Thunderbird's New Mail notification asterisks don't clear right away

[l33ting disorder]

Binary package hint: thunderbird

Hi,

Long time devotee of Thunderbird.

I just switched to Ubuntu 8.04 from Vista/SP1.

Now that I've switched to Ubuntu, I've noticed that the little red/orange asterisks that appear over the "Inbox" icon and the "Local Folders" icon (indicating new unread messages have arrived) don't go away when messages are read.

The asterisks beside the actual messages disappear when the listing goes from bold to normal, but the asterisks still remain on the Inbox icon and the Local Folders icon.

When I click on a different folder from the Inbox, such as "Sent" or "Trash", the "Inbox" and "Local Folders" icons lose their asterisks and the bold returns to normal.

So basically instead of just checking all my messages and closing thunderbird, I have to check all my messages then click on a non-inbox folder then back on the inbox just to verify I haven't missed anything. It's not a huge deal but I shouldn't have to do it ;) And it is technically a bug so I can imagine I'm not the only one experiencing this.

All the best and kind regards,

Scott Johnstone
<email address hidden>

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Jul 24 10:29:01 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: mozilla-thunderbird 2.0.0.14+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: thunderbird
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-19-generic x86_64

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

omni wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> Binary package hint: thunderbird
>
> Hi,
>
> Long time devotee of Thunderbird.
>
> I just switched to Ubuntu 8.04 from Vista/SP1.
>
> Now that I've switched to Ubuntu, I've noticed that the little
> red/orange asterisks that appear over the "Inbox" icon and the "Local
> Folders" icon (indicating new unread messages have arrived) don't go
> away when messages are read.
>
> The asterisks beside the actual messages disappear when the listing goes
> from bold to normal, but the asterisks still remain on the Inbox icon
> and the Local Folders icon.
>
> When I click on a different folder from the Inbox, such as "Sent" or
> "Trash", the "Inbox" and "Local Folders" icons lose their asterisks and
> the bold returns to normal.
>
> So basically instead of just checking all my messages and closing
> thunderbird, I have to check all my messages then click on a non-inbox
> folder then back on the inbox just to verify I haven't missed anything.
> It's not a huge deal but I shouldn't have to do it ;) And it is
> technically a bug so I can imagine I'm not the only one experiencing
> this.
>
> All the best and kind regards,
>
> Scott Johnstone
> <email address hidden>
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> Architecture: amd64
> Date: Thu Jul 24 10:29:01 2008
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
> Package: mozilla-thunderbird 2.0.0.14+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
> PackageArchitecture: all
> ProcEnviron:
> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
> LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: thunderbird
> Uname: Linux 2.6.24-19-generic x86_64
>
> ** Affects: thunderbird (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
>
> ** Tags: apport-bug
>
>
Do you have this issue with 2.0.0.16? You can get it if you enable
http://security.ubuntu.com hardy-security/ repo

 status incomplete

--
Sincerely Yours,
    John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246

[l33ting disorder (omni-networksense)]

I'm using 2.0.0.14

How do I enable http://security.ubuntu.com hardy-security/ repo ?

Thanks

[l33ting disorder (omni-networksense)]

Correction. About 5 minutes after posting that I'm using 2.0.0.14, I got a little update notification in my tray, telling me that a thunderbird update was available. I applied the update and now I'm using 2.0.0.16 :)

So I sent myself a test e-mail and sure enough, same results. The red asterisk cleared from the email when I clicked on it, but the red asterisk on Inbox and Local Folders remained.

Another interesting detail: This time instead of clicking "sent" or "trash" to clear the Inbox asterisk, I clicked on Local Folders (the parent folder for Inbox). When I did, the red asterisk on Inbox remained but it cleared from Local Folders. Then I clicked on "sent" - asterisk still present on Inbox. Clicked on Inbox, then back on "sent" and the asterisk went away from the Inbox icon.

So, it seems the behavior is different when I click the parent folder than it is when I click on a sibling folder like Sent or Trash.

In any case, the bug is still present in 2.0.0.16

[l33ting disorder (omni-networksense)]

(bump)

Any ideas? Anyone?

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

omni wrote:
> (bump)
>
> Any ideas? Anyone?
>
>
Please dont bump bugs we have > 300 bugs in firefox-3 alone not
including the other packages mozilla team supports, we will get to your
bug as fast as we can. Every bug is important to us however there are
show stopper bugs that get first priority and crashes. A few of us are
in Canada for the Mozilla summit so we are down people at this time and
the 2 or 3 of us that are not there are working as hard as we can.

--
Sincerely Yours,
    John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246

[l33ting disorder (omni-networksense)]

Understandable - apologies.

I thought bugs were visible to the entire community so it wouldn't be exclusively the moz devs viewing my bug report. My thought was that some other regular (non moz-dev) user might read it and reply saying "That exact same thing happened to me and here's how I solved it"

Now that I know the ONLY people who will EVER view my bug reports are the related devs for that project, I won't bump anymore.

Again, apologies.

[l33ting disorder (omni-networksense)]

Update: the problem seems to have gone away.

I'm not entirely sure what solved the problem as I haven't been actively troubleshooting it.. However it does occur to me that in order to get mail-notification 5.4 working just the way I want it to, I changed my thunderbird account settings so "Leave a copy on the server" is unchecked.

Before it was leaving a copy on the server, now it clears/deletes the message from the server once it's downloaded.

Now as soon as the listing in the message window goes away, the asterisks on the Inbox and Local Folders icons disappears as well.

So - my problem seems to be fixed.

I hope these details help to troubleshoot the problem if anyone else encounters it.

[l33ting disorder (omni-networksense)]

Retraction - the problem hasn't gone away. It seems it's just intermittent now.

What seems to be the case is that if I have new unread messages that have been filtered into side-folders at the same tree level as the Inbox folder, the asterisks remain on the Inbox folder even after all unread messages have been read and their bold text style has been stripped to normal.

If I ONLY have new unread messages in my Inbox folder, then the asterisk clears from the Inbox icon as soon as it clears from the message listing in the pane on the right. (Likewise for any other folder - the bug only seems to be present when there are new unread messages in multiple folders)

Hope this helps to debug!

[Kayvee (vkkodali)]

I think I have the same problem. And I don't know if it is a bug or if it is expected behavior... Here is what I noticed:

When I get a new mail, a red asterisk appears next to the folder in which the new mail is put. When I click on that new mail to read, it gets marked as 'Read' but the asterisk does not disappear. However, it disappears once I click on any other email in the same folder or when I click on some other folder in the folder tree.

[l33ting disorder (omni-networksense)]

That is actually different from the problem I was experiencing.

On my TB, the asterisk would clear from a new message as soon as I read
it, but the asterisk on the containing folder would remain even when
there were no more new messages in said folder. (eg, "Inbox" would have
the asterisk on it and be in bold, even after all the new messages were
read).

For what it's worth, I'm now using 2.0.0.18 and having no problems at all.

Kayvee wrote:
> I think I have the same problem. And I don't know if it is a bug or if
> it is expected behavior... Here is what I noticed:
>
> When I get a new mail, a red asterisk appears next to the folder in
> which the new mail is put. When I click on that new mail to read, it
> gets marked as 'Read' but the asterisk does not disappear. However, it
> disappears once I click on any other email in the same folder or when I
> click on some other folder in the folder tree.
>
>

[etali (etali)]

Since you have said that this problem is resolved in 2.0.0.18 I am closing this bug.

Please do not hesitate to open another bug report if you encounter any problems in the future.

Thanks.