Mails can't be deleted if there's not enough disk space

[Debian Bug Importer]

Automatically imported from Debian bug report #295270 http://bugs.debian.org/295270

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213072: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213072

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-Id: <1108408425.4492.5.camel@cube>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 14:13:45 -0500
From: Albert Cahalan <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: unable to delete mail

Subject: unable to delete mail
Package: evolution
Version: 2.0.3-1.2
Severity: grave

Evolution is unable to delete mail. This "makes the package in question
unusable or mostly so", thus the severity. One can not simply keep getting
more mail without deleting any. Space is not infinite, so now I really
can't be downloading my incoming mail.

I have 6856 messages. In a vfolder with 627 messages, I select all but 44.
I hit the Del key, marking the selected messages for deletion. I choose
to Expunge the messages. I get the following dialog box:

---------------------------------------------------------------
  Error while Expunging folder.

  Error storing `~/.evolution/mail/local/Inbox (mbox)': Summary
  and folder mismatch, even after a sync.

                                              OK
---------------------------------------------------------------

I would not be surprised to find that this is a regression.
Back around the 1.1 to 1.3 releases, a similar procedure would
cause evolution to crash. The 1.4 release worked.

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-id: <20050215191631.GI30327@localhost>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 16:16:31 -0300
From: Margarita Manterola <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: Please provide more information

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Hi!

Regarding your bug report:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=3D295270

Lots of information is missing from your report, that will be needed to fix
the problem. (I use evolution and delete mail everyday, so clearly there's
a problem related to your specific configuration).

Are you using sarge or sid?
Do you have any "experimental" packages?
Do you have any ubuntu, or other non-Debian packages?

What filesystem type is your /home ?
Is it local or is it shared through NFS ?

Does this problem happen with all the folders or just with the Inbox?
What happens if you delete & expunge just one message instead of 500 ?
What happens if you delete messages from inside the Inbox folder instead
than from the vFolder ?
What's the output of "ls -l /.evolution/mail/local/" ?

This and any other related info is needed to provide you with a solution.

--=20
 Bessos,
     Maggie.

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[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 19:35:39 -0500
From: Albert Cahalan <email address hidden>
To: Margarita Manterola <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>
Cc: <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#295270: Please provide more information

> Lots of information is missing from your report, that will be needed to fix
> the problem. (I use evolution and delete mail everyday, so clearly there's
> a problem related to your specific configuration).

I may have guessed the problem. I had less free disk space than the size of
the Inbox file, but not zero disk space either. I suspect that
evolution corrupts
the mail files when this happens.

Of course, this should not happen.

Additionally, it ought to recover by regenerating the summary data and index.
I got it to recover by manually deleting several files; these were then rebuilt.

Not that I believe this is relevant, but to cover everything: the system is
a 32-bit ppc box; it is thus big-endian with char being unsigned by default.

> Are you using sarge or sid?

set to unstable, whatever that is, and somewhat recently updated

> Do you have any "experimental" packages?
> Do you have any ubuntu, or other non-Debian packages?

Nope.

> What filesystem type is your /home ?
> Is it local or is it shared through NFS ?

Plain ext2.

> Does this problem happen with all the folders or just with the Inbox?

I think only the one was corrupted.

> What happens if you delete & expunge just one message instead of 500 ?

At this point, I can not tell. Sorry.

(while I know this would help for debugging, please do not imagine this to be
a reasonable work-around if it would have worked)

> What happens if you delete messages from inside the Inbox folder instead
> than from the vFolder ?

I tried expunging with the Inbox selected, though the selection of stuff to
delete had been made via the vFolder. I got the same error.

> What's the output of "ls -l /.evolution/mail/local/" ?

