Flurry of password requests make evolution unusable with down email server

[Shaun Crampton]

Binary package hint: evolution

Sometimes my ISP's email server is down/misconfigured for whatever reason. When this happens evolution becomes unusable, popping up the password dialog every 5 seconds. I'd like an option that allows me to say, "my password is correct, the server is broken right now" rather than pointlessly having to retype my password over and over. Alternatively, the approach used in newer versions of GAIM could be used, where a prominent (red) button is displayed in the main window indicating a disconnection (but no dialog is popped up), clicking the button brings up an appropriate prompt. Assuming that my email server is going to be live 100% of the time is just not possible (especially as I have multiple accounts).

Cheers,

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

Confirmed. I personally see this happening every so often with gmail. Hitting OK will bring again the dialog (or pop up a new warning). Hitting CANCEL will allow Evolution to gracefully recover from whatever error, and enable it to log-in. I have seen it on POP only.

I will try to run Evolution with CAMEL_DEBUG=all, in the hope that I will eventually trap one such error.

[Shaun Crampton (fasaxc)]

My problem was with an IMAP server (although I've had it with gmail as well). I don't think evolution is broken per-se, I think the server was genuinely (temporarily) rejecting my password for whatever reason but 'cancel' or 'OK' both brought back the dialog after a couple of seconds. I'd like a 'quit bugging me' option (that takes account of the fact that my email is checked automatically every minute or two and does something smart -- like the 'disconnected' buttons in GAIM). Ideally, an unobtrusive warning that mail hasn't been checked in a while, combined with serving the offline cached version of my inbox.

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

I do not think a continuing server failure is always needed... all the times this happened to me, I kept getting a failure until I canceled all dialogs -- and, in extreme cases, restarted Evolution. Also, most of the times this would happen with one single account -- the same, all the times.

For me it looks more like Evolution is (sometimes) losing status somewhere. I am keeping with running with camel debug set, in the hope I will trap one such occurrence, and have something more tangible to look at in the code.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Do you still get that problem?

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

On Tue, 2007-03-06 at 17:11 +0000, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> Do you still get that problem?
>

I get it every two or three days, most of the times with gmail. Once
Evolution fails to open a session to gmail it keeps on sending out the
same pop-up (error connecting etc, retry or cancel) until I hit cancel.

One I hit cancel, I can do a new "Send/Receive" and it works.

First time I had it I kept clicking on retry until my finger hurt, then
I clicked on cancel. Every other time I just click on cancel.

I tried setting a trace on Evolution but, unfortunately, it did not
happen in the first 4 days (and created an enormous file :-). I will
keep on trying -- but today I forgot my laptop's power supply at home,
so...

Anyway, the point the reported wanted to get thru is that repeating the
same error pop-up over and over is counter productive. I agree with him.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Is this still an issue with Gutsy?

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

Will check on it next time it happens. Right now I was just cancelling the error dialog.

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

OK, it happened again with me. I get a dialog with the usual "retry or cancel" options. While I hit "retry", I am presented with the same dialog again (for the same account). Evo only recovers when I cancel the dialog -- I then can immediately hit send/receive, and it works.

I did save a backtrace, and will try to go thru it -- or, next time, I will debug it to zero in the correct point in the code.

This is Evo 2.11.92/E-D-S 1.11.92. Since 2.12/1.12 is being uploaded right now, I will also try it there.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

To be forwarded upstream by someone getting the bug, thanks.

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

Pedro, I cannot replicate this anymore, since 2.12. Every so often I get the already know modal dialog errors, but that is it. Unless the original reporter, or somebody else, confirms this on 2.12, I think we could close as magically solved from 2.11.92 to 2.12.

[Mateusz Holysz (mateusz-holysz)]

I would like to confirm described behaviour in gutsy relase. Just after lounching evolution software asks countlessly to insert password. Canceling request helps. It is no problem to catch mail from server. Incomfortable is to cencel questions about password all rhe time I lounch evolution.

Regards

Mateusz Hołysz

[superjan (jan-bockaert)]

I can confirm this bug (?) When i launch evolution, i get an error box asking for my password. Entering the password and hitting ok, produces the same error box. Hitting cancel, and then send & receive mail, works without a problem.

I'm also using gmail.

[superjan (jan-bockaert)]

oh, i'm using gmail on gutsy with evolution 2.12.0 and it only happens when you ask evo to check automatically for new mail, right after you start evolution. Do'nt close this bug yet.

[Martin Prunières (keyserling)]

Same thing here. And i don't use gmail but multiple (french) mail providers.

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

can someone confirm this bug on Hardy (currently Evo 2.22.00)?

[Shaun Crampton (fasaxc)]

Sorry, I switched to using gMail as my main mail client so I've not been using evolution for a while.

[sc00ter (gosdenj)]

Don't know about Hardy, but I can confirm this behaviour occurs with Yahoo accounts too (Running Gutsy / Evolution 2.12.0). But seems to only only when Evolution is first started. Click on Cancel for the POP password request, stops the prompt all the time Evolution is kept open. Stopping and restarting Evolution will invoke the repeating password prompt (regardless on the number of times you try an enter the correct password) until you click on cancel.

I'll see if this still occurs once I've upgraded to Hardy, but I won't be doing this until after April 2008.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!.

[Josh Adams (knewter)]

I can't figure out from reading the bug why it was closed. I don't see where information that was requested wasn't provided. At any rate, this shouldn't be a low importance bug - for people it happens to, and I know it's at least 80% of the people I personally know who run ubuntu, it's a major annoyance. It's not only a problem with evolution - thunderbird will do the same thing for the same IMAP providers. Still, the fact that GMail users (along with many other IMAP services) cannot reliably use evolution for their mail is of greater importance than I see given to it.

