82999 - When computer is not on network, Mozilla still checks for new email/does not check when goes back online

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(MailNews Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[emmet]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9+) Gecko/20010526
BuildID:    2001052620

When offline (dialup networking), and with a setting like ,'check for
mail every 10 minutes', Mozilla does just that and you get a window
telling you that Mozilla can not contact the network (doh). Leave the computer
for half and hour and you get two or three.

Likewise, when you use dialup networking to go back online then Mozilla does not
automatically check for new mail and has to
be asked.

Eudora seems to be able to pick up on whatever signs Windows offers to
avoid these problems.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use dialup networking only
2. Set Mozilla to check for email every 2 minutes
3. Log off dialup networking and wait.

Comment 1

[Scott MacGregor]

.

Comment 2

[David :Bienvenu]

Darin, please feel free to reassign this bug if appropriate. What the user wants
is, if I understand correctly, a way for necko to detect that the OS/Computer is
not on the network, and not make network connections, like check for new mail. I
assume I'd need support from Necko for that. The user has NOT put
Netscape/Mozilla in offline mode, as near as I can tell, so I've changed the
summary.

Comment 3

[Darin Fisher]

in general, necko needs a way of automatically detecting that we are offline.
currently, we don't have a solution for this problem.

Comment 4

[emmet]

[User (!)] Yes, you are right -- I didn't even know that there
was an 'offline' mode! Problem still stands and can be very irritating
since mozilla cannot be used when 'network not found' error dialogue
is up (and when you use microsoft's Xmouse then the little pop up
window can be very difficult to get to...)

Comment 5

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 78294 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

marking new.

Comment 7

[Darin Fisher]

-> future

Comment 8

[石庭豐 (Seak, Teng-Fong)]

A little comment that I put in the bug I reported:
Netscape 3.x and 4.x were able to detect if network is up.  Maybe you could take
a look at that source code?
Thanks

Comment 9

[emmet]

I have a potential solution for this bug.

The main problem with mozilla checking email when the network is down is
that when it fails to connect it pops up a modal dialog telling the user
this and the refuses to respond until acknowledged.

The simple solution is that when mozilla *automatically* checks for
email then *do not* bother reporting the error (or send it to a non-emergency
log file etc).

This is what the user expects anyway -- short network outages
is common and if the user suspects that there is a problem then just checking
their email will provide them with the required feedback.

[I now think this bug is severity=major because on my laptop when a
modal dialog has popped up and the power system has disabled the 
screen then about 1/4 of the time I can not get the screen to
repower which (I think) is a consequence of the keyboard input not
being eaten up by the dialog (i.e if mozilla is maximized) -- this
forces a reboot and hence data loss]

Comment 10

[Darin Fisher]

-> mailnews for possible changes on their end.

Comment 11

[石庭豐 (Seak, Teng-Fong)]

In some old builts (more than 2 weeks ago), once Mozilla found that the computer
wasn't online, it didn't keep on checking for new mails.  I thought this bug was
fixed.  But recent builts shows the same behaviour.  A regression due to recent
Bugzilla upgrade as it's written there??

Comment 12

[Matti]

Hi

I finally found this bug because I also was very annoyed of there mail errors...
I often use my laptop on my way to work and usually I dont bother switching to
any offline modus...
The behaviour I would expect is, that mail should _NOT_ generate any error-poups
caused by AUTOMATICAL message retrieval.
I surely want them when I actively check it but not when automatical.
The two I'm aware of are: Error when the host cannot be contacted and error when
there's already somebody logged in (quite common here because I read my mail
from multiple computers....).
Would be nice if any dialogs could then be suppressed...?

Matt

Comment 13

[m baker]

I would agree with the last solution that error messages should be suppressed. 
It would be more "elegant" in terms of user experience to gracefully degrade
without any error messages during automatic checks for new mail.  I lost my
connection overnite while I was sleeping.  Having set the "automatic check for
email" to 3 minutes.  I ended up with over 100 popups saying email could not be
checked when I got up in the morning.  Not fun killing all those little message
boxes.

The error messages should not even go to a log file.  Automatic checking is a
convenience and is not critical.  A simple status line messages would suffice.

Comment 14

[K. Richard Pixley]

This problem is not limited to "offline".  It also occurs when moving a laptop
from a network connection with access to server A but not B, to a network with
access to server B but not A.  With a large number of polled folders,
(hundreds), which get fresh dialogues every poll, it's entirely possible to
spawn a new round of dialogues before you've managed to close all of the first
round.

At this point I usually have to crash/forced-quit/kill-9 my mozilla and start over.

The only workaround I've found is to set none of my accounts to "check on
startup".  This means that I can turn them on at will by clicking.  Then I have
to quit and restart mozilla every time I move, which is costly.

What's needed is the ability to open/start-polling an account, (and all
associated folders), and to close/stop-polling an account, perhaps by clicking
on the letter icon.  If a loss of connection forced a "stop polling" state for
that account, you could still manually reopen it at a later time just by
clicking on your inbox.

And the "loss of connection" dialogue should only appear once per account, not
once per polled folder.

Comment 15

[K. Richard Pixley]

This bug also occurs on linux, macosx, and winXp.

Comment 16

[K. Richard Pixley]

Also see bug 123440 which appears to be related.

Comment 17

[K. Richard Pixley]

*** Bug 231643 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 18

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

Does this problem still manifest itself on 2.0.0.* or recent Trunk builds? IF no response in 3 weeks, I will RESO INCO.

Comment 19

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

Closing as RESO INCO due to lack of response to last comment. If you feel this change was made in error, respond to this comment with your reasons why.