Thunderbird lossing mail.

[Michael]

I'm running 1.5.0.8 in Linux and I've noticed a problem that seems
pretty serious. When a folder reaches the 4GB limit instead of just
refusing to move any more mail to that folder it's now wiping the folder
out and starting over. I had two folders disappear in this way. I also
had the INBOX just randomly disappear when downloading a large amount of
mail at once from my server so I wonder if it didn't also reach the 4GB
limit. I've never experienced this problem in the past. I'm not sure if
it's a new bug or if it might be tied to my new Core 2 Duo processor
which seems to be giving random programs issues.

I ran a test on the RAM, CPU, and HDD to look for hardware problems but
nothing has came up.

[David Bienvenu]

Michael,

Did you used to get a warning when you were close to the 4GB limit?
Something like:

"The folder Inbox is too large to add messages to. Try deleting old mail and compacting the folder."

We put up that warning if you're within 1 MB of 4GB, and try to download
mail or copy mail into a folder. Do you receive more than 1MB of mail at
a time?

I don't know why a folder would be wiped out, but I don't know why a
Core 2 Duo processor would cause a problem like this, though we have
seen some weird problems with multi-processor machines.

- David

[Bill Northlich]

I lost all my pop mail a couple of days ago. (right after an
auto-upgrade). I really have no idea of the scenario. There was a lot
of stuff in the inbox; not sure it got up to 4 gb but maybe. Poof...
all gone. Can't find any secret temporary folders holding the email. I
never thought I'd have to be careful or my pop mail would disappear.
foo. Luckily I was in the process of archiving all mail in there from
google, other accounts, etc. I'd file a bug but all I know is "lost all
mail".

Also, before the loss, I had created an account with same everything but
the name of the account. (except It would not let me have the same smtp
server.)

I'm on a Mac OS X core duo 2 gb mem.
From about box: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US;
rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

Grumble.
/b

[Michael]

I used to get that warning message but this time I did not receive it.
Instead the mail just vanished. I checked the available hdd space and I
see that it did in fact open up about 8GB of space when those two
folders reset.

In this case I was emptying old accounts so I probably receieved around
20GB of mail that day and as each transfer does around 200-300 messages
I'd guess that each transfer is around 100MB. It all goes into the INBOX
and then is filtered out into folders. It's not unusual for me to
receive a 1000+ messages a day and often I have attachments in messages
I receive so I'm going to guess that I often transfer more than 1MB of
files at a time.

I know that it isn't unusual for me to have to fetchmail my mail from
the server if I've been gone a couple days because some of my POP/IMAP
srvers won't transfer my build-up mail to Thunderbird if there is more
than a gig or so waiting. (fetchmail works leading me to think this is a
Thunderbird issue. Is there a way to only download 50 messages at a time
with Thunderbird?)

I don't know that it's the dual core processor but thought it worth
mentioning since so many apps, mostly Windows apps, have issues since I
upgraded the processor.

Any suggestions on how I can be sure not to wipe out any more of my
mail? Thanks.

[Michael]

I used to get that warning message but this time I did not receive it.
Instead the mail just vanished. I checked the available hdd space and I
see that it did in fact open up about 8GB of space when those two
folders reset.

In this case I was emptying old accounts so I probably receieved around
20GB of mail that day and as each transfer does around 200-300 messages
I'd guess that each transfer is around 100MB. It all goes into the INBOX
and then is filtered out into folders. It's not unusual for me to
receive a 1000+ messages a day and often I have attachments in messages
I receive so I'm going to guess that I often transfer more than 1MB of
files at a time.

I know that it isn't unusual for me to have to fetchmail my mail from
the server if I've been gone a couple days because some of my POP/IMAP
srvers won't transfer my build-up mail to Thunderbird if there is more
than a gig or so waiting. (fetchmail works leading me to think this is a
Thunderbird issue. Is there a way to only download 50 messages at a time
with Thunderbird?)

I don't know that it's the dual core processor but thought it worth
mentioning since so many apps, mostly Windows apps, have issues since I
upgraded the processor.

Any suggestions on how I can be sure not to wipe out any more of my
mail? Thanks.

> Michael,

[Michael McGlothlin]

[David Bienvenu]

I believe this is the same issue that's being tracked in
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=361730

- David