Closed Bug 868041 Opened 11 years ago Closed 8 years ago

Delete / Archive / Move message (update of folder) not working. Perhaps related to flakey network

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Folder and Message Lists
Version:
22 Branch
Platform:
x86
macOS
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: mitra_lists, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Keywords: steps-wanted, Whiteboard: [closeme 2016-11-01][intermittent])

Attachments

(1 file)

Log file as requested
10.67 KB, text/plain
Details 
I keep hitting a problem where moving or deleting messages doesn't work - neither with keys or menu - Delete / Archive / Move are all effected. 

It sounds similar to bug #772370 except that restarting TB always clears the problem for a while.

It is not consistently repeatable, but is happening frequently (started sometime in the last few weeks) and the symptoms are always the same.

There is nothing in the error console.
More information - when it happens it also seems to stop the "Copy message to Send Folder" and "Save to Drafts", so anything you send you can't keep a copy of. 

I've also confirmed that its stopping copy to both IMAP folders and Local Folders. 

This was happening occasionally the last few weeks and I put it down to bad internet connections, (I've been traveling) but I'm now on a solid connection and still seeing it. It also appears to be happening more frequently and makes TB almost unusable when it occurs.
Can anyone else confirm this, or help track it down, its making TB unusable as it requires TB to be restarted every 5 mins or so. 

I'm going to have to switch to Apple-Mail until its fixed or goes away :-(
COuld anyone help me track this down. I've tried running with 
export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=imap:5,imapoffline:5
but I'm not getting any debugging that indicates what the problem is,i.e. no errors happen at the point where it transitions from working (successfully deleting messages) to not working.

I've got all Add-Ons disabled
Does it happen if you use version 17?
At some point it stopped happening. Very suddenly - TB went from the point where I was starting to use Apple Mail instead to being fully functional again.
I spoke too soon - this has started happening again, sometime in the last couple of days.
Another data point is that now once it starts happening when you select a new message in the list, it doesn't display in the message pain.  I don't think that was the behavior before.
Wayne - can I get some help trying to track this down, its happening about once every 5 mins, and it would be good to track the cause BEFORE it disappears again, and then re-emerges for me or someone else.
In case its helpful there are three errors in Error Console that might be relevant. They appear at startup rather than after or just before the bug manifests.
...

Could not read chrome manifest 'file:///Applications/Shredder.app/Contents/MacOS/components/components.manifest'.
Could not read chrome manifest 'file:///Applications/Shredder.app/Contents/MacOS/extensions/%7B972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd%7D/chrome.manifest'.
While creating services from category 'profile-after-change', could not create service for entry 'Disk Space Watcher Service', contract ID '@mozilla.org/toolkit/disk-space-watcher;1'
No chrome package registered for chrome://webclipper3/style/mac/webclipperOverlay.css
(In reply to Mitra Ardron from comment #8)
> Wayne - can I get some help trying to track this down, its happening about
> once every 5 mins, and it would be good to track the cause BEFORE it
> disappears again, and then re-emerges for me or someone else.

I don't have other good ideas at the moment. I've seen someone else report this (not in bugzilla), but it's so rare that it's difficult to pursue. But if you have a reproducible situation, I suggest trying trunk. And maybe others can offer feedback.
Blocks: 883621
Rare but really nasty - its stopped again and I suspect that TB has something odd in its database that makes it do this and then somehow gets fixed. Its a pity there is no useful information generated in Error messages when it fails to Archive or otherwise write, could useful error messages help track it down?
(In reply to Mitra Ardron from comment #11)
> Rare but really nasty - its stopped again and I suspect that TB has
> something odd in its database that makes it do this 

does it fail moving message to one folder only?
what is the frequency level - like average once a week?


> Its a pity there is no useful information generated in Error messages
> when it fails to Archive or otherwise write, could useful error messages
> help track it down?

indeed it is a pity

did not happen prior to version 22?
Flags: needinfo?(mitra_lists)
Once it was happening then TB would often last for only 5 mins before entering this mode of non-functioning (requiring a restart) 
At that point you couldn't move files to any folder (including Trash etc)
I posted the bug the first time I saw it, and I was running nightlies, I haven't seen it since June.
Flags: needinfo?(mitra_lists)
WFM based on comment 13
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 11 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
I'm re-opening this bug as I've now seen this on a friend's machine. They are using TB 17, they've reinstalled the app, checked their hard disk for errors etc. 