Running the command I think you intended:

$ ls -l ~/.evolution/mail/local/
total 42124
-rw------- 1 albert albert 34855 Jan 23 17:03 Drafts
-rw-r--r-- 1 albert albert 13 Feb 14 22:16 Drafts.cmeta
-rw------- 1 albert albert 1242 Jan 23 17:03 Drafts.ev-summary
-rw------- 1 albert albert 25600 Jan 23 17:03 Drafts.ibex.index
-rw------- 1 albert albert 10896 Jan 23 17:03 Drafts.ibex.index.data
-rw------- 1 albert albert 27506931 Feb 15 09:18 Inbox
-rw-r--r-- 1 albert albert 197 Feb 15 09:24 Inbox.cmeta
-rw------- 1 albert albert 1138033 Feb 15 09:18 Inbox.ev-summary
-rw------- 1 albert albert 1030144 Feb 15 09:18 Inbox.ibex.index
-rw------- 1 albert albert 3139660 Feb 15 09:18 Inbox.ibex.index.data
drwxr-xr-x 2 albert albert 4096 Feb 14 22:16 Inbox.sbd
-rw------- 1 albert albert 0 Feb 14 22:35 Outbox
-rw-r--r-- 1 albert albert 13 Feb 14 22:35 Outbox.cmeta
-rw------- 1 albert albert 44 Feb 14 22:35 Outbox.ev-summary
-rw------- 1 albert albert 7168 Feb 14 22:35 Outbox.ibex.index
-rw------- 1 albert albert 0 Feb 14 22:35 Outbox.ibex.index.data
-rw------- 1 albert albert 7805151 Feb 14 22:35 Sent
-rw-r...

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-id: <20050216135113.GA22909@localhost>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 10:51:13 -0300
From: Margarita Manterola <email address hidden>
To: Albert Cahalan <email address hidden>
Cc: <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#295270: Please provide more information

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Retitle 295270 Mails can't be deleted if there's not enough disk space
Tags 295270 upstream
thanks

Hola Albert Cahalan!

> > Lots of information is missing from your report, that will be needed to
> > fix the problem. (I use evolution and delete mail everyday, so clearly
> > there's a problem related to your specific configuration).
> I may have guessed the problem. I had less free disk space than the size =
of
> the Inbox file, but not zero disk space either. I suspect that
> evolution corrupts the mail files when this happens.

Yes, this sounds like the reason of the problem. Thus, I'm retitling.

> Of course, this should not happen.
> Additionally, it ought to recover by regenerating the summary data and
> index. I got it to recover by manually deleting several files; these
> were then rebuilt.

Ok, although I agree that what you experienced was not right, but I find
that the bug was that the message was not clear enough.

If your disk is full, you'll experience many many problems, you'll lose
data and things like that. So it's not a good idea to have a full disk. I
don't think that Evolution should find a way to delete the messages even if
there isn't enough space, however, it should tell you what the problem is
and let you fix it.

> > Are you using sarge or sid?
> set to unstable, whatever that is, and somewhat recently updated

Ok, that's sid.

> > What filesystem type is your /home ?
> > Is it local or is it shared through NFS ?
> Plain ext2.

Not that it's related, but I seriously recommend migrating to ext3, it's
a simple migration and it's really a better filesystem.

> > What happens if you delete & expunge just one message instead of 500 ?
> At this point, I can not tell. Sorry.
> (while I know this would help for debugging, please do not imagine this
> to be a reasonable work-around if it would have worked)

It was only intended for debugging purposes. With what you've told me, I'd
say that probably the same thing happened.

Thanks for all the input, I'll forward this to upstream, I hope they'll be
able to fix it.

--=20
 Bezitos,
     Maggie.

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[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-Id: <email address hidden>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 09:11:58 -0500
From: Justin Pryzby <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: tagging 295270

# Automatically generated email from bts, devscripts version 2.8.10
tags 295270 sid

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 09:25:15 -0500
From: Albert Cahalan <email address hidden>
To: Margarita Manterola <email address hidden>
Cc: <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#295270: Please provide more information

> > I may have guessed the problem. I had less free disk space than the size of
> > the Inbox file, but not zero disk space either. I suspect that
> > evolution corrupts the mail files when this happens.
>
> Yes, this sounds like the reason of the problem. Thus, I'm retitling.
>
> > Of course, this should not happen.
> > Additionally, it ought to recover by regenerating the summary data and
> > index. I got it to recover by manually deleting several files; these
> > were then rebuilt.
>
> Ok, although I agree that what you experienced was not right, but I find
> that the bug was that the message was not clear enough.
>
> If your disk is full, you'll experience many many problems, you'll lose
> data and things like that. So it's not a good idea to have a full disk. I
> don't think that Evolution should find a way to delete the messages even if
> there isn't enough space, however, it should tell you what the problem is
> and let you fix it.

