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Large amount of message filters cause reset/repair folders

createdbyjurand
Making moves

Windows 10 updated as possible.
Latest Thunderbird updated as it comes.
Couple of accounts connected to pop3 and smtp mailboxes.
And I have hundreds of filters.
Each account has like 200-300 folders with filters to move new messages, set colours, etc.
Folders are set to remove messages older than 30-365 days.

Problem:
I started receiving errors that message cannot be moved to folder. And it is like over 50 errors each time I open Thunderbird. Pop-ups comes in and i am clicking on "ok" like non stop until all mail downloads. Messages that should go to folder where filter is set, drop to Inbox folder. Some folders are being reset/repair by Thunderbird I think. But that does not help. After downloads are finished, when I select Inbox and do "Run Filters on Folder" everything works fine and filters run exactly like they should.

When it started happening:
This year, I do not remember when exactly, more or less February.

When it is happening:
It is happening when large amount of emails comes in. When I did not open Thunderbird for couple of days. When Thunderbird is open and couple of emails comes in, everything works fine.

What I did to try to fix it:
I thought it was Bad sectors on my drive, so I did check, but everything was ok, but to make sure I moved mail folder to other drive that is 6 months new. That did not change anything. I read about those errors, so I did for every folder: [right mouse click on folder]/Properties/Repair Folder. That did not help. I thought that for some reason the problem is with conflict between retention policy of folder to delete messages older than 30 days for example and moving messages at the same time but I can't confirm this. I was hoping that Thunderbird will fix the issue with next updates but it is still happening, so I am writing to let you know about the issue. I suppose that there might be few people that like to organise messages like me deeply with lots of filters. My guess is Thunderbird is unable to process lots of filters at the same time and that causes the issue.

7 REPLIES 7

siffemcon
Familiar face

Try temporarily changing the 'Recover disk space' setting to Don't delete and see if that helps.

createdbyjurand
Making moves

I think it might, but that's the whole point of writing this BUG report, not to get workaround, but to fix the issue and keep having Thunderbird deleting old messages with spam, because the alternative is having couple GB of spam messages and removing them manually once in a while from 200 folders, and that does not fix anything, just wasting my time.

I can check if this helps for BUG report sake, but that does not fix the BUG.

createdbyjurand
Making moves

Anyway, when I leave Thunderbird open non stop. Even after a month, there is no error and all mail drops nicely to each folder and filters work fine. This BUG happens only when there is a lot of messages at once and load is heavy. My guess is, filters start to work as mail comes in, and because there is ~300-600 of messages each account, it lasts for about 30-90 seconds. Both message filters and retention policy start to work together when mail is still being pulled and still new messages are being added and processed, so there is folder write from removing old messages and from moving messages to folder, and when they collide there is write conflict to folder file and app throws error that folder is unwrite-able and instead puts messages to Inbox and sometimes does Repair Folder because it thinks it is damaged.

siffemcon
Familiar face

The proper place to file bugs is at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi/. If you do, please post the link to it here.

createdbyjurand
Making moves

This is the error I am getting. Hundreds of it.
ep.png

createdbyjurand
Making moves

ok, I will post BUG report there, thx.