In their case, closing and re-opening doesn't clear the issue so they have no way to Archive / Delete or even copy messages to their Sent folder. 

There are no relevant error messages in Error Console.
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Resolution: WORKSFORME → ---
Hi, I have this problem (on macos), and it happens always (can not move a message to a folder, but I still get mail into inbox, and I can send mail).   I can not move to trash, junk, either local or imap.   I reinstalled the app, I have moved from 17 to 24b3, I have restarted, I disabled all addons and extensions, I have an uptodate OS, I made verified the disk, (as you can see I am desperate).

nothing in activity manager or error console.

Any help with this would be most appreciated.

-brewster
brewster@archive.org
Internet Archive
I found a fix (suggested by Mitra):   I mv'ed the mail out of the Library, then deleted the profile to let thunderbird build a new one, then put the local files back in after imap had reloaded.   it is working fine.   So I imagine there was something in a database or config file that caused this issue.

relief.

-brewster
(In reply to Mitra Ardron from comment #15)
> I'm re-opening this bug as I've now seen this on a friend's machine. They
> are using TB 17, they've reinstalled the app, checked their hard disk for
> errors etc.

Does it mean error of "could not create service for entry 'Disk Space Watcher Service'", which you cited in comment #9, for which you opened bug 883621, started to occur on Tb 17?

(In reply to Brewster Kahle from comment #16)
> Hi, I have this problem (on macos), and it happens always (can not move a
> message to a folder, but I still get mail into inbox, and I can send mail).
>(snip)
> nothing in activity manager or error console.

As stated in comment #9 by bug opener, it looks that error message relevant to 'Disk Space Watcher Service' is always seen if this bug.
Why your problem is same problem as this bug?
To Mitra Ardron(bug opener) and Brewster Kahle :

Can you get NSPR log for MsgDB open/close and message copy requet?
Is error seen in log by MsgCopyService:5?
> Win example : SET NSPR_LOG_MODULES=timestamp,MSGDB:5,MsgCopyService:5
Thank you for the quick reply, but since we have a workaround that involved stopping the bug, I do not have a way to reproduce it.    I still have the complete profile if that is helpful.

mitra thought it was the same bug, based on symptoms.   it could have been different.

-brewster
Yes - symptoms were the same except:
* the error message wasnt' in the console
* restarting TB didn't clear it.
Profile directory was broken by some Tb 24 builds?
Following is known phenomenon.
 1. Open Mbox file(not Mbox.msf) with "write exclusive" by other program.
 2. Copy/Move mails to Mbox manually or by filter.
 3. Write open of Mbox by Tb fails(sharing violation in this case on Win), 
    so Tb can't write any data to file named Mbox.
 4. Tb does do nothing. Tb silently fails to Copy/Move mails.
    No error message is shown.
Is write permission of mail directory, subdirectories of mail directory, broken?
  If creation of ...\Mail\server\Sent is not permitted, Tb can't write to Sent,
  If creation of ...\Mail\server\Archives\yy-mm, Tb can't write to yy-mm.
We checked the permissions on the files, directories etc 

Would a useful first part to a fix be for TB to generate a meaningful error if that write fails, or at least meaningful debugging info then next time its encountered we could see what was happening
NSPR log with MsCopyService:5 is a meaningful debugging info, and tracking of "Tb's file access to Move/Copy source/target folder file by file monitor tool" may help problem determination, because this bug is for problem around "copy/move mails".
Brewster, what is being suggested in cryptic shorthand is .... create a shell script like ...

#!/bin/sh

export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=MsCopyService:5
export NSPR_LOG_FILE=/Users/mitra/temp/imap.log
echo NSPR_LOG_MODULES=$NSPR_LOG_MODULES  to $NSPR_LOG_FILE
/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird-bin  -profile "<path>" &

And then run that ...

