GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 610043
Evolution does not show From, Subject, or Date in the list window
Last modified: 2010-09-24 07:28:22 UTC
In the List window where all the messages are listed many have the FROM and SUBJECT fields blank and the DATE field is a "?". (See attached: evolution_exchange_empty_questionmark.png) In the Preview window all those fields are displayed with their entries intact.
Created attachment 153871 [details] example of bug
Originally reported here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/380678
Bug #451720 seems to have the same symptoms: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=451720 Empty "From", "Subject", and a Question Mark [?] under "Date" (From MS Exchange Server)
Thanks for a bug report. The 2.26 is really old, could you try with 2.30.0 or newer, please? Also, is this when using evolution-exchange (the OWA connector) or a new evolution-mapi when you are accessing your exchange server? It can be also seen in Edit->Preferences->Mail Accounts, the exchange account's protocol would be either "exchange" or "mapi" in the table, usually at the last column.
I'm seeing this with the Evolution version packaged with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS - Evolution 2.28.3, using the MAPI connector. The subject is displayed in the preview window but not in the message list. If I double click a message to open in a new window the window title does not pick up the subject. This doesn't appear to be consistent as a handful of messages do show subjects in the message list.
With respect of mapi, please try with 0.30.0 or later (evolution 2.30.0), as one of relevant changes was in bug #592057. Note this bug is filed against evolution-exchange, which is a different product and reason for my questions in comment #4.
Can anybody please confirm the reported issue with evolution 2.30.x or later ?
Closing this bug report as no further information has been provided. Please feel free to reopen the bug if the problem still occurs with a newer version of GNOME 2.30.2 or later, thanks.
Akhil, I am running GNOME 2.30.2 and am having the exact same issue as the reporter (komputes). Regarding Milan's question, my Evolution Preferences pane shows 'exchange' as the protocol. Is there any more information I can provide? One strange note: If I move a message with a ? From / Subject / Date to a local folder, the From / Subject / Date values are displayed correctly. Doesn't really help with mail that is intended to stay on the Exchange server, though. Thanks.
Is this reproducible always on your machine, please? I mean, it can happen that only newly downloaded messages are having this issue in your exchange account, but when you close evolution and run it again, then the messages are shown properly in the message list? If you can reproduce it, could you run evolution in valgrind and reproduce the issue, as it may show some problem with memory, please? You can run it like this: $ G_SLICE=always-malloc valgrind evolution &>evo.log It'll be slow, but when you'll see this, the best with newly downloaded message, (as it is possible the "?" is stored in the summary) then close evolution and attach here that evo.log text file. Be sure it'll not contain any private information, though valgrind logs usually doesn't contain any. Thanks in advance.
Milan Crha: ===== Is this reproducible always on your machine, please? I mean, it can happen that only newly downloaded messages are having this issue in your exchange account, but when you close evolution and run it again, then the messages are shown properly in the message list? ===== Milan, I'm not sure if I understand your question, so let me offer a few facts, and you can follow up if I haven't answered your question: 1.) Some e-mails have the aforementioned display bug, some don't. Opening and closing Evolution an arbitrary number of times makes no difference with respect to which e-mails do or don't have this display problem. 2.) If I select 'Auomatically synchronize account locally', that doesn't seem to affect whether or not new (or older) e-mails will have this display bug. 3.) If I go to ~/.evolution/mail/exchange and delete the ME@MYEXCHANGESERVER folder, the bug will still occur when the messages are re-downloaded. As near as I can tell, the exact same e-mails suffer from the display issue. 4.) I don't think I have ever seen a message originating from Thunderbird, webmail of your choice, etc., have this problem. This might just be a sampling issue, as my work is mostly a Windows shop and Outlook is everywhere. 5.) Double-clicking on an e-mail (one that has the display bug) to pop it up in its own window shows a correct parsing of all the fields. 6.) I can't discern any relevant differences between buggy and non-buggy messages with respect to message headers, message source, or character sets. 7.) Moving a buggy-looking message to a folder in 'On This Computer' (which I understand to be downloading and erasing it from the Exchange server [maybe you have to expunge to actually delete the messages?]; I'm not sure about that) 'cures' the message, and all the previously-affected fields are displayed correctly. I will try to produce a relevant valgrind log. The bug doesn't happen too often (I'm going to take a wild stab and say it affects maybe 5% of my messages), so it's not practical for me to wait around with valgrind open until it happens. I'll try wiping out my mail on disk again, starting up Evolution with valgrind going, and see if anything interesting comes up in the log when I re-download all the messages. Mike Sheffler
Created attachment 170297 [details] valgrind log
Thanks for the update. Looking into the valgrind log I do not see anything related, most of the issues are from Python, which evolution doesn't use much, the most for plugins. Thus it seems either as a logic issue with the summary fetching, or server didn't return these values when was asked. Could you remove your local mail cache for exchange account as before, and try to capture the communication between evolution and exchange server with this command, please? $ E2K_DEBUG=5 evolution &>evo.log Please note it's very chatty, and it prints to the log pretty everything, as it's a raw communication with the server, thus it's rather better to not share it publicly, so feel free to send it to me to my bugzilla email, and I'll look inside. To read it much easier, I would need some pointers what message is doing a trouble, in which folder and such. As it doesn't contain a subject, then I suppose it'll be better to know a subject from the previous and the next message, to better identify the offending one. In case you'll send it to me, please write the bug number in the subject, otherwise it would come to my "might be a junk" folder, and I would overlook it there. (Just to note, to capture the E2K_DEBUG log the evolution-exchange should be configured with this debugging enabled, and if it isn't then the captured log will be pretty empty. I hope your evolution-exchange has this turned on.)
I'm willing to give that a try. This is a work e-mail account, so I need to be quite careful about what is passed on. Let me see what is printed to the log and I'll decide whether or not I can send it. Mike Sheffler
I tried your suggestion, but the log is empty. Apparently, I do not have debugging symbols. I took a look in Synaptic (I'm running Ubuntu 10.04, by the way), and there are evolution-dbg and evolution-exchange-dbg packages that purport to have unstripped binaries. I installed them, but evolution still emits not messages when called as above. Looking at the evolution-exchange-dbg package contents, I see that it doesn't replace the 'normal' installation of evolution, so that's probably why nothing changed when I installed the -dbg packages. If anyone has an idea on how to fire up evolution using these new unstripped binaries, I'd be willing to try it. Mike Sheffler
those -dbg packages are used for debug symbols, like when getting backtraces in gdb. The E2K_DEBUG variable is somewhat different :) It seems they do not configure evolution-exchange with --enable-e2k-debug (I didn't myself too, but now I have it on).
I have build a evolution-exchange package for Lucid with --enable-e2k-debug. Mike, please install it from my PPA -- https://edge.launchpad.net/~hggdh2/+archive/evolution-tests --, and try again. Thank you,
Okay. I can't connect to my exchange server until Monday, though, so don't be waiting on the edge of your seat :) Mike Sheffler
I removed my evolution-exchange package and installed yours. I'm still not getting any output from E2K_DEBUG=5 evolution &>evo.log. I guess evolution itself needs to be thusly configured. Anybody else have any ideas?
Strange. This is only about evolution-exchange package. Maybe something didn't install/configured properly during build.