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Bug 442098 - Folder list shows I have new Exchange mail, but it doesn't appear in the summary
Folder list shows I have new Exchange mail, but it doesn't appear in the summary
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: Evolution Exchange
Classification: Deprecated
Component: Connector
2.10.x
Other All
: Normal normal
: 2.11
Assigned To: Connector Maintainer
Ximian Connector QA
: 429375 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2007-05-29 15:40 UTC by Paul Smith
Modified: 2009-10-27 05:28 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: 2.17/2.18



Description Paul Smith 2007-05-29 15:40:58 UTC
Please describe the problem:
A few weeks ago my Ubuntu 7.04 system crashed due to a power outage.  Ever since then, Evo has had a strange behavior which is extremely frustrating.  I have multiple accounts in Evo: two POP accounts and an Exchange account.  When I "Send/Receive", the new mail in the POP accounts is downloaded, the folders on the left side are updated and the ones with new mail turn bold and have the number of new mails next to them in parenthesis, just as you'd expect.  If you click on the folder then in the summary window you see the new messages, in bold (as they're unread).  It all works fine.

But, most of the time when I get new mail in the Exchange account, the Inbox folder goes bold and the number of new messages appears in parens, but when I click on that folder the new messages DO NOT appear in the summary window!  All my previously read messages are there and I can click around and see them all, but the new ones aren't there.  I can change the sort criteria, use the arrow keys, etc. but nothing will make them show up.

I have to exit Evolution and restart it, then I can see the new messages.  But the next time I get new mail it will probably happen again.  This is a serious pain because my POP passwords are not remembered across Evo restarts and I have to re-enter them.

I've tried: stopping/starting Evo including with --force-shutdown; logging out and back in; rebooting; deleting my Exchange account in Evo and re-creating it.  None of these things helped.

The only thing I haven't done is rename my ~/.evolution directory and recreate it, because that would be a gigantic pain in the *ss.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Get new mail in my exchange account
2. Click on my Exchange Inbox folder


Actual results:
I can't read the new mail messages

Expected results:
I see my new mail messages in the summary and I can read them.

Does this happen every time?
Almost every time.  Every once in a while the new messages do appear.  I can't quite figure out what's different; maybe if I leave the folder selected, or I have it visible (rather than on another workspace), or something.

Other information:
Launchpad bug: I filed it here first but no one is doing anything with it:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution-exchange/+bug/114934
Comment 1 Paul Smith 2007-05-29 21:37:52 UTC
I should add something: I read mail in my Exchange account both at work and at home (via a VPN).  They are two different systems (but both run Ubuntu 7.04) with two different installations of Evo but connected to the same Exchange server/account.

My work instance of Evo does NOT exhibit this behavior: there, new mail appears in the folder view and when I click on the folder I can see the new messages in the summary.

So, in case there was any question, it must be something to do with my local Evo install rather than something odd on the Exchange server.
Comment 2 Veerapuram Varadhan 2007-06-22 10:10:16 UTC
(In reply to comment #1)
> I should add something: I read mail in my Exchange account both at work and at
> home (via a VPN).  They are two different systems (but both run Ubuntu 7.04)
> with two different installations of Evo but connected to the same Exchange
> server/account.
> 
> My work instance of Evo does NOT exhibit this behavior: there, new mail appears
> in the folder view and when I click on the folder I can see the new messages in
> the summary.
> 
> So, in case there was any question, it must be something to do with my local
> Evo install rather than something odd on the Exchange server.
> 
Can you start evolution from terminal?  If so, 

1) open two-terminals
2) In one terminal, export E2K_DEBUG variable and start evolution-exchange-storage  (should be under /usr/lib/evolution directory)
3) In the second terminal, start evolution.

Send me E2K_DEBUG log of Evolution-exchange, when the mails don't appear but the count increases.  For more information on E2K_DEBUG traces, see http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/bugs.shtml .
Comment 3 Paul Smith 2007-07-05 14:51:32 UTC
I've tried this a few times but nothing interesting is generated.  It's tricky because I haven't been able to figure out how to reproduce this problem reliably.

However, this morning I think I may have realized what MIGHT be the trigger.  On my work system (where I don't see this problem) I only have one email account configured: my exchange account.

On my home system (where I do see this problem) I have three email accounts: two different POP accounts (one that uses authenticated POP and one plain POP), plus exchange.

If I start Evo, it automatically connects to Exchange and gets my mail.  Obviously the POP accounts are not retrieved unless I click Send / Receive.  It appears to me that as long as I never download those POP accounts, then new mail is detected properly in my exchange account.  As soon as I click Send / Receive to download the POP accounts, then I see this bug.  Note it's not Send/Receive itself, because I can click that on my work system and not see this bug.  I'm not sure whether it's necessary to actually download anything via POP to trigger the bug.

