[VoIP] Off Topic? Major Software Bug Warning

[Steph Kerman]

Hi Folks,

I recently started using Thunderbird 1.5.0.9, migrating to it from 
Seamonkey, the current Mozilla mailer/browser suite descendant.

Yesterday I encountered a major bug which caused me to lose a huge 
amount of mail.  Fortunately, the mail that was lost was all in folders 
that were unchanged since a recent backup and I was able to restore 
them.  It's only a matter of luck that I had this backup.

Anyone who is using this version certainly needs to be aware of this 
problem.  The problem seems to occur when mail folders or mail folders 
containing other folders are dragged to another location to reorganize 
the folders. 

Thunderbird and its Mozilla ancestors use a practice I have always been 
uncomfortable with.  When a folder is moved, instead of simply moving it 
within the Windows file system, the most efficient and safest practice, 
it copies the file from the source location to the destination location 
and deletes the source file directly back into vacant disk space.  The 
file does not go into RECYLER.  Copying is of course required when 
moving individual messages between folders but not when moving entire 
folders. 

Herein lies the crux of the bug.  When folders are moved, the program is 
creating empty destination files.  The mail folder tree appears to 
contain the moved folders but when one attempts to open them, there is 
no displayable mail.  Inspecting the files in Windows Explorer, these 
files have a length of zero.  The data is not actually copied.

I've encountered this problem both when moving folders from INBOX to 
LOCAL FOLDERS and also within INBOX.

Previously I had observed that when I attempted to move folders 
containing folders contain folders below them (3 levels deep), the 
program would quit and not perform the move.  It was obvious in this 
case that the program was misbehaving in a major way.  When I attempted 
to move only the bottom levels from INBOX to LOCAL FOLDERS, I succeed.  
When folders are moved from INBOX to LOCAL FOLDERS the source folders 
are moved to TRASH.  The original folders appear to be uncorrupted in 
TRASH and as long as one does not delete them, they can be used to 
restore folders that get lost during a move to LOCAL FOLDERS.  But you 
have to understand the way Mozilla uses the Windows file system to 
restore any of this.

All these problems are occurring on a Win2K Pro system with the latest 
Service Pack, SP4 rollup, recently installed.  It is performing 
perfectly well in all other respects.  It has oodles of disk space, 
512MB of RAM and the maximum allowable size Windows swap file.  I don't 
know whether the problem occurs in other environments.  *BEWARE*

There are also a host of other annoying problems that I knew to exist in 
earlier Moz. versions and which no one has fixed.  Indeed I think I 
reported some of them back in the Netscape days, they were fixed in late 
4.x versions of NS and reappeared in the Mozilla packages.  These have 
to do with sensitivity to certain characters used in mail folder names.  
Although the program behaves bizarrely when some of these characters are 
used, it does nothing to prevent you from using them.  Examples I know 
of are the "period" or dot and the pound sign #.  If you try to name a 
folder "#1" or "no. 1" you are in for trouble.  "No 1" works okay.  But 
to me, that means "no one" not "number 1".  I'd be surprised if there 
were not other problem characters.

I will of course report all this to the Mozilla group.  I suspect they 
will tell me it's not really a problem with the program but that my mail 
files are corrupted or some other such lame thing.  That's what they 
have said in the past.

I'd be interested in hearing from other people who can reproduce these 
problems and also people who can't, together with info about their 
operating environments.  I can't promise prompt replies if there are 
many responses.

Good luck!
Steph