890721 - Thunderbird deletes pop Inbox after compact

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Michelle]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130618035212

Steps to reproduce:

Hi,

I'm very upset now b/c I had no backup on this laptop since I lost my desktop due to lightening, & was using this laptop until I get my new computer.

This is the 2nd time this has happened to me.

On my desktop it happened once. I lost the ENTIRE inbox & yes there was a lot of mail in there, but I was under the impression TB could handle it.

THIS time though, I barely had any mail in this inbox since I just started this account after losing the desktop & it's not a busy e-mail addy. I guesstimate there was maybe 100-200 e-mails in there, maybe less.

What had I been doing at the time?

I was moving my sent mail into a backup folder so I could import my sent mail from the desktop to here.

There was about over 2k worth of sent mail which is small for me since I'm a heavy e-mail user.

After the mail had moved over, I couldn't get TB to pop up again from taskbar. When it did, I saw the compact button. I clicked on it & the next time I went to look at all my accounts, one of them had lost the inbox.

I was very upset, I closed TB down, deleted the .msf file, opened it & still nothing. :  (

Please fix this problem. Oh & I'm using 17.0.7

So the inbox is totally gone, right???


Michelle


Actual results:

Lost all the mail within the inbox & it wasn't even the account where I had created the folder to move my sent mail into.


Expected results:

No e-mail got lost.

Comment 1

[Andre Klapper]

What kind of account is this about? POP? IMAP?

> deleted the .msf file

What were the reasons for that?

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Michelle from comment #0)
> I'm very upset now b/c I had no backup on this laptop 

you have since corrected this ?

> since I lost my
> desktop due to lightening, & was using this laptop until I get my new
> computer.

lightning has not been known to cause loss thunderbird messages.
 
> This is the 2nd time this has happened to me.

still no backup?
 
> On my desktop it happened once. I lost the ENTIRE inbox & yes there was a
> lot of mail in there, but I was under the impression TB could handle it.

> I was moving my sent mail into a backup folder so I could import my sent
> mail from the desktop to here.

what is mail doing on your desktop?
 
> There was about over 2k worth of sent mail which is small for me since I'm a
> heavy e-mail user.
> 
> After the mail had moved over, I couldn't get TB to pop up again from
> taskbar. When it did, I saw the compact button. I clicked on it & the next
> time I went to look at all my accounts, one of them had lost the inbox.

> Lost all the mail within the inbox & it wasn't even the account where I had
> created the folder to move my sent mail into.

this sounds like the work of antivirus software.
pop account?
which AV software?

Comment 3

[Michelle]

LOL, I never said lightening caused the inbox to disappear.

A desktop computer, you know, as apposed to a laptop computer.

I don't think my avast deleted the inbox & I read that other people have the same problem.

And yes, I'm on POP.

I have a backup, but that's not the point. I had no backup for my laptop & I lost everything.


Michelle

Comment 4

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

If all mails in a mail folder are deleted by your Retention Policy setting in Tb, "Empty mail folder", "file size=0 after Compact" is pretty normal phenomenon.
Please surely rule out such case first.

What is evidence that inbox was deleted by Compact of Tb?
Do you have Process Monitor log for "Tb's Compact deleted Inbox and Inbox.msf even though mail data should be remain in file named Inbox"?

As written in bug 498814, Compact might delete file named Inbox, and dup of that bug, depends on bugs, blocks bugs, seem such problem which occurred in actal environment. And bug 674742 is actual case of "Inbox is surely deleted by Compact" when certain error occurs while Compct execution.
However, as written in bug 498814, many of such problem was resolved by "file size check after Compact", and, IIUC, almost all outstanding cases were resolved by fix of bug 674742.

> I don't think my avast deleted the inbox

You think or you don't think is irrelevant.
Please surely rule out "Avast quarantined Tb's Inbox file" case by checking log/trace etc. of Avast, because here is bugzilla.mozilla to report Tb's actual bug to developers and here is not support forum.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

 Michelle,

Please update to version 24, because if this is really happening during compact, then another possible cause is the folder got trashed by the AV killed the temporary folder in the windows temp directory. This issue is fixed in version 24 by bug 785274. 

Also, pop users can avail themselves of a setting to download messages to a location where they can be scanned, before being moved to Thunderbird mail folder.  This setting is found at tools | options | security | antivirus | Allow quarantine

Comment 6

[Michelle]

Again, I don't feel it's my anti virus program that did this & I've been on 24 since it came out.

I can't upgrade to 24.1 b/c my theme hasn't upgraded yet :  (

I wrote them last night & I hope they upgrade soon.

As for pre-scanning mail, it sounds very time consuming & with over 30 different accounts, I just don't have that kind of time, but thank you for the info. Didn't know TB could do that.


Michelle

Comment 7

[Phoenix]

So, did you have chance to test 24.1?

Comment 8

[Michelle]

No, theme is still an issue. I had to downgrade & turn off upgrade notifications otherwise by accident it may upgrade again.

Not sure they will ever fix the theme which is concerning me.

Even if I upgrade, the deleting of the inbox happens once in a blue moon, so there's no real way to test it.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Historically this issue is majority caused by AV. 
Unfortunately until we have ruled this possibility out, there's no point keeping this open.