I only had a few minutes to test my theory this morning before I had to leave for work, and in brief tests it did hold up, but I'll try it again tonight and see if I can pin it down more precisely.
Comment 4 Paul Smith 2007-07-06 08:10:30 UTC
OK, I have more details on this.  My suspicion above was not correct: invoking Send/Receive, with or without any messages to download from other accounts, doesn't have anything to do with it.

The problem can be triggered by VISITING MY LOCAL INBOX FOLDER.

The scenario where the problem is reproducible is this: I start Evolution and the selected folder is my Exchange account's Inbox folder.  As long as I leave it there, as soon as new Exchange mail is received I get notified about it and I can see it in the summary, I can select it, read it, delete it, etc.  I've tried visiting a few other local folders (that I created) other than the local Inbox folder and they didn't cause the bug either, but I haven't tried all of them.

As soon as I select the Inbox folder for the local system (where my POP accounts drop mail, etc.), then immediately the behavior of the Exchange account changes: now I no longer get notified automatically when new mail is received in my Exchange account.  Instead I have to click the Send/Receive button to see new mail.  When I do that, the above behavior occurs: I see the number of new emails in parentheses next to the Exchange Inbox in the folder list, but there are no new messages appearing in the summary, and I can't select, read, or delete these new messages.  All I can do is restart Evolution, then it works again until I select the local Inbox folder again.

It might do this on my work system as well; I don't ever visit the local Inbox folder there because there's never anything in it.  But, I'll try it tomorrow.

I'll also try to enable some debugging and attach it, although when I've done this in the past nothing interesting was printed.
Comment 5 Paul Smith 2007-09-18 15:43:22 UTC
I've tried many things, including upgrading to the latest SVN sources for libsoup, gtkhtml, e-d-s, evo, evo-exchange, and evo-webcal.  I constantly run Evo with all debugging enabled, core dumping enabled, in a separate directory for each invocation to be sure I can capture things.

I've tried looking at the logs etc. right after this happens and again after exiting, and again when restarting (since once it happens it stays there).

There is nothing useful or interesting in the log files.

This continues to happen to me, although it's not QUITE as simple to reproduce with SVN as it was in 2.10.  It no longer seems to happen every time I visit my local inbox, but it still happens fairly often.  I believe it still happens when I visit my local account junk folder.

I've also had it happen on my work system, when I set Evo to be offline at night before I go home (by clicking the offline icon in the lower left corner), then the next morning when I come back in I click it again to go back online.  Now I can see that I have some new email in my summary, but it does not show up in the inbox.

I'm willing to do anything you need to help fix this: I already build Evo and parts myself from SVN so I can add debugging messages, run Evo under the debugger and set breakpoints, or do anything else you need, as long as someone gives me some insight on what to do and where to look.
Comment 6 Paul Smith 2007-10-03 01:42:00 UTC
I think you can reproduce this pretty reliably by changing to offline mode, then back to online mode.  When I set Evo on my work system to offline mode, then go home and access my Exchange account from my home system, then come back to work the next day and set Evo on my work system back to online mode, I get this behavior every time: new mail shows up in the folder hierarchy panel but nothing appears in the summary.  I have to restart Evo to see them again.

Also, my calendar alerts stop working; the only way to re-enable them is to exit Evo AND kill e-d-s.
Comment 7 Paul Smith 2007-11-19 01:59:31 UTC
Is anyone looking at this?  Can anyone else reproduce it?  It seems to ALWAYS happen to me, even in the latest SVN Evo as of yesterday (17 Nov 2007).

All I have to do is visit my local Junk folder; as soon as I do that, I can see new email for my Exchange Inbox folder announced in the folder list window BUT it never appears in the summary if I select that folder.  I have to exit Evo and restart it (I don't have to use --force-shutdown) before I can read that new mail.

Anyone?
Comment 8 Paul Smith 2007-11-19 02:10:32 UTC
I guess I should add that I also have an IMAP account configured in this instance of Evo, and it DOESN'T impact my IMAP account at all.  That is, I can visit any folder in my IMAP account and that doesn't cause my Exchange account summary to go "deaf" to new mail; and when I visit my local Junk folder I can still see all the new email that arrives in my IMAP Inbox folder.

It seems to be a very specific interaction between the local Junk folder and the Exchange Inbox folder.
Comment 9 Wiliam Murray 2007-11-19 06:51:53 UTC
Yes, I see this. It is annoying indeed. I don't even have a complex setup  - just the exchange OWA access. I had not worked out that the junk folder was responsible,  but I can confirm that 'sometimes' the inbox fails to display new mail while agreeing they are there, and a restart seems required.
  
