap.whatever.tld.  This caused Thunderbird to redownload 100% of the mail headers in this account, back to the Beginning of Time.  This is clearly pathological behavior.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Have an IMAP mailserver with many stored messages.
2. Change the DNS name of the mailserver.
3. Change the mailserver name in Thunderbird.
4. Thunderbird will redownload 100% of the message headers.

What should happen instead:

4. Thunderbird should redownload only new message headers, unless prompted by the user.

Comment 1

[:aceman]

I have seen this too. I think it is caused because the file popstate.dat (holding list of downloaded messages) contains the name of the old server and when new mail checking is done, the server name does not match so the file is discarded.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to :aceman from comment #1)
> I think it is caused because the file popstate.dat
> (holding list of downloaded messages) contains the name of the old server
> and when new mail checking is done, the server name does not match so the
> file is discarded.

Joe, NoOp, thoughts?

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

this seems to me the same as bug 843506.
(took some serious digging to find it)