Mail Notification Crashes Randomly

[Alper KANAT]

When it starts for the first time, it crashes after a while.. I understand it because bug-buddy appears everytime to make sure if I want to save the log of the crash or not... (so I paste the whole bugreport below..) There is also another issue.. If I start my session disconnected to internet somehow, mail-notification uses nearly %100 CPU or crash.. the %100 CPU usage happens for almost 1-2 years..

[Ivan Mirić (imiric)]

I can also attest to the high CPU usage, though I haven't been able to pin-point the exact cause.

Sometimes it can be fixed by forcing mail-notification to update, and other times it just keeps going on until I kill and restart it. I have 3 accounts: 1 POP, 1 IMAP and 1 Gmail.

I've been using the program for almost a year now and this has always been a constant issue, of such magnitude that it has forced me to go on a hunt for an alternative mail notifier on numerous occasions, but alas I haven't had much luck in finding something that similarly ties in with my workflow. I'm not sure if it's related, but I'm on a laptop (IBM T43) running Ubuntu (Feisty, and now Gutsy).

I can't believe the developers haven't bumped into this bug, as it pops up so many times it almost makes the program unusable.

[Jean-Yves Lefort (jylefort)]

This problem has been known for some time but I have never been able to reproduce it. I'm waiting for a fix or for detailed debugging information (see https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?18367).

[sabby7890 (tsalacinski)]

Mr. Alper KANAT:

Are you using GMail notification plugin? I've noticed, that it seems to be because of GMail.

After bug-buddy appears, application is still running flawlessly and it's checking for emails properly. Closing bug-buddy closes Mail-Notification, too.

My bug report shows, where the error is:

#13 0x004b8576 in g_strdup_vprintf () from /lib/libglib-2.0.so.0
No symbol table info available.
#14 0x0805dcaa in mn_mailbox_notice ()
No symbol table info available.
#15 0x0808328e in ___5_mn_gmail_mailbox_authenticated_check ()
No symbol table info available.
#16 0x08080e08 in mn_authenticated_mailbox_check_thread_cb ()
No symbol table info available.
#17 0x004c046f in ?? () from /lib/libglib-2.0.so.0
No symbol table info available.
#18 0x0041632f in start_thread () from /lib/libpthread.so.0
No symbol table info available.
#19 0x0035127e in clone () from /lib/libc.so.6
No symbol table info available.

Just take a look at the full bug report. I am using GMail as a normal POP3 mail account with SSL enabled - Mail Notification is not crashing anymore. It seems it has nothing to do with popups.

[fearpi (fearpi)]

I, too, have been having this issue but I have not been using the Gmail plugin. I have been using a Gmail account but using POP3 with SSL. As far as I can remember, I have only been having this issue with mail-notification 5.x.

[Marcin Wisnicki (mwisnicki)]

I think I have the same problem on FreeBSD7. Mail-notification segfaults right after fetching headers from gmail. It seems to be locale-related (everything works fine with LANG=C, normally I'm using pl_PL.UTF-8).

