Ubuntu
thunderbird package

thunderbird issue in Ubuntu only

Asked by izzy200198

Im wondering if anyone has encountered this issue with Thunderburd in Ubuntu. I use thunderbird in Windows XP and recently decided to install Thunderbird in Ubuntu 8.10 and copy my mail folders over. Everything seemed ok. But when i checked for new messages from gmail I noticed T-bird displayed the new message incorrectly. the sender name was correct. but the subject and body of the email were from a very old email. even if i delete that old email, the next time i check for a new message it will even display the contents of the now deleted email.

i tried reinstalling T-bird and creating a new inbox. then coping the old inbox as a copy of the inbox. then open T-bird and manually moving emails from "copy of inbox" to "inbox". what i noticed was the inbox worked when it was empty and again at 12,000 emails. but somewhere around 19,000 emails i encountered the same problem.

as far as i know T-bird doesnt have a maximum mailbox size or maximum number of emails it can store. And i dont have this issue at all on XP. So it appears to be a problem specific to running on Ubuntu. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

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izzy200198
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André Carezia (carezia) said : 		#1

This seems to be the effect of a corrupt mailbox. Thunderbird and other mail readers use the mbox format for storing messages in each folder:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Limits_-_Thunderbird#Folders_and_messages

The problem with mbox is that if only one message is corrupt, it can affect every other message in the same folder. A better solution is installing fetchmail and dovecot-imapd on the same machine running Thunderbird, configuring Dovecot for using Maildir format and configuring Thunderbird to access the folders via IMAP:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/mail-fetchmail.html
http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailLocation/Maildir
http://kb.mozillazine.org/IMAP

Maildir format uses one file per message, so a corrupt message just affects the message itself. It's a better format than mbox when there is a need for storing tens of thousands of messages in each mail folder.

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izzy200198 (izzy200198) said : 		#2

well ive played with it a little more. it doesnt appear to be a corrupt mailbox or a specific email message.

ive tried creating a new inbox and copying emails from another mailbox folder and everything works fine until i get to right around 19,000 emails in that inbox then boom. downloaded gmail messages come in all screwed up and they start downloading several times. i can take that same mailbox and place it on a windows machine with thunderbird have no problem at all.

I have alot of emails for work and i like having a pop account with a copy of all emails on my hard drive. sometimes its proven very useful to go back and find some information or attachment or some correspondence even from a year ago. and when i hit my gmail account limit i can freely delete emails off gmail's server because i know i have a copy on my hard drive.

if anyone has experienced this apparent limit on the number of messages in your thunderbird inbox please post.

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André Carezia (carezia) said : 		#3

What is the size of the mailbox right after you copy, as you mention, 19k messages?

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izzy200198 (izzy200198) said : 		#4

mailbox size is 2.2 gigs for the inbox. but i also have a sent folder which is 2.8 gigs.

looking at the messages more closely i also noticed the way it is displayed is not exactly giberish. if you selected view from the toolbar and view message source, that is exactly how new emails are coming in.

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izzy200198 (izzy200198) said : 		#5

i should say in some cases. cause it other cases the email is the source view of another email entirely.

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Nicholas A. Suppiah (t-boxmy) said : 		#6

izzy200198,

On Thunderbird 2.0.0.17 and Kubuntu 8.10, I faced a similiar problem but not with gmail account. Total email was at 12K. As far as Thunderbird goes, limit is only in the Linux filesystem and max levels of directory but correct me if its wrong.

I left the thunderbird's folder in download for offline use and set when synchronised, it will work offline. For what ever reason, 1 hour later still processing, but 2 hours later I came back and all is back to normal. Set back to online and it works as normal. In brief steps taken:

Right click the inbox->properties->Offline. Choose the "Download now", Checked "use this folder for offline use".
If that folder is already marked for offline, then:
Choose File->Offline->Download/Sync now...

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izzy200198 (izzy200198) said : 		#7

heres another thing i noticed. if i right click inbox...properties and select rebuild index. my messages will look normal again after that. meaning it will display correctly. but new messages still screwed up.

Nicholas, i tried following your steps. we are using the same version of t-bird. if i right click inbox, then properties i dont have an offline option. also if i click on file...offline the" dowloand/sych now" option is grayed out.

i take it from your steps above that after you did that,new email came in normally. is that correct?

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izzy200198 (izzy200198) said : 		#8

ok, i have confirmed there were some problematic emails which have now been eradicated. what i did was export all mail to eml using importexport tools in ubuntu. but what i noticed was that the folder i exported too contained a few less emails than what was in my inbox. i then created a test inbox and imported all the mail into that. i noticed the email count of my test inbox folder matched my inbox but i knew this could not be because the folder didnt contain that many emails. I figured it somehow got that number from the index file it created when it originally exported. so i right clicked on the test inbox and selected properties... rebuild index. when it was done its email count matched what i knew to be in the exported folder. i then deleted the contents of my original inbox and moved all these newly imported emails from the test folder into the inbox. i then started checking new emails. and bingo the problem was gone. all emails now come in fine. and i can continue to work exactly as i had before.