evolution locks up

[Brandon Ingalls]

I upgraded to 12.10 the 19th, now every day randomly evolution will lock up and become unusable -- unable to close through the x button or pkill I have to get its pid and kill -9 it.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: evolution 3.6.0-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-17.28-generic 3.5.5
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Oct 22 08:04:06 2012
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/evolution
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evolution
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-10-19 (2 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Romano Giannetti (romano-giannetti)]

It has happened a couple of time to me to. I can stop evolution issuing

evolution --force-shutdown

which I suppose is the same than killing -9. What happens is that a network connection hangs (like a refresh), it became impossible to cancel (it says "(cancelling)" but never do it) and after that every other operations is stuck.

After restarting it works ok.

[Romano Giannetti (romano-giannetti)]

...and I'd like an "edit" for own comments, so that I could correct the horrible language of #3. Sorry.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Doesn't seem to be the same issue though; if operations stay in cancelling but the rest of the UI is usable, whereas the original reporter seems to indicate that none of the UI is responsive.

What is happening at the time? Are you doing specific actions in Evolution when the freeze happens, or doing it happen by itself when evolution is in the background?

[Brandon Ingalls (brandoningalls)]

When evolution starts to lock up I can click on other messages or folders but it will not load the contents of either. I think it may have something to do with the IMAP account I use for school. Then in one of the tasks I get "Unknown background task". When I then try to exit out of the program everything locks up and I have to kill it.

Next time it happens I will attach a picture.

[Brandon Ingalls (brandoningalls)]

01.png is when I first see that evolution is locked up.

[Brandon Ingalls (brandoningalls)]

02.png is how evolution will stay after I try to exit out of it.

[Romano Giannetti (romano-giannetti)]

It happens the same to me. Basically, the UI *seems* to be usable, but when you click nothing happens (at most you have another tab doing something that will never finish at the bottom). When you try to exit, the UI grays out, and then nothing works.

I have not tried to let evolution in that state all night, for example. Maybe is just something interlocking so that it's extremely slow...

Seems a lock problem. I have sometime a strange similar thing; one tab seems to stay forever saying "pinging server at (whatever)" and all is blocked. Fortunately that kind of thing *do* timeout after 10-20 seconds, and evolution resumes happily with just an error. Could this help to shed some light?

[Brandon Ingalls (brandoningalls)]

Well I will no longer be adding my input to this -- evolution is unusable for me so I am switching to Thunderbird sadly.

[Jared Norris (jarednorris)]

I know it's probably no consolation to you but I was experiencing the same issues and was concerned about the fact that it never seemed to sync data locally like it said it should. I tried all sorts of different hacks and attempts to get it working. The only thing that worked was purging evolution AND the purging the hard drive of all config and data files. Only then when I reinstalled did evolution function flawlessly. That being said it was a pain having to download multiple gigabytes of emails again from the imap server. It's not really a workaround but figured someone else might benefit from it if they were also at the end of their tether like I was with this issue.