What information do you need? This bug's plagued me for 2+ years and makes the linux desktop experience suck much more than it needs to. I'm open source all the way, but it's embarrassing for people to see this on my otherwise awesome machines.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

what is required is to have somebody having the issue sending it upstream, I never had the issue on any box in several year of evolution use and don't know anybody who did, if 80% of the people you know have this bug either you guys configure evolution in a specific way or you should consider using a decent email provider rather

[Alecz20 (alexguzu)]

I think my problem is also related to this bug.
If I leave evolution running all the time, when i get come from work I get the message 'Server unexpectedly disconnected: Unknown error" and asks for password.

Evolution is set to remember the password, but I still have to re-enter it.

I use gmail IMAP, and evloution 2.12.1 on Gutsy.

I still don't know how to reproduce it exactly, but it happens everyday if I leave the client running.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

thanks for the report, this needs to be forwarded upstream by someone having the issue, for forwarding instructions please have a look to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME; leaving this as incomplete until that, thanks in advance.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could somebody having the issue open the bugzilla bug?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

We are closing this bug report as it lacks the information, described in the previous comments, we need to investigate the problem further. However, please reopen it if you can give us the missing information and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future.

[pc345 (randomjoe)]

I can confirm this bug still exists, in Evolution 2.22.3.1 running on KDE 3.5.10 (basically Kubuntu 8.04)

There are some important points which the other bug reporters didnt mention. Heres my setup (and the accounts are checked in this order)...

2 gmail POP accounts
2 virgin.net POP accounts

Evolution will occasionally act as though gmail authentication has failed. I dont know whether this is really a fault on GMails servers, or a bug in Evolution, but I've never had this problem with any other email client using the same setup of accounts, and same frequency of checking

There is a definite bug in Evolution though, in that whenever gmail authentication appears to fail, both of my Virgin.net accounts start prompting for a password too. At this point even though the passwords entered are correct, the virgin.net password prompts will repeatedly appear until Cancel is clicked.

As with the other users, at this point if I click Send and Receive, all 4 email accounts authenticate correctly, which is why I dont think its a problem with GMail servers at all.

Crucially, this only ever happens when the email accounts are being checked automatically (ie, every 5 minutes.).
I have never had this problem after manually clicking Send / Receive

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

reopening, and marking Triaged. I had opened a bug upstream, but did not remember about this one here... so I am reopening.

What happens: on unspecified circumstances Evo receives an unexpected response from the mail server. At this point it loses the gnome-keyring password, and starts prompting for it.

On some occasions, this can percolate to other accounts, creating the error described here. I will add the upstream bug watch.

LAST TESTED RELEASE:
Evolution/E-D-S trunk 2.25.4 (not yet available on Ubuntu).

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

I am adding some debug code to my copy of trunk to see if I can zero in the causes. Do not expect results any time soon. Whatever I find will be added to the upstream bug, so I suggest others having this issue to check & comment there.

[gigglehurtz (dannyw6b)]

I'm seeing the same problem with Evolution, but not in Ubuntu - I'm using openSUSE 11.1 (x64). It seems to me that the connection to my email at Bellsouth (4 accounts) times-out, and Evolution assumes that the password is incorrect. Canceling and restarting Evolution does not help, it just prompts me for the password for each account when it restarts.

I upgraded from version 10.x fairly recently, and I never saw this until the upgrade, although auto-checking for email on Bellsouth would occasionally time-out. I would have to cancel, but I never had to re-enter my password(s). I didn't upgrade my version of Evolution until the OS upgrade. I am now on version 2.24.1.1. I can't tell you what version I used in openSUSE 10.

I found this thread because re-entering passwords is a real pain and I was hoping to find a fix, or at least find a way to configure Evolution to keep the passwords.

[gray (info-graydesigns)]

Hi

I am running 9.10 Ubuntu and have the same issue - tho I have side-stepped the need to remember the passwords by accessing seahorse, selecting evolution application and ensuring that evolution has read-only access in seahorse.

When a server wobbles I get a request for evolution to access seahorse, which I deny.

Then the password dialogue pops up, with the correct password, which I close with the "X" rather than any dialogue buttons. When I hit send/receive again evolution works fine once more.

This happens at least once a day. But at least I don't need to remember the passwords this way.

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

I have closed the upstream bug Resolved/Obsolete -- I cannot duplicate on current Evo 2.32. If anyone here can, please update.

[phxphun1 (phxphun1)]

It's Baaaaaaaack! Along with 12.10 Quantal came a new version of Evolution. While I've noticed a couple fixes/improvements, it is now even more unstable than it had been, and this repeated prompting for password makes it virtually unusable.

If anyone is still watching this in spite of it having been expired, perhaps it can be re-opened (or a new bug report created? let me know). Here is some more info that may or may not be pertinent:

   I use Evolution for a number of email accounts on several different servers, all POP/SMTP.

   Among my accounts are TWO Yahoo Mail accounts.

   This problem seems to only affect ONE of my two Yahoo accounts, and none of the others.

   Sometimes once this has happened, it eventually gets a "TCP connection refused by peer" error, followed by spontaneous and sudden closure of Evolution upon next attempted mail fetch cycle.

By now any sane person would probably have changed email clients, but Evolution has one feature I've not seen in another client: the ability to call a shell script as a signature; I use this in conjunction with fortune-mod to generate random taglines.

(speaking of signatures, that's become somewhat messed up in the latest version, but that's fodder for another bug report)

[Jörg Frings-Fürst (jff-de)]

change status to invalid ( see gnome-bugs)