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
[Switching to Thread 0x8190f00 (LWP 100263)]
strlen () at /usr/src/lib/libc/i386/string/strlen.S:48
48 repne /* search! */
Current language: auto; currently asm
(gdb) bt
#0 strlen () at /usr/src/lib/libc/i386/string/strlen.S:48
#1 0x2910af32 in __vfprintf (fp=0xbf6fbdbc, fmt0=0x8217bb9 "nag\ufffd\202ówek pobrany pomy\ufffd\233lnie (%s bajtów)", ap=0xbf6fbebc "")
    at /usr/src/lib/libc/stdio/vfprintf.c:1052
#2 0x29065a5b in vasprintf (str=0xbf6fbe74, fmt=0x8217bb9 "nag\ufffd\202ówek pobrany pomy\ufffd\233lnie (%s bajtów)", ap=0xbf6fbeb8 "^\001")
    at /usr/src/lib/libc/stdio/vasprintf.c:59
#3 0x28cd965c in IA__g_vasprintf (string=0xbf6fbe74, format=0x8217bb9 "nag\ufffd\202ówek pobrany pomy\ufffd\233lnie (%s bajtów)", args=0xbf6fbeb8 "^\001")
    at gprintf.c:313
#4 0x28cbe596 in IA__g_strdup_vprintf (format=0x8217bb9 "nag\ufffd\202ówek pobrany pomy\ufffd\233lnie (%s bajtów)", args=0xbf6fbeb8 "^\001") at gstrfuncs.c:218
#5 0x08061e8e in mn_mailbox_notice (self=0x81c80c8, format=0x8217bb9 "nag\ufffd\202ówek pobrany pomy\ufffd\233lnie (%s bajtów)") at mn-mailbox.gob:1151
#6 0x0808bd16 in ___5_mn_gmail_mailbox_authenticated_check (mailbox=0x81c80c8) at mn-gmail-mailbox.gob:190
#7 0x08088c26 in mn_authenticated_mailbox_authenticated_check (self=0x81c80c8) at mn-authenticated-mailbox.c:644
#8 0x08088bc1 in mn_authenticated_mailbox_check_thread_cb (self=0x81c80c8) at mn-authenticated-mailbox.gob:227
#9 0x28cc9850 in g_thread_create_proxy (data=0x81e73a0) at gthread.c:635
#10 0x29030a69 in pthread_getprio () from /lib/libthr.so.3
#11 0x00000000 in ?? ()

(gdb) bt full -10
#2 0x29065a5b in vasprintf (str=0xbf6fbe74, fmt=0x8217bb9 "nag\ufffd\202ówek pobrany pomy\ufffd\233lnie (%s bajtów)", ap=0xbf6fbeb8 "^\001")
    at /usr/src/lib/libc/stdio/vasprintf.c:59
 ret = Variable "ret" is not available.
(gdb) bt full -9
#3 0x28cd965c in IA__g_vasprintf (string=0xbf6fbe74, format=0x8217bb9 "nag\ufffd\202ówek pobrany pomy\ufffd\233lnie (%s bajtów)", args=0xbf6fbeb8 "^\001")
    at gprintf.c:313
 len = 0
 __PRETTY_FUNCTION__ = "IA__g_vasprintf"
#4 0x28cbe596 in IA__g_strdup_vprintf (format=0x8217bb9 "nag\ufffd\202ówek pobrany pomy\ufffd\233lnie (%s bajtów)", args=0xbf6fbeb8 "^\001") at gstrfuncs.c:218
 string = (gchar *) 0x0
#5 0x08061e8e in mn_mailbox_notice (self=0x81c80c8, format=0x8217bb9 "nag\ufffd\202ówek pobrany pomy\ufffd\233lnie (%s bajtów)") at mn-mailbox.gob:1151
 _mn_strdup_vprintf_args = 0xbf6fbeb8 "^\001"
 message = 0x6 <Error reading address 0x6: Bad address>
#6 0x0808bd16 in ___5_mn_gmail_mailbox_authenticated_check (mailbox=0x81c80c8) at mn-gmail-mailbox.gob:190
 self = (Self *) 0x81c80c8
 atom_size = 350
 node = (xmlNode *) 0x8190f00
 result = GNOME_VFS_OK
 atom = 0x826a040 "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n<feed version=\"0.3\" xmlns=\"http://purl.org/atom/ns#\">\n<title>Gmail - Inbox for <email address hidden></title>\n<tagline>New messages in your Gm...

[Marcin Wisnicki (mwisnicki)]

OK there was a problem in polish translation where translated string changed %i to %s.
I'm surprised gettext doesn't verify this ;-(

Attached patch fixes this problem for me.

[Jean-Yves Lefort (jylefort)]

Thanks for spotting this issue.

[Alper KANAT (alperkanat)]

I'm Turkish by the way... Not Polish.... I wouldn't believe it if someone had said to me that it was a gettext problem but I've always suspected the Turkish character transitions like ı->I and i->İ etc..