thunderbird corrupting email since 20090519

[KarlGoetz]

Binary package hint: thunderbird

Somewhere between 11.50(am) and 19.00 on 20090519 thunderbird stopped correctly downloading email.
The messages are downloaded and removed from the pop server, but are corrupt/still encoded.

Has anything thunderbird related changed in that time? Evolution on the same system successfully downloads the messages which thunderbird fails with.

:~$ apt-cache policy thunderbird xulrunner-1.9
thunderbird:
  Installed: 2.0.0.21+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
  Candidate: 2.0.0.21+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
  Version table:
 *** 2.0.0.21+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1 0
        500 http://mirror.internode.on.net hardy-updates/main Packages
        500 http://mirror.internode.on.net hardy-security/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.0.0.12+nobinonly-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://mirror.internode.on.net hardy/main Packages
xulrunner-1.9:
  Installed: 1.9.0.10+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
  Candidate: 1.9.0.10+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
  Version table:
 *** 1.9.0.10+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1 0
        500 http://mirror.internode.on.net hardy-updates/main Packages
        500 http://mirror.internode.on.net hardy-security/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.9~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu3 0
        500 http://mirror.internode.on.net hardy/main Packages

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat May 23 14:54:23 2009
Dependencies:

DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
Package: mozilla-thunderbird None [modified: /var/lib/dpkg/info/mozilla-thunderbird.list]
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: thunderbird
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-24-386 i686

[BobtheJayhawk (rbstalcup)]

Is there a way to recover?

[KarlGoetz (kgoetz)]

In a proper way? I'm not sure.

The work around I've found is to move ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/current.default/Mail/Local Folders/Inbox.msf aside before opening thunderbird. This forces t.bird to regenerate its email list on the next start, but does let you look at email once its open. (Warning: This can take a few minutes if you have a lot of email).

Obviously, I'm using Local Folders :) ( An imap account on the same t.bird is unaffected by this problem).

I haven't tried this very often, so I don't know if its a proper fix or just a work around.

[drfloob (drfloob)]

I can confirm that KarlGoetz's workaround solved the issue in my case. Renaming Inbox.msf caused a new Inbox.msf to be created, and all emails were then viewable upon thunderbird restart. Generating the msf file took ~30 seconds for a 2GB inbox on an average laptop.

For searchability, here were the symptoms that the workaround fixed:

 - opening a recent email (from yesterday) would actually open an older email with a very similar subject string (from 2007)
 - some emails were entirely blank - both body and header - and their source did not resemble anything like an email (it appeared to be a jumble of characters, maybe base64?)
 - some email text appeared cut off mid-sentence.
 - having any sort of media in/attached to an email seemed to cause these symptoms. The few plain-text emails I opened were unaffected (though I didn't test this thoroughly).

Oddly, the old msf file was 1.7 MB, and the new one only 1.4. Hope this helps.

[gf (gf-interlinks-deactivatedaccount)]

Hi Karl,
Thank you for having taken the time to report a problem with Ubuntu and Thunderbird. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner.

You made this bug report in 2009 regarding Thunderbird and there have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time. Your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates.

Could you confirm that this is no longer a problem and that we can close the ticket?

Or, if it still might be a problem, it would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running only once:
apport-collect 379629

and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

G

[KarlGoetz (kgoetz)]

Hi gf,
I no longer use Ubuntu so I'm unable to supply further information.

[gf (gf-interlinks-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks for the update, Karl. I will close the report now.
Take care and have a great day
:)
G

[gf (gf-interlinks-deactivatedaccount)]

Closed per reporter’s feedback; not a bug anymore.