enigmail is useless on large email messages

[Rory McCann]

Someone tried to send me a large email message (about 22MB). We both have gpg set up, so regularly encrypt our emails. I'm using IMAP on my server. This large email was encrypted to me. However I can't access it at all using Thunderbird and enigmail. When I try to open it, I see nothing and there is an OpenPGP message at the top saying "Decryption incomplete; click Key icon", clicking on the key presents a popup saying "Error - IMAP message too large to decrypt/verify".

This makes Thunderbird/Enigmail completly unusable for large email messages.

[Rory McCann (rorymcc)]

Actually, to clarify, the email was 2MB, so enigmail is useless on 2MB emails, which is ridiculus.

Also, I found a work around. If you right click on the message and select 'Get Selected Message', thunderbird will download it for you. You can then open the email fine and engimail will decrypt it.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

confirming problem and workaround

This already happens for messages below 100KB. Sending a signed GPG key in the attachment already breaks this threshold.

[Kenneth Loafman (kenneth-loafman)]

That workaround does not work if 'get selected messages' is grayed out, i.e. the message is already fetched. I'm getting the same problem on a 31KB message that I sent when I try to go back and read it locally. If I save it as a file, it decrypts properly.

So, it is possible to send a message that you can't read later.

[Cornelius Sicker (ysis)]

Do you have the setting "Preferences > Advanced > Only download attachments when opened (IMAP only)" unset? I remember having similar error messages when using encryption on larger messages in conjunction with IMAP.
Please try turn this option off and see if this changes anything.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

I believe this works fine now in trusty. Anybody else still see this?

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

We'd like to figure out what's causing this bug for you, but we haven't heard back from you in a while. Could you please provide the requested information? Thanks!

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

marking as fixed, works fine for me now