I've not done that last step to force TB to use an old profile and don't know for sure that it works as it says on one of the FAQ pages.
>  export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=MsCopyService:5 (comment #24 is wrong, comment #19 is correct)
=> export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=timestamp,MSGDB:5,MsgCopyService:5
To test with backup of profile, do following standard/safer way, please.
0. Terminate Tb
1. Copy backup of profile directory to /Test/ProfX (any location, any name)
2. .../thunderbird.bin -p
   => ProfileManager is started.
3. Create a new profile named ProfX, click Next,
   and click "Choose folder..." button, and select /Test/ProfX
4. .../thunderbird.bin -p "ProfX"
   or .../thunderbird.bin -p , then select ProfX
Just wanted to chime in to say I'm also experiencing this problem with TB 17.0.8 on Ubuntu 12.04 x64.  It seems similar to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=817392 (which I contributed to before this more relevant bug was brought up).

I can sen mail fine, but I can't open or save to Archives, Sent, and some other special folders.  However I can still open and manipulate Inbox, and receive new mail.

In my case the problem happens with specific wifi networks, notably my local library's.  Note that the library connection is extremely fast, but whenever I connect to it, 2/3 times (but not always!) I cannot save to sent, do things with the archives folder, etc.  This only started with the last TB update, and I've been using TB for half a decade now.
Mitra, have you sorted this out?
Flags: needinfo?(mitra_lists)
I haven't een it again - but its shown on three machines now (mine, Brewster's and Alex's), which suggests its also appearing for lots of people who don't report here. 

Lack of meaningful error testing/reporting seems to mean we never catch it before something like Comment #17 is applied to make it go away. But that's a meta-bug in TB.
Flags: needinfo?(mitra_lists)
(In reply to Mitra Ardron from comment #29)
> its shown on three machines now ... which suggests its also appearing for lots of people who don't report here. 

I don't believe we can make that conclusion.
Please we don't know the cause or steps to reproduce - so it's impossible to correlate to the myriad of possible random reports that users make about "not being able to delete"


> Lack of meaningful error testing/reporting seems to mean we never catch it
> before something like Comment #17 is applied to make it go away. 

are you saying your problem goes away when you start over with a new file/folder? (you haven't said so)

With current development build do you still see 
While creating services from category 'profile-after-change', could not create service for entry 'Disk Space Watcher Service', contract ID '@mozilla.org/toolkit/disk-space-watcher;1'
Flags: needinfo?(mitra_lists)
Keywords: steps-wanted
Summary: Delete Archive or Move not working → Delete / Archive / Move message (update of folder) not working
Whiteboard: [intermittent]
Brewster's was identical behavior to mine (coincidentally he showed his non functioning TB to me). 

I don't see the Disk Space Watcher Service issue now, and it didn't show up on Brewster's error log, so I suspect they were two different errors occurring at the same time, and it went away (Comment #13) in June. I don't know what I did to fix it. Brewster's we fixed using the process in Comment #17. I haven't seen it again, and presume Brewster hasn't.
Flags: needinfo?(mitra_lists)
I'm seeing this bug again, I was operating for a while on very poor WiFi networks (India and Airports) both of which seems to be a common cause of TB problems I've seen - i.e. some internet interaction fails and TB gets confused. Same symptoms, unable to Archive/Save/Copy/Delete etc. I've also been working a fair bit offline. 

I've run with the debugging suggested and get the following in the log

2049471248[1003392d0]: CopyMessages
2049471248[1003392d0]: request 1c889d60 CopyMessages request - src imap://mitralow@path.net/INBOX dest imap://mitralow@path.net/Inbox_unknown numItems 0 type=0
2049471248[1003392d0]: request 1c889d60 DoCopy - src imap://mitralow@path.net/INBOX dest imap://mitralow@path.net/Inbox_unknown numItems 1 type=0
2049471248[1003392d0]: CopyMessages
2049471248[1003392d0]: request 1ca6f8e0 CopyMessages request - src imap://mitra@mail.path.net/INBOX dest imap://mitra.lumeter@path.net/INBOX numItems 0 type=0
2049471248[1003392d0]: request 1ca6f8e0 DoCopy - src imap://mitra@mail.path.net/INBOX dest imap://mitra.lumeter@path.net/INBOX numItems 0 type=0
2049471248[1003392d0]: NotifyCompletion - src imap://mitralow@path.net/INBOX dest imap://mitralow@path.net/Inbox_unknown
2049471248[1003392d0]: request 1c889d60 Clearing OK request - src imap://mitralow@path.net/INBOX dest imap://mitralow@path.net/Inbox_unknown numItems 1 type=0
2049471248[1003392d0]: CopyMessages
2049471248[1003392d0]: request 7cdd140 CopyMessages request - src imap://mitra@mail.path.net/INBOX dest imap://mitra.lumeter@path.net/INBOX numItems 0 type=0
2049471248[1003392d0]: request 7cdd140 QueueRequest - src imap://mitra@mail.path.net/INBOX dest imap://mitra.lumeter@path.net/INBOX numItems 0 type=0