Comment 10 Veerapuram Varadhan 2007-11-19 11:16:31 UTC
Can you guys throw some light on the version of connector since you experience this bug?  As Paul mentioned above, we were not able to reproduce it to debug and see what was going wrong.  This version info will let us analyze our commits for any possible regression.
Comment 11 Paul Smith 2007-11-19 14:08:11 UTC
I've been building my own versions of libsoup, libgtkhtml, e-d-s, Evo, evo-exchange, and evo-webcal since mid-summer 2007 sometime and this problem has been persistent.  So, I started with 2.10.1 as provided with Ubuntu 7.04, then I built 2.11.1 through 2.11.5, then 2.12.0, 2.12.1, 2.12.2, and now I'm running 2.21.1 from SVN HEAD as of this past Saturday.

All versions exhibit the same problem.
Comment 12 Wiliam Murray 2007-11-20 13:02:22 UTC
I have fedora 8:
beagle-evolution-0.2.18-1.fc8
evolution-exchange-2.12.1-1.fc8
evolution-sharp-0.14.0.1-1.fc8
evolution-webcal-2.12.0-1.fc8
evolution-2.12.1-3.fc8
libopensync-plugin-evolution2-0.22-2.fc8
evolution-data-server-1.12.1-2.fc8

It may be worth noting that the account was used by a hand compiled evo for a while.
 
Comment 14 Nik Lam 2007-11-28 10:22:44 UTC
I cannot reliably reproduce it, although it usually (but not always) seems to follow a networking glitch. E.g. I connect to the exchange server via a VPN. If the vpn session drops out while evo is trying to scan a folder, that folder may become affected.

I've been able to rectify folders individually by quitting evo and deleting the specific folder. When I start it up again, the contents of the folder are then visible again.
Comment 15 Peter Robinson 2007-12-04 14:39:25 UTC
I'm seeing this consistently in Fedora 8 (details below) and colleagues are seeing the same issues in Ubuntu 7.10.

I see it reproduced consistently (usually once or twice a day) without any network glitches at all.

evolution-data-server-1.12.2-1.fc8
evolution-2.12.2-1.fc8
evolution-webcal-2.12.0-1.fc8
evolution-data-server-devel-1.12.2-1.fc8
evolution-help-2.12.2-1.fc8
evolution-exchange-2.12.2-1.fc8
Comment 16 Bharath Acharya 2008-06-07 05:19:58 UTC
http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/evolution-exchange?view=revision&revision=1627 Exact same scenario fixed. If you have network glitches or Evolution goes Offline, switching back to Online will only keep refreshing the Folder list, but no messages would be displayed. Any stub related operation would fail. 

Paul, can you confirm this one? Reproducing it is very simple. Just switch between Offline and Online and you would notice it happening. TIA
Comment 17 Bharath Acharya 2008-06-07 05:21:44 UTC
*** Bug 429375 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 18 Paul Smith 2008-06-07 12:21:17 UTC
I can confirm that following your instructions (going offline, then back online) causes the behavior described here: new messages appear in the folder list but I can't see them in the summary.  I wasn't going offline/online (I've always had weird problems with that) but it's quite possible there were Exchange or network glitches.  Since we have moved our offices it seems like I don't see this one hardly at all anymore, so it may well have had to do with that (we took the opportunity to reconfigure the network and Exchange server).

Seems like a good bug to fix in any event!
Comment 19 Akhil Laddha 2009-07-29 13:30:38 UTC
Works fine for me in 2.27.5 

Could you please confirm if this bug is still happening at your end ? Please try in 2.24.x / 2.26.x and report back, thanks. 
Comment 20 Wiliam Murray 2009-07-29 14:19:27 UTC
Hi Akhil,
       I was running 2.26.2 in FC11 on the 20th of July and 
only seeing 1/4 of my email. I have moved to 2.27 and it seems 
to be fixed.
               Bill
Comment 21 Peter Robinson 2009-07-29 14:51:30 UTC
I'm still seeing the issue on occasion on 2.26.x on Fedora 11. One day I'll probably just compile up 2.27.x for F11 and use that.
Comment 22 Akhil Laddha 2009-07-30 03:44:28 UTC
Bug 581908 fix should help here. 
I will keep the bug open till stable 2.28.0 release comes out and wait to get views from others. Thanks Wiliam for your update.
Comment 23 Akhil Laddha 2009-10-27 05:28:03 UTC
Thanks for taking the time to report this bug; however, closing due to lack of
response of the reporter, sorry. if you still see this issue with a current
release of evolution (2.28.x or later), please reopen. thanks in advance.