Binary package hint: thunderbird
1. From normal Inbox view of your e-mails, click Write
2. if there isn't already a "Contacts" sidebar beside the message you're composing, click View menu... Contacts Sidebar.
3. In the contacts sidebar, in the Address Book drop-down, pick an address book with thousands of entries.
4. click on the first one in the list, then either scroll to the last one or press Ctrl-End to jump to the last one, and hold Shift while clicking to highlight everything from the first to the last.
5. right-click on any one in this highlighted-list and choose "Add to BCC field"
BUG: you get pop-up warnings about "a script on this page may be busy..." with Continue or Stop Script buttons, and only a fraction of the addresses are (so far) added to the message
BUG: if you click Continue, it fills in a few hundred more addresses and gives the error pop-up again
BUG: if you click Stop Script, it fails to add the remaining addresses to the To:
BUG: in the time between the pop-ups, thunderbird-bin is taking 100% CPU
BUG: after clearing about 20 or 30 of these pop-ups, thunderbird crashes, dies, closes, disappears without a trace
BUG: no partial message is in Drafts with the so-far successfully added addresses
Note 1: in step 5 the problem also happens whether you choose "Add to To field" or "..Cc.." or "...Bcc..".
Note 2: with an address book of 1358 entries, this pop-up had to be cleared 3 times. On a different machine, with an address book of 4800 entries, the pop-up had to be cleared dozens of times, so it does not seem to happen after a certain fixed number of addresses are processed.
Note 3: full text of the pop-up is Title bar:
Note 4: an alternate method seems to have the 100% CPU usage problem but not the pop-up or crash: main window... Address Book... highlight all addresses... right click... choose Write... (however, this is not usable if you want to add from 2 large address books to the same message)
ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Mar 5 17:15:54 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: mozilla-thunderbird (not installed)
ProcEnviron:
LC_TIME=en_CA_ISO_username.UTF-8
LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-20.57-generic
SourcePackage: thunderbird
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-20-generic x86_64
---
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: thunderbird 3.1.7+build3+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.10.1
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
PATH=(custom, user)
LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.35-generic 2.6.35.4
Tags: maverick
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout dip fax floppy fuse lpadmin mythtv netdev plugdev sambashare tape video
clarification on Note 4 where I said: an alternate method seems to have the 100% CPU usage problem but not the pop-up or crash....
That only helped in the case of the ~1500 entry address book. When trying the same steps with the ~4800 entry address book, the pop-up still occurred, but only once, and after clicking Continue, the whole screen was slightly greyed for about 30 seconds, and then the e-mail showed up with all the addresses. The crash part of the problem did not happen. (Another thing I accidentally did different, not sure if it is relevant, is that the address book rows were reverse-sorted by name this time.)