Communication with Exchange quietly hangs

[Jonas Stenberg]

Hi,

I use the Exchange MAPI plugin with Evolution. Sometimes it seems that the communication with the Exchange server just quietly goes away and Evolution is un-aware of new in-comming mails etc. When this happens it is also not possible to send email and when I try to shut down Evolution it just hangs and I have to kill the process explicitly. After re-starting Evolution everything works fine again.

Best regards
Jonas Stenberg

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: evolution 2.32.2-0ubuntu7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-10.46-generic-pae 2.6.38.7
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-10-generic-pae i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia wl
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Jul 29 10:47:05 2011
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/evolution
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=sv_SE.UTF-8
SourcePackage: evolution
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sean Voyce (sean-voyce-o)]

I'm not sure this is related, but I've found that evolution-addressbook-factory & evolution-calendar-factory quietly open more & more tcp connections to Exchange. On my machine the number of connections to the Exchange server starts around 14. When it gets to 81 or so things stop working. Killing off evolution doesn't (immediately) resolve the problem as the connections go to WAIT. I can use 'tcpkill' to clean them up, or reboot.

I've not yet determined exactly what actions cause more connections to be opened. Addressing an email (looking up names) would seem to be one candidate.

Perhaps Evolution forgets it already has a connection available? (evolution exchange MAPI)

[Sean Voyce (sean-voyce-o)]

It probably doesn't help that our Global Address Book has over 20,000 entries, but notice that e-addressbook-factory uses almost a whole core (CPU) while I am composing a reply to an email! The number of connections to Exchange jumps by 18 every time I click to reply to an email, but only goes down again by 12 - net increase of 6 for every email I reply to.

[Sean Voyce (sean-voyce-o)]

Interesting - the high cpu usage seems to have gone away for now. No idea what has changed.

e-addressbook still creates 18 connections to Exchange every time I reply to an email (or create a new one).
12 of these eventually time out (1-2 mins).

I've scripted up a wee monitor that warns me when the number of connections gets too high & will eventually force-shutdown evolution, wait for connections to drop then restart it for me.

[Jonas Stenberg (jonas-stenberg)]

My problem still persists though although it has become less frequent since I upgraded Ubuntu. I now run Ubuntu 12.04 and Evolution 3.2.2.

I am connected to the Exchange server via VPN and I can provoke this error by simply disconnecting the VPN connection and connecting again. Evolution fails to re-connect and it just hangs.

[codemonkey (codemonkey-interthingy)]

I have exactly the same issue as described by the OP.

However, I also find that upon initial connection (and sometimes on later reconnects) Evolution immediately claims that the connection fails and asks me to re-enter my password. I don't change the password (since it has not changed) but if I click "retry" a bunch of times it eventually connects and is okay (until it quietly drops the connecton again).

I have a work-around for getting Evolution to re-connect: click the "offline" button (buttom left), cancel the "sync" dialog (which can be done with Esc) and then click it again to go back online. You can also do this if sending an email failed (after getting reconnected click retry on the "send failed" dialog). Sometimes when I attempt to reconnect in this manner I have to hit retry a few times before it works. After reconnecting Evolution will check for new mail right away (and will find it). Thus, you can think of this procedure as the "check new mail" function. ;)

One other work-around: after reconnecting (as above) sometimes messages that I already deleted re-appear. Apparently the conection was lost before Evolution was able to sync the deletions. If I hit the send/receive button a couple times right after deleteing messages (with a fresh connection) this problem is usually averted.

Thanks,

~ray

[Linatux (sean-voyce)]

Now running Kubuntu 12.04 & Evolution 3.2.3 - mostly very good.
I did try 12.10 but Exchange configuration has changed & I was unable to set up a connection at all.

[Bernhard Denner (bernhard-denner-thalesgroup)]

I can confirm that also for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (evolution 3.10.4).

After some time (2-3 hours) the connection seems to be broken. After a restart of evolution sending/receiving mails works fine again.

[David H. Wilkins (dwilkins)]

This is most likely not an issue with Ubuntu - I'm a Fedora user and I have the same problem.

Many times hitting "Send / Receive" ends up with a dialog that never returns, after which I restart Evolution and it gets fast again.

The problem *seems* to also happen when changing networks or resuming from suspend, but I haven't done any tests to verify

[ianni67 (ianni67)]

The problem is still there, at least for me.
Ubuntu 14.04, fresh install.
From time to time evolution hangs with a "connecting" dialog and I have to kill -9 it.
It also happens consistently immediately after a suspend/resume.

[Paul Martin (ukrcamilio)]

I am still seeing this problem in 2018. It is a major problem for me, as I am missing emails after the connection quietly hangs. Is there any fix on the horizon?