GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 243755
#mbox.ibex.index.data grows without limit
Last modified: 2011-01-07 17:56:17 UTC
Description of Problem: When I attempt to start evolution, the #mbox.ibex.index.data grows without limit and evolution huangs (it shows the first panel giving its version number). If I wait for the disk to fill it does seem to finally start. See the bottom for a note on related bugs. Evolution had been working reasonably well before this, and I have not updated it in a week or two. I'd be happy even to get a work-around. Steps to reproduce the problem: 1. start evolution 2. the folder that is causing problems is automatically populated by a filter from a relatively high volume mailing list. Here's what I currently see: epibiosun115-4:~/evolution/local/R$ls -al total 932805 drwx------ 2 ross 512 May 27 12:17 ./ -rw------- 1 ross 1024 May 27 12:50 .#mbox.ibex.index -rw------- 1 ross 947439224 May 27 12:54 .#mbox.ibex.index.data drwxr-xr-x 19 ross 512 May 22 17:31 ../ -rw-r--r-- 1 ross 93 May 1 15:04 folder-metadata.xml -rw------- 1 ross 95 May 27 11:39 local-metadata.xml -rw------- 1 ross 5815893 May 27 11:41 mbox -rw------- 1 ross 253726 May 27 11:41 mbox.ev-summary -rw------- 1 ross 344064 May 27 11:50 mbox.ibex.index -rw------- 1 ross 816816 May 27 11:41 mbox.ibex.index.data 3. Running killev and oaf-slay doesn't help. Deleting the two .# files doesn't help. The following series of steps preceded the problem's appearance: 1. With evolution running locally, I started up another copy remotely. Because of X redirect issues, the addition copies (several) displayed to the local, not remote monitor. 2. I shutdown evolution when I got to work. A day later 3. started another copy remotely, with proper display 4. ran killev 5. started copy remotely 6. killev For a couple of days, mail accumulated without evolution running. 7. arrived locally and started evolution. 8. it ran, though somewhat erratically (very slow, and reported errors trying to send email). 9. I tried shutting it down and restarting a few times. 10. I noticed my disk was full, mostly because my evolution directory was huge. I mv'd it to another disk, and created a symlink. 11 Attempted to restart evolution, and waited and waited. Noticed the particular files that were growing. 12. Tried killev; oaf-slay; and deleting my files. No help. 13. When the disk finally fills, the evolution GUI seems to come up. When I exit the program, the .# files are left in place (1.1 Gigabytes). Actual Results: Disk full. Evolution starts very slowly (e.g., 20 minutes) and runs sluggishly. Evolution can't work, because disk is full. Expected Results: Rapid start up and free disk space. The same thing I was seeing a week ago. How often does this happen? Every time I start up. Additional Information: My Ximian desktop is non-functional; I have been running Evolution from CDE. Related Bugs: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=236778 and http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=240755 appear to be roughly the same problem. However, I have a different version of evolution (1.2) and different operating environment (Solaris 2.8) so I thought I'd file this bug separately.
removing the mbox.ibex* files should help. (the .# files are only temporary files, not looked at at startup) this is a known bug, but we dont know the cause yet, and it happens very rarely :(
actually before you do that, could you attach them here? (tar/gzip both files) it might be the only clue to the bug :-/ thanks
I'll send you the files when I get to work. I take it from your response that it is safe to get rid of them, and that doing so might fix the problem--right? There might also be a glitch in the bug report form; I remember it was set to Solaris for the OS, but it went in as empty. I've reset it. I don't think the .#* files are completely ignored at startup. Each time I started up when those files were present I noticed they started growing immediately. They grew from their existing size, rather than being overwritten and growing from 0 bytes.
Created attachment 42478 [details] gzipped tar file of folder that was growing without limit, except mbox
Deleting the two regular ibex files (not the ones starting with .#) did seem to fix the problem. I put them in the previous attachment. If you have some way of flagging that there is a work-around for the bug, it would be good to do so.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 236778 ***
I have same problem here! See: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=628114