Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

102.2.0 on Linux: unified folder not working

  • 5 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by Piero

Piero
Piero
more options

I'm running 102.2.0 (64-bit) on Debian.

I use Thunderbird since 2014 and it was working fine since last year. Then it started to become slow and unresponsive, pushing my CPU to 100%. When this happens (frequently and especially at start up) I have to kill the process and restart the application hoping that it does not happen again.

Today I decided to update it to the latest version, 102.2.0 (64-bit). The result is even worse: it's still slow and unresponsive but in addition when I look the the unified folder I don't see any message. And I cannot go back to the previous version because the new version has modified the profile, without asking me permission to do so.

I use Thunderbird for work, and it is really painful. Not to mention the time I have to waste every time trying to understand what the problem is and how to fix it.

IMHO what we need is an application that is reasonably fast, secure and reliable. That's the basic. There is no point in having tons of features that most people don't ever use, with new features coming out at each release, but not having the basic. Sorry for the rant, but it's really a pain.

Anyone who has an idea about how to fix the unresponsiveness and the unified folder it would be really appreciated.

Thanks. Piero

I'm running 102.2.0 (64-bit) on Debian. I use Thunderbird since 2014 and it was working fine since last year. Then it started to become slow and unresponsive, pushing my CPU to 100%. When this happens (frequently and especially at start up) I have to kill the process and restart the application hoping that it does not happen again. Today I decided to update it to the latest version, 102.2.0 (64-bit). The result is even worse: it's still slow and unresponsive but in addition when I look the the unified folder I don't see any message. And I cannot go back to the previous version because the new version has modified the profile, without asking me permission to do so. I use Thunderbird for work, and it is really painful. Not to mention the time I have to waste every time trying to understand what the problem is and how to fix it. IMHO what we need is an application that is reasonably fast, secure and reliable. That's the basic. There is no point in having tons of features that most people don't ever use, with new features coming out at each release, but not having the basic. Sorry for the rant, but it's really a pain. Anyone who has an idea about how to fix the unresponsiveness and the unified folder it would be really appreciated. Thanks. Piero

Chosen solution

First, I'm a novice at Linux, but this works on Windows and maybe for you:

- for CPU load, try, in config editor, changing mail.db.idle_limit set to 30000000 That has been reported to reduce cpu usage.

For unified folders: - unset unified folders - exit thunderbird - in profile Mail folder, delete 'smart mailboxes' (or rename) - in profile, delete virtualfolders.dat (or rename) - restart thunderbird and set unified folders

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (5)

david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Chosen Solution

First, I'm a novice at Linux, but this works on Windows and maybe for you:

- for CPU load, try, in config editor, changing mail.db.idle_limit set to 30000000 That has been reported to reduce cpu usage.

For unified folders: - unset unified folders - exit thunderbird - in profile Mail folder, delete 'smart mailboxes' (or rename) - in profile, delete virtualfolders.dat (or rename) - restart thunderbird and set unified folders

Piero
Piero Question owner
more options

Hi David, thank you for the quick reply.

The unified folder suggestion works! I deleted those two files and I got the unified folder back again.

The CPU suggestion unfortunately not because it was already set to 30000000.

Anyway, half problem solved. Thank you very much.

david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

I'm glad for that. but be sure you counted the zeros. I think the default is 3000000.

Piero
Piero Question owner
more options

You're correct about the number, it seems that in the past this problem was caused by a missing zero. I'm sure the value I have is correct.

I also played around a bit with the mail.db.idle_limit, to see if something changes, but no luck. Increasing this value lets the database stay open for longer, when no activity is detected, but does not solve the high CPU consumption after start up (snapshot attached).

It seems to me that Thunderbird has become more resource intensive in these recent releases. After 10-15 minutes of high CPU load everything goes down to normal, but until then the application is lagging, unresponsive and hard to use.

It might also mean that I am handling too many mailboxes (around 20) with too many messages in some of them. I'll clean them up and see if something changes.

Thanks.

Piero
Piero Question owner
more options

Some final remarks:

The 100% CPU load at startup, during the first 10 minutes or so, is not new. The issue has been reported many times and it seems to affect mainly Thunderbird on Linux. For those who have the same problem, one of the most interesting thread is this:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1321864

Cleaning up my mailboxes, deleting all messages I can delete and compacting folders, did not solve the issue. I did not mention before, but just for the sake of completeness, I do not have any add-on installed.

However, as the subject of this question was "unified folder not working" and as that issue has been solved by David, I decided to close this question and mark it "solved". Thank you.