Thunderbird freezes on downloading mail

Bug #224105 reported by mschillhahn
4
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Mozilla Thunderbird
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
thunderbird (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: mozilla-thunderbird

version 2.0.0.12 (20080227)

Using with Hardy Heron, since the upgrade the entire system (except the system clock <g>) will lock up some of the times when Thunderbird tries to download mail from one of the servers. We check multiple servers for several accounts. Most of the time, we'll get the "It's not responding, do you want to stop it" box pop up, other times nothing short of a hard reset using the power button does the trick.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Apr 29 05:02:10 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
Package: mozilla-thunderbird 2.0.0.12+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: thunderbird
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-rt i686

Tags: apport-bug
Revision history for this message
mschillhahn (mschillhahn) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Joel Goguen (jgoguen) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? If this is still an issue, could you please answer the following questions:

Are the accounts you're checking all IMAP, all POP3, some other type, or a mixture?

Are the messages causing Thunderbird to freeze large?

Are any of your accounts using GMail?

Thanks in advance!

Changed in mozilla-thunderbird:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
mschillhahn (mschillhahn) wrote : Re: [Bug 224105] Re: Thunderbird freezes on downloading mail

Hi!

Doesn't happen often, but still does happen vary rarely (just so happens
it did yesterday <g>). All accounts are POP3, one is GMail. All use the
same SMTP outbound, the local ISPs.

What happens more often (but still rarely) is a total lock-up (leading
to a forced quit) when replying to a message. During the spell check
portion of the experience, it will just freeze when a replacement is
chosen. Doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to when it happens, and
I've never been able to duplicate any specific instance. The message can
be short or long, it doesn't seem to matter.

Joel Goguen wrote:
> Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
> Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been
> any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue
> for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? If this is still an
> issue, could you please answer the following questions:
>
> Are the accounts you're checking all IMAP, all POP3, some other type, or
> a mixture?
>
> Are the messages causing Thunderbird to freeze large?
>
> Are any of your accounts using GMail?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> ** Changed in: mozilla-thunderbird (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
>

Revision history for this message
Joel Goguen (jgoguen) wrote :

Are all the accounts on the same server (except for your GMail account obviously)? I may not have enough servers/accounts available to test this with properly, but with five accounts across two servers (one server, three accounts, is GMail) it takes almost no time at all, even with 40+ new messages to download.

Your spell check issue sounds very similar to this bug (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=469369) reported to Mozilla. Could you please read the description of that bug and see if it sounds similar to your issue? Let us know if it is or not, and also please let us know what language(s) this issue occurs with for you.

Thanks in advance.

Revision history for this message
mschillhahn (mschillhahn) wrote :

Three separate physical servers (two accounts go to virtual servers on
the same host box). It doesn't seem to be related to a "time out"
issue, the error trapping seems to handle that fine.

The spell check bug isn't quite the same as reported there. I'm using
the English dictionary, it will sometimes hang when I click on the
replace button (doesn't seem to care which word is being replaced). It
will not reproduce as hard as I've tried <g>. It takes a forced quit to
recover.

The frequency of both problems has decreased drastically since the
original report, but still occur once in a blue moon.

Other than that, I'm a real happy camper <g>.

Joel Goguen wrote:
> Are all the accounts on the same server (except for your GMail account
> obviously)? I may not have enough servers/accounts available to test
> this with properly, but with five accounts across two servers (one
> server, three accounts, is GMail) it takes almost no time at all, even
> with 40+ new messages to download.
>
> Your spell check issue sounds very similar to this bug
> (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=469369) reported to
> Mozilla. Could you please read the description of that bug and see if
> it sounds similar to your issue? Let us know if it is or not, and also
> please let us know what language(s) this issue occurs with for you.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>

Revision history for this message
In , Mkmelin+mozilla (mkmelin+mozilla) wrote :

STR:
1) Have an (imap) mail account with check for new mails on startup
2) Send yourself a mail
3) Close, and reopen thunderbird
4) Notice all the UI is frozen until the mail fetch is done

With no mail in the inbox, there is no freeze.

During the freeze you can't scroll the folder pane for instance, which is pretty annoying to say the least :(
I notice it the most because the UI freeze causes the close button on the new mail notification does not do anything. Or that's my take on it why the button isn't working.

Tried to pin it down a bit, the freeze issue isn't very new, apparently goes back to 2008-09-01 at least, but the notification used to come up only after the check and freeze was done so it wasn't as noticeable - this changed sometime recently. (Or maybe i notice it more since my server got slower to respond...)

The close button doesn't work most other times it notifies about new mails either, doesn't need to be on startup.

Revision history for this message
Joel Goguen (jgoguen) wrote :

Could you please check https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478765 and see if that is similar to your bug when downloading mail? Also, please open a new bug report on Launchpad about your spellcheck issue using the command 'ubuntu-bug -p thunderbird'. Open Terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and type in that command, push Enter, and it will work for a bit and bring you to a page to submit a new bug.

Also, could you please confirm your current Thunderbird version?

Thanks in advance!

Revision history for this message
In , John Vivirito (gnomefreak) wrote :

Can you please answer a few questions for us to better understand your issue.

1. Is this only in IMAP?
2. What version of Thunderbird?
3. Is this on Windows or Linux?
4. If Windows what version of Windows is this on?
5. What are system specs? Could this be your system low on memory/CPU?

