862007 - Version 17.0.5 hangs - unusable since update

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[carlamc]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_8) AppleWebKit/537.31 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/26.0.1410.65 Safari/537.31

Steps to reproduce:

Open thunderbird.


Actual results:

Inbox comes up... then rainbow-wheel just spins. Have to force quit. Can't do anything.
This is on 2 separate machines. Granted I have a LOT of email in here, years of business correspondence. But it worked until this latest update. Now, just spins.


Expected results:

Should be able to compose or reply to emails.

Comment 1

[carlamc]

Forgot to note: Using IMap connection.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

1. backup your thunderbird profile https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/Profiles#w_backing-up-a-profile
2. does problem improve if you reinstall from http://getthunderbird.com/ ?

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

- So it worked in 17.0.4, but not in 17.0.5?
- Is safe mode better?   http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/safe-mode

Comment 4

[Nick Brown]

Ive also been having big problems with Thunderbird 17.0.5.

System info says Mint 14 as the OS on 3.5.0-17 kernel.

Ive been using Thunderbird for 18 months under Ubuntu 10.4 and moved to Mint in Jan 2013 (so its been up and running for some time.

Thunderbird did an auto-update yesterday to 17.0.5 (cant be sure) and immediately went wrong.

I have deeply nested folders (perhaps 6 deep) and many folders (perhaps 1,400 of them, all locally held); mail comes in via POP3 (1 account) and IMAP (another account).

The first problem I spotted was that the inbox had gone (as in, still in the folder list but with nothing in it). The mailbox file is still there with data in it, but the messages didn't display.

Then I spotted that the "+" white boxes to open a sub-folder had dissapeared. It also looked like Thunderbird was reindexing (or something like this) on start-up and a small wrist watch icon is displayed with the mouse pointer. If during this time I tried to get into a sub-folder by double clocking on the name (the "+" box being absent) Thunderbird would crash after the thrd or fourth attempt. 

Where it did open a sub-folder this would have no further subfolders below it an nothing in any of the mail boxes. A while "-" box would appear but if I clicked on this the folder would shrink back flat again and the white box would dissapear (instead of turning to a "+").

The reindexing activity would only produce white boxes on the top level (at first, although this changed later, going a bit deeper) and no folder contents would be present.

Then it it became apparent that no mail is being fethced by POP3 or IMAP. The network is up but no traffic passes on the traffic meter when Thunderbird should be busy POP3-ing or IMAP-ing. This might be becuase it will only do this after reindexing - except that this appeared to be a permanent status and the "wrist watch" pointer icon never changes.

I am also a long-time user of Eudora. So I installed Eudora and found the same thing.

I also checked through the file structure of the mail boxes (known well to me as I imported everything from MS Outlook several months back with a certain amount of hacking involved then) and found that they had bene interfered with as follows (for a given mailbox "foo2" within a mailbox "foo"):

file foo (zero length) is still there and zero length and has not have been touched at the time of update
file foo.msf has bene newly generated
directory ./foo.sbd is intact and not touched

./foo.sbd/foo2 is intact and not touched
./foo.sbd/foo2.msf (for deep mailboxes) has been removed
It looks like all the indexes have been wiped and ahve been recreated. As I have quite a few mail bixes this has taken a long time and has bene incomppete - and no warning that this was going on nor that it was still under way when the app crashed...

Except that having got some of the mailboxes back, the white "+" boxes (in the root of the mailbox display) have now all gone again.

So Thunderbird 17.0.5 is not well at all....

Comment 5

[Nick Brown]

Bit more information. 
The "+" and "-" boxes are invisible, not missing. Click on the invisible box and the sub-mailbox opens. The indexes are being rebuilt - slowly - and the messages are all coming up as unread. 1,400 mail boxes all with "unread" messages in them.. thanks. So PLEASE could you add a recursive effect to "mark all as read" .. please...?

Also, Ive seen several occurrences of two types of script crashing. At first I thought it was Firefox but it is indeed Thunderbird doing it. I missed the first one; the second is
resources/modules/gloda/index_msg.js:2831. So, something to do with large quantities of indexing going on, then, by any chance...?

And I think that to release an upgrade that auto installs then trashes every index isn't very helpful.

Comment 6

[carlamc]

3 co-workers have had to stop using Thunderbird in the past week for the same reasons.
It just crashes / churns before it fully opens.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to carlamc from comment #6)
> 3 co-workers have had to stop using Thunderbird in the past week for the
> same reasons.
> It just crashes / churns before it fully opens.

answers to comment 2 and comment 3 please

Comment 8

[Nick Brown]

(in response tp Wayne)
Comment 2: the download failed but I later ripped out 17.0.5 and reinstalled it, both using Synaptic. 
Comment 3: tried this, doesn't affect the performance

Comment 9

[Nick Brown]

@Wayne - sorry I ticked the box saying "proivded information for [e-mail]" when I shouldn't have....

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Nick Brown from comment #9)
> @Wayne - sorry I ticked the box saying "proivded information for
> [e-mail]" when I shouldn't have....

no problem. thanks for your update!

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Nick, what OS?  And if windows _____, then are you running McAfee?

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thommie, can you help?

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #11)
> Nick, what OS?  And if windows _____, then are you running McAfee?

nevermind, didnt' read far back enough

Comment 13

[Thommie Rother]

Wayne, I have no Mac here, sorry. 
TB 17.0.5 on three different Linux boxes (Opensuse 121.,12.2) and on WIndows 7 works fine ...

Comment 14

[carlamc]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #7)
> (In reply to carlamc from comment #6)
> > 3 co-workers have had to stop using Thunderbird in the past week for the
> > same reasons.
> > It just crashes / churns before it fully opens.
> 
> answers to comment 2 and comment 3 please

My CEO (who encountered the same problem, both on his office mac, and home laptop) said the only thing that worked for him was, he was able to get the office machine's Tbird working again by compacting his mailboxes.  
But he's unable to get it to load on his home machine to the point of achieving that there. 

Based on his experience and mine, compared with not everyone having this problem... it seems the problem is related to account size.  
"Mail", where I'm currently working from during this crisis, is telling me my account is about 5.5 GB

(I've been on some deadlines myself, without time to try booting it again to try safe-mode or re-install.  I'll see if I can do so in the coming week or so, but I've just been slammed, so have been 'getting by' with a Mail install I did for emergency.)
thanks.

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

carlamc, not necessary to reboot to do safe-mode or re-install.
Also, please post information from help | troubleshooting.

Comment 16

[Phoenix]

Resolved per whiteboard