GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 777042
[NNTP] Offline access not working when server service unreachable
Last modified: 2017-06-21 08:40:55 UTC
Created attachment 343149 [details] Evolution NNTP Offline screenshot Evolution has a feature mentioned, for NNTP News Servers, that it can store messages locally for offline operation. The text is, "Copy folder content locally for offline operation". And it is a check box. Even after checking the box, NNTP messages cannot be access when offline. It complains that it cannot access the NNTP server. Now I think the problem may lie with how evolution decides when to "Download all messages for offline operation". During automatic checks, Evolution does not seem to be downloading the messages for offline usage. It only seems to be doing so when I explicitly set Evolution to Offline mode. Then, it asks if I want to "Synchronize" folders marked for offline use. Ideally, on every check, Evolution should synchronize the folders marked for offline use. Because, lets assume our wifi got disconnected. And then Evolution gets offline. At that time, Evolution has no way to synchronize its offline folders. I hope I've been able to explain the problem. Please ask me any other details you may want. The machine is: Debian Sid/Unstable Evolution: 3.22.3 GNOME: 3.22 Remote NNTP Server: leafnode
Created attachment 343151 [details] evo online status I think there are 2 problems with Evolution here. 1. Evolution should synchronize content for offline usage during check mail. Or it should have an option to include offline synchronization during check mail. 2. Evolution should synchronize its network status with network manager. WHen in airplane mode, Evolution is still shown as online. Please see attached screenshot.
Thanks for a bug report. The way the offline works is as expected: https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/mail-working-offline.html.en The idea is that you set the folder to be copied for offline operations, then you force the download for offline in that folder and since then only newly received messages are downloaded for the offline usage. It's good for performance reasons as well. The question about synchronize for offline when you go to offline manually is there just to try a bit more. It's not needed to do so each Send/Receive. With respect of the airplane mode, the Evolution fully relies on the GNetworkManager, if it provides inaccurate information, then the Evolution uses inaccurate information as well. There are provided multiple implementations. The 3.22.x has a setting for which implementation to use, in Edit->Preferences->Network Preferences, thus when one would not work as expected in certain setup, then it can be switched to another by the user, without a need to use environment variables for the override.
Hello Milan, Thank you for your quick response. So, as I understand it, Evolution's behavior is more like how MS Outlook is/used to be. In that case, sorry I didn't investigate more before filing the bug report. Previously, having used Thunderbird, and Kmail, I expected Evolution to behave likewise. Just a minor question, when you say ".... since then only newly received messages are downloaded for the offline usage", you mean it'll download, for offline usage, only the messages whose headers are already downloaded ? And that, a week later, the same steps would be required to offline download the new messages in that week. Correct ? Would it be acceptable to have the requested behavior (of synchronizing offline marked folders) made available through an advanced settings? Or maybe, a dconf registry entry ?
(In reply to Ritesh Raj Sarraf from comment #3) > sorry I didn't investigate more before filing the bug report. No problem at all. > Just a minor question, when you say ".... since then only newly received > messages are downloaded for the offline usage", you mean it'll download, for > offline usage, only the messages whose headers are already downloaded ? No. Since then, any new messages recognized on the server are downloaded for offline use automatically. That may answer all the other questions you had too.
Created attachment 349456 [details] inaccessible message (In reply to Milan Crha from comment #2) > Thanks for a bug report. The way the offline works is as expected: > https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/mail-working-offline.html.en > The idea is that you set the folder to be copied for offline operations, > then you force the download for offline in that folder and since then only > newly received messages are downloaded for the offline usage. It's good for > performance reasons as well. The question about synchronize for offline when > you go to offline manually is there just to try a bit more. It's not needed > to do so each Send/Receive. > Hello Milan, As I understand, "set the folder to be copied for offline operations" is: * Right click each nntp folder * Click Properties * Check box "Copy folder content locally for offline operation" is enabled. * Repeat the steps for all nntp folder needed for offline operation. The above steps do not work fully. Fox example, even after selected, if later the nntp server goes inaccessible, previously seen messages are still unavailable. As you mentioned, "File" => "Download messages for offline usage" is just an additional instruction to try a bit more. Irrespective of it, old messages should still be available, even if the server goes down. But that is not the case, as I show in the attached screenshot. I was wondering if we could reopen this bug as mark the below items as Feature Request. * Add an option in Dconf registry, to explicitly download messages for offline usage, where the folder has been marked as such. This way, for most normal users, performance issues (if any) can be avoided, while at the same time provide a (hidden) option for power users. If the above bullet point is to accepted as a valid Feature Request, it would solve a behavioral bug in Evolution's Offline message access. I'll pictorially prove that in the next attachment. But in this attachment, you can see that the message is inaccessible.
Created attachment 349457 [details] accessible message In this screenshot, you can see that the very same message, is accessible. Please note that since yesterday, my nntp server is still offline. So this exercise proves that the message was cached by evolution, but was not displayed until the user explicitly instructed Evolution to get into Offline Mode. This is an odd workflow, in my opinion. Users wouldn't always remember to explicitly switch to Offline Mode, "File" => "Work offline" or "File" => "Download messages for Offline Mode". So I'm not very confident if this behavior is a bug or should be an extended feature request. Because the message was there in Evolution's cache. It is just the odd way in which Evolution considers displaying the message, when offline.
The other use cases where it doesn't work well is: Scenario 1 * Using Evo at work. NNTP working fine * Suspend Laptop. Do not switch Evo to "Work offline" * At home, now you cannot work well in offline mode, because in step 2, you did not explicitly choose "Work Offline" before suspend. Scenario 2 * You are at a coffee shop * Something went wrong and you rebooted you computer. * Now open fresh instance of Evolution * NNTP Offline won't work. Because it expect it to be set explicitly to "Work Offline" mode.
Thanks for the testing. This makes it a slightly different issue than what I thought initially, thus I'm reopening this bug report.
This is partly NNTP issue and partly not. I made a change which makes it work, even it can get annoying soon, because many operations on a folder results in an error message, due to the evolution itself not being offline, nether the NNTP store, but I do not want to set NNTP store as offline, because it won't recognize when the server gets online (unless online/offline change of the evolution or re-starting evolution). Created commit cbc6714 in eds master (3.25.1+) Created commit d1c08e1 in eds gnome-3-24 (3.24.2+)
*** Bug 349787 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***