Revision history for this message
In , Mkmelin+mozilla (mkmelin+mozilla) wrote :

Yes it appears to only be an issue with IMAP.
This is using the latest (comm-central) nightlies, on linux.

The notification has been working pretty nice for years, so system specs aren't an issue.

Revision history for this message
In , John Vivirito (gnomefreak) wrote :

Thanks for the update.

Revision history for this message
mschillhahn (mschillhahn) wrote : Re: [Bug 224105] Re: Thunderbird freezes on downloading mail

version 2.0.0.19 (20090105)

Looked at the downloading bug report, close.

I will put the spellcheck freeze together as a report.

Thanks!

mike schillhahn

Joel Goguen wrote:
> Could you please check
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478765 and see if that is
> similar to your bug when downloading mail? Also, please open a new bug
> report on Launchpad about your spellcheck issue using the command
> 'ubuntu-bug -p thunderbird'. Open Terminal (Applications -> Accessories
> -> Terminal) and type in that command, push Enter, and it will work for
> a bit and bring you to a page to submit a new bug.
>
> Also, could you please confirm your current Thunderbird version?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
>

Revision history for this message
Joel Goguen (jgoguen) wrote :

Confirming this based on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478765 which is reported to be close to this bug. I believe fixing that Mozilla bug will fix this issue as well.

Changed in mozilla-thunderbird:
status: Incomplete → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
John Vivirito (gnomefreak) wrote :

On 03/06/2009 08:39 AM, Joel Goguen wrote:
> Confirming this based on
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478765 which is reported to
> be close to this bug. I believe fixing that Mozilla bug will fix this
> issue as well.
>
> ** Changed in: thunderbird (Ubuntu)
> Sourcepackagename: mozilla-thunderbird => thunderbird
> Status: Incomplete => Confirmed
>
> ** Also affects: thunderbird via
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478765
> Importance: Unknown
> Status: Unknown
>
I'm not entirely sure this is same bug.
Reasons:
It happens with POP3 in this bug report. In upstream it happens with IMAP.
2. There is more to this bug than the upstream bug for example:
> Doesn't happen often, but still does happen vary rarely
> the entire system (except the system clock <g>) will lock up some of the times when Thunderbird tries to download mail from one of the servers

That is different from upstream bug report. Can you please confirm that
the above still applies.
Are you still using Hardy? do you see this with any other Ubuntu version?
What are system specs? Memory/CPU/etc... I'm disabling this upstream bug
report at this time. Can you please file or see if you can find another
bug report.
We shouldn't mark bugs to track bugs that are "similar" since there are
many variables that are considered.
I have asked a few questions on upstream bug report to compare with this
one.

Can you please test with Thunderbird-3.0 from Ubuntu-Mozilla-Daily Teams
PPA. Please do not add the repo to update since these are updated daily
there is a good chance it will break. The link follows:
https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ppa

--
Sincerely Yours,
    John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246

"How can i get lost, if i have no where to go"
    -- Metallica from Unforgiven III

Changed in thunderbird:
importance: Unknown → Undecided
status: Unknown → New
status: Confirmed → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Joel Goguen (jgoguen) wrote :

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 try to reproduce this with Thunderbird 3 as described earlier? Thanks in advance.

Revision history for this message
In , Vseerror (vseerror) wrote :

Magnus, do you still see this? Do you still see the problem with mail notification turned off?

I wonder if this combined with gloda indexing might cause a mega issue like bug 528499?
 (which may be a bad example, because in 528499 I haven't yet entered the imap pwd)

Revision history for this message
In , Mkmelin+mozilla (mkmelin+mozilla) wrote :

Ah, no, forgot to close this. IIRC this was bothering me for quite a while until i realized i had set the new mail notification to play some longish sound file, but had the sound off... There's a bug open about playing sounds locking up tb on linux though.

Revision history for this message
John David (johndavid-berryhillstudio) wrote :

I have exactly the same problem here in the uK. Even though I have reformatted the drive and installed Ubuntu 10.10 and the latest Thunderbird, it still happens. Not all the time but about 10% of the time when replacing a mis-spelled word. The spell check window can be moved around the screen with the mouse, and leaves a trail of cascading copies, but the only other thing you can do is force quit. It's a pain in the butt when you've just composed a long email, and you just have to start again. Any help would be appreciated. Regards, John David.

Revision history for this message
gf (gf-interlinks-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

Hello Mschillhahn,
Thank you for submitting this bug and reporting a problem with Thunderbird. You made this bug report in 2008 and there have been several versions of Ubuntu and Thunderbird since then.

Could you confirm that this is no longer a problem and that we can close the ticket?
If it is still a problem, are you still interested in finding a solution to this bug?
If you are, could you let us know and, in the current version, could you run the following (only once):
apport-collect 224105
and upload the updated logs and and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

Thank you again for helping make Ubuntu and Thunderbird better.
G

Changed in thunderbird:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Paul White (paulw2u) wrote :

Bug report did not expire due to bug watches
Upstream reports were closed in 2009
No activity on this report since 2009/2010
No reply to gf's email so closing by marking "Invalid"

Changed in thunderbird (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Invalid
Changed in thunderbird:
status: Incomplete → Invalid
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