xfce mailwatch error icon persists after connection is restored

[Forest]

xfce4-mailwatch-plugin shows a red error icon in the system tray when it cannot connect to the mail server, and keeps showing the error icon even after connectivity is restored and it has contacted the server. This is misleading (and irritating).

[Emitrax (emitrax)]

It's a stupid thing really, but I find it annoying.

When I check for updates and I have no connection the little red-road-sign comes up in the icon (which is gray), but when I update again with connection, the icon change color like expected if I have new emails, but the little red-road-sign doesn't disappear like I expect.

[Samuli Suominen (ssuominen)]

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=272953

[Rob86 (robuck)]

I also find this bug annoying. I hope it gets fixed. It seems like a minor thing to change, but I couldn't do it myself.

[Brian Tarricone (kelnos)]

Please don't spam with "me too" messages.

It's not at all easy to fix, otherwise I would've done it already.

[Brian Tarricone (kelnos)]

*** Bug 6012 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Brian Tarricone (kelnos)]

*** Bug 6155 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Aky (aky)]

actually i find it very easy to get rid of the 'red-road-sign' in mailwatcher's panel icon; depending on what you want you need.. either:
1) uncheck the 'Show log status in icon' checkmark from mailchecker's Properties/View Log window and the 'red-road-sign' won't show any longer on errors
or,
2) if you'd still like to get feedback on netowrk and/or mailserver issues just leave that checked and when the 'red-road-sign' shows open the same afore mentioned log window (Properties/View Log) and the 'red-road-sign' will poof

[Corentin Perard (corentin-perard)]

*** Bug 7072 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[tomasi02 (tomas-ivanek)]

i have the same issue here.
Can you increase priority?

[[e-mail] (dennygoot)]

This red minus shows up all the time, even though the app works and my net connection works..??

[Sucan (sucan)]

*** Bug 7697 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Sucan (sucan)]

*** Bug 10369 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Sucan (sucan)]

*** Bug 9093 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Sucan (sucan)]

*** Bug 9832 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Sucan (sucan)]

*** Bug 10065 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Sucan (sucan)]

Error/warning indicating is universal mechanism and network connection is not the only reason why the indicator icon is showed. This icon stays showed until the user views the log because errors/warning is something that user should be interested in. If he is not interested he can disable indicating in View Log window.

In one of the duplicate reports someone said that internet connection should be checked before indicating error. As far as I know there is not platform independent way how to check if network connection is available. And if it was we should have to know if network is not available because user wants it to be so or not (i.e. if he knows about it or not).

I think the easiest solution is to introduce two configurable threshold values. First for number of subsequent checks in which error/warning occurs and after which the indicator icon is displayed. Second for the number of subsequent checks in which no error/warning occurs and after which the pending error/warning event is cleared and indicator icon is hidden.

If someone has some objections let me know.

[Mihail (mikhail.lukin)]

I think that applet error indication should just say: "I do/don't know current state of all your mail boxes". So, if last check of all mail boxes was successful, error indication may be turned off. This is the way many monitoring systems work.

[Sucan (sucan)]

Mihail, thanks for the reply. Yes, it seems that hiding error icon after the first successful check would be sufficient.

But now I have realized that mailwatch plugin design imply that there is nothing as "check of all mailboxes" (all in the same time). Each mailbox has its own thread and is checked independently from others. Then we can say that error indication icon may be hidden after the last check from the sequence of successful checks of all mailboxes starting with the first mailbox. If I implement it like that, it would mean that if user has two mailboxes, one with checking interval 2 minutes and one with the 60 minute interval, in the worst case it will take almost 58 minutes (and 28 successful checks of 2-minute mailbox) until error icon disappears.

The better solution would be a "distributed" version of this mechanism. Error/warning should be cleared only by the next successful check of the mailbox which caused it. The error icon would be hidden only if there is no mailbox with error status and showed otherwise.

[Mihail (mikhail.lukin)]

Yes, that would be great! For example, after every mail check in a thread we could set mail box' "local status" and then check all those "local statuses" to see if any mail box is under error condition.

[Michael Kogan (michael-kogan)]

Thumbs up for this solution!

[Sucan (sucan)]

It will take some time while I get used to the implementation of logging functionality of the plugin (as a new maintainer) to be able to write patch of satisfactory quality. But I think that it will soon be in the master branch of the source tree and this bug closed once and for all.

[Sucan (sucan)]

After hours of source code reviewing I have realized that I don't know how to implement the fix without ugly hacks (and I don't have a time and motivation for a major redesign of the plugin). So this bug could be fixed if someone will provide a clean solution or some other maintainer will push some fix to the git repository.