Notably when I hit Delete in mitra.lumeter@path.net/INBOX nothing shows up in the log.
When I go to mail.path.net/INBOX I get the folder show up, but get a spinning blue ball and some more requests. 

I don't know how to interpret the log , but I do notice that there are a number of these requests that appear to want to copy 0 items between from the inbox of one folder to the inbox of another. 

I'll attach the full log
Attached file Log file as requested — 

    
    

    
  
(In reply to Mitra Ardron from comment #33)
> Created attachment 8422537 [details]
> Log file as requested
Flags: needinfo?(m-wada)

        Attachment #8422537 -
        Attachment mime type: text/x-log → text/plain
Flags: needinfo?(m-wada)

    
    

    
  
(In reply to Mitra Ardron from comment #33)
> Log file as requested

No difference from pasted part in comment #32.
After DoCopy, IMAP requested is queued(QueueRequest), but no IMAP log.
It looks that Tb is waiting for establishment of connection with server.

> I've also been working a fair bit offline.

Log while Work Offline?

    
    

    
  
(In reply to WADA from comment #35)
> (In reply to Mitra Ardron from comment #33)
> > Log file as requested
> 
> No difference from pasted part in comment #32.
> After DoCopy, IMAP requested is queued(QueueRequest), but no IMAP log.
> It looks that Tb is waiting for establishment of connection with server.

So this doesn't sound like a client issue.
Do you disagree?
Flags: needinfo?(mitra_lists)
Whiteboard: [intermittent] → [closeme 2016-11-01][intermittent]

    
    

    
  
(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, NI for questions) from comment #36)
> (In reply to WADA from comment #35)
> > (In reply to Mitra Ardron from comment #33)
> > > Log file as requested
> > 
> > No difference from pasted part in comment #32.
> > After DoCopy, IMAP requested is queued(QueueRequest), but no IMAP log.
> > It looks that Tb is waiting for establishment of connection with server.
> 
> So this doesn't sound like a client issue.
> Do you disagree?

I can say nothing. I san say flowwing only.

One of next:
(a) connection related problem due to server side issue.
(b) connection related problem due to client side issue.
    Because number of cached connections is never infinite,
    if something is going on at all available cached connections,
    an action on IMAP in Thunderbird has to wait for end of other job.
    It can be normal situation, but it can be wrong situation too.

    
  
Summary: Delete / Archive / Move message (update of folder) not working → Delete / Archive / Move message (update of folder) not working. Perhaps related to flakey network

    
    

    
  
I'm not quite sure what the needinfo is requesting and note the bug was reported over 2 years ago, so my memory will undoubtedly be innaccurate. 

This problem was not unique to being offline, it also happened on really good connections,  those logs were while online (or I'd have said otherwise) BUT I was working offline a lot, and symptoms looked similar, so wondered if something that happened while offline (never TB's strong point) caused a problem when online.
Flags: needinfo?(mitra_lists)

    
    

    
  
I don't recall anyone else reporting this. So I guess the followup question is, have you seen this problem in the last 6 months, offline or online, while using a current version?
Flags: needinfo?(mitra_lists)

    
    

    
  
Understood Wayne, no I haven't seen it since 2014. (Note that Brewster also reported it in Comment #16 at same time )  I'm guessing it was cleared up in a later version or its rare enough that its not appearing for people who report bugs on Bugzilla !  Ok to close from my perspective.
Flags: needinfo?(mitra_lists)

    
    

    
  
Thanks!
Status: REOPENED → RESOLVED
Closed: 11 years ago → 8 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME

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