[pchelpers] Re: Problem Getting Thunderbird To Open Next Mail In List/ And Open To Inbox

Hi Scott

> EGlnl> In other words, the actual email file is usually intact; it's
> EGlnl> just the index file that tries to keep track of what parts to
> EGlnl> show and what parts not that gets huge or corrupted.
> 
> In that case, I'd say that there's a problem with the index handling.

I think the main problem is that Thunderbird was originally a program 
for geeks and that it still doesn't do some things automatically that 
geeks don't need to be reminded of, like compacting. Even now, when TB 
can compact automatically, this is not the default setting. Most older 
users of TB want to be in control of everything and are upset when 
something becomes automatic in a new version.

Since geeks regularly compact (and also make manual backups), apparently 
not enough of them are aware of an apparently serious bug in TB's 
indexing handling. Outlook Express is famous for slowing down and for 
even destroying mail when it's never compacted, but these serious 
problems don't appear until it's been used for many months or years. 
Thunderbird starts spluttering and producing small problems already 
after a a few days of major email deleting without compacting, but many 
people don't take this seriously until things get really bad. Even then, 
mail is only rarely lost in TB because its system of storing in the form 
of text files is such a well-established and robust technique. But TB 
does often require manual deletion of the index files if one doesn't 
make TB compact often enough or automatically.

> If it were a database application that I were working on, I'd have it
> automatically reindex when the program is terminated abnormally and
> the database is not in a stable state, and/or have it reindex
> automatically when a problem (inconsistency) is found.
> 
> Transactional systems use a structure which allows an update to stop
> at any point without corrupting the database; the database is always
> stable, unless the hard drive fails partway through writing a sector.
> Thus, corruption can still occur, but with difficulty.

Often when people experience TB index corruption, this is probably due 
to TB being interrupted by other programs due to lack of RAM and due to 
antivirus messing around in the email. I'll check to see if a bug report 
has been filed about making TB automatically compact if it detects a 
problem and about automatically detecting problems.

> EGlnl> What happens in The Bat when someone deletes a large part of
> EGlnl> their daily mail? Does the program compact automatically or do
> EGlnl> users have to do it manually? Does the program choke if a large
> EGlnl> part of the inbox is deleted and compaction doesn't take place
> EGlnl> either manually or automatically?
> 
> It has an option to compact automatically when exiting, but I have
> that turned off, since it takes a while on my system.
> 
> I used to see corruption every month or so, but in the more recent
> versions (approximately the last year), I haven't seen any corruption
> issues.

Are you saying that you compact manually or that it can large amounts of 
"deleted" but not physically removed mail? In other words can it handle 
huge index files with large numbers of "hidden" mail? And do you mean 
index corruption or actual mail corruption?




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