I'm not saying that evolution should be able to delete when there isn't
enough disk space.

Evolution failed even after I freed up plenty of disk space. It had corrupted
its database, and would not function again until I manually performed an
undocumented procedure of deleting the summary data file and index files.

The matter of a correct error message is secondary. The important thing is
that evolution not corrupt its data files.

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-Id: <1108588525.5125.28.camel@cube>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 16:15:25 -0500
From: Albert Cahalan <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: bug title

So now the title is this:
   Mails can't be deleted if there's not enough disk space

Well, true, but that's not really the big problem. This bug
causes several problems:

1. can not delete mail (minor)
2. database gets corrupt (grave) <<<<< Ouch!
3. no error message about disk space problem (important)

It's the database corruption problem that let me to report
the bug and mark it grave. I can somewhat accept that
evolution may have trouble when disk space is low, although
deleting mail is particularly desirable in such cases!
It is not even remotely acceptable that the database gets
corrupted. The lack of an explanation is moderately bad.

Google let me to this:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-October/msg00932.html

So that is how I figured out what needed to be done. I was
rather nervous deleting undocumented important-looking files.
Nobody should ever need to do this.

I think a better title would be:
   Mailbox database gets corrupted if disk space gets low

To make this really clear, making more disk space did NOT
solve the problem. Even with 500 MB free, evolution would
not work. I had to delete the Inbox database files.

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-id: <20050216231932.GA24816@localhost>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 20:19:32 -0300
From: Margarita Manterola <email address hidden>
To: Albert Cahalan <email address hidden>
Cc: <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: The root of this problem

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Retitle 295270 Messages cannot be deleted and index file gets corrupted whe=
n there isn't enough disk space

Hola Albert Cahalan!

> 1. can not delete mail (minor)
> 2. database gets corrupt (grave) <<<<< Ouch!

With database you mean Inbox.ibex.index, Inbox.ibex.index.data,
Inbox.cmeta, or what?

Neither of these are databases, they are just index files to make the
accessing of the message box faster. No data is lost when deleting them.

You didn't lose any data did you?

While the files were corrupted (before you deleted them) could you still
use the program? Could you receive new mail? Did you get any other error
messages than the one you described?

> It's the database corruption problem that let me to report
> the bug and mark it grave.=20

This is not true. You reported the bug before finding out the solution.
You reported it grave because you couldn't delete the mails.

> So that is how I figured out what needed to be done. I was
> rather nervous deleting undocumented important-looking files.
> Nobody should ever need to do this.

I agree with this, yet I still don't find this to be of "grave" severity,
if no data was lost.

> I think a better title would be:
> Mailbox database gets corrupted if disk space gets low

I'm retitling, but not to this. There's no database corrupted.

> To make this really clear, making more disk space did NOT
> solve the problem. Even with 500 MB free, evolution would
> not work. I had to delete the Inbox database files.

Ok, I'm really interested in the "would not work" part. Please elaborate.

--=20
Besos, ,''`.
       Marga : :' :
               `. `'=20
                 `- =20

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[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-id: <20050217012046.GE24816@localhost>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 22:20:46 -0300
From: Margarita Manterola <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Cc: <email address hidden>
Subject: Upstream report

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forwarded 295270 http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=3D13072
thanks

I found the upstream report for this bug. It's an ancient report and it
seems that Evolution team thought it had been fixed with 2.x, but I've
already added a comment stating otherwise.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's an easy fix for this.

--=20
Love,
Margarita

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[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 10:37:08 +0200
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Lo=EFc?= Minier <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: #295270 forwarded http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213072

forwarded 295270 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3D213072
thanks

--=20
Lo=EFc Minier <email address hidden>
Come, your destiny awaits!

[Carthik Sharma (carthik)]

Changing to confirmed, since the bug in the Gnome BTS is still active. Sorry if this seems like me spamming you. Let me know if it is :)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

No problem Carthik, thank you for the work you do!

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

This bug has been fix-released for Evolution 2.21.90 onward, on Hardy Heron.

If you need a fix for the bug in previous versions of Ubuntu, please follow the instructions for "How to request new packages" at [WWW] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports#request-new-packages