Question

Blank email tabs following Thunderbird crash during close

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Last reply by Nikita

3 months ago

1/29/24, 4:36 AM

Thunderbird crashed during a normal close (https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/3c0242b0-1a55-4eba-9f02-4a7bc0240126) and since then when I open Thunderbird, tabs appear for the messages I had open at the time of the crash, but they are all blank, and the tabs themselves are all empty. It is as if they are place-holders that are then never populated. I've attached a screen shot showing some of these tabs, with the crash report tab open and displayed.

About 1-2 months ago I reindexed folders due to mail apparently being missing and this resulted in a huge number of messages that had previously been dealt with becoming marked as unread again.

Ideally I would like the blank tabs to be reinstated and to be able to carry on working on my email from where I left off, but if this is not possible, I need to be able to identify the emails that were open in the tabs to be able to pick up the pieces. This is crucially important as I operate multiple accounts and it would be impossible for me to re-establish state any other way, especially in view of the earlier problem with email becoming marked as unread again. That would condemn me to needing to re-open many thousands of email items to identify those that may need action.

I renamed global-messages-db.sqlite which has been recreated and rebuilt but nothing has changed. The rebuilt file is significantly smaller than the original and if this implies that there has been data loss, I would rather reinstate the original file, if it is safe to do so.

My best guess is that the tabs are defined within history.sqlite and I have made a copy of this file but superficially it appears to contain a lot more than just tabs and it has been updated since the crash.

The most recent change I made to my Thunderbird configuration before the crash was the addition of the British-English dictionary.

The next most recent change to my Thunderbird configuration was the addition of a Proton Mail account using Proton Mail Bridge. I am accessing this account on behalf of someone who has sustained serious injuries and is unable to access it themselves. If this added account or Proton Mail Bridge is implicated in the crash in any way, I would prefer to remove the account and the Bridge software.

Many thanks in advance for your help and guidance with this problem.

Nikita

Thunderbird crashed during a normal close (https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/3c0242b0-1a55-4eba-9f02-4a7bc0240126) and since then when I open Thunderbird, tabs appear for the messages I had open at the time of the crash, but they are all blank, and the tabs themselves are all empty. It is as if they are place-holders that are then never populated. I've attached a screen shot showing some of these tabs, with the crash report tab open and displayed. About 1-2 months ago I reindexed folders due to mail apparently being missing and this resulted in a huge number of messages that had previously been dealt with becoming marked as unread again. Ideally I would like the blank tabs to be reinstated and to be able to carry on working on my email from where I left off, but if this is not possible, I need to be able to identify the emails that were open in the tabs to be able to pick up the pieces. This is crucially important as I operate multiple accounts and it would be impossible for me to re-establish state any other way, especially in view of the earlier problem with email becoming marked as unread again. That would condemn me to needing to re-open many thousands of email items to identify those that may need action. I renamed global-messages-db.sqlite which has been recreated and rebuilt but nothing has changed. The rebuilt file is significantly smaller than the original and if this implies that there has been data loss, I would rather reinstate the original file, if it is safe to do so. My best guess is that the tabs are defined within history.sqlite and I have made a copy of this file but superficially it appears to contain a lot more than just tabs and it has been updated since the crash. The most recent change I made to my Thunderbird configuration before the crash was the addition of the British-English dictionary. The next most recent change to my Thunderbird configuration was the addition of a Proton Mail account using Proton Mail Bridge. I am accessing this account on behalf of someone who has sustained serious injuries and is unable to access it themselves. If this added account or Proton Mail Bridge is implicated in the crash in any way, I would prefer to remove the account and the Bridge software. Many thanks in advance for your help and guidance with this problem. Nikita

Attached screenshots

Chosen solution

I've finally found time to work this out for myself. Tabs are in session.json not history.sqlite. The file contains 86 null references which should have message URIs within the braces following "state": and there is a session.json.backup file, which, if it had been copied and preserved by the crash handler, would have allowed me to recover the state from the time of the crash. As soon as you restart Thunderturd, it gets overwritten.

That's 86 out of 100K+ emails that I now need to find and deal with. It is effectively an impossible task. I evidently made a bad bet with this email client. Given the impact of this data loss, it's time to reconsider.

👍 1

Answer 1 · 2024-01-29 04:36:32.290813

Wayne Mery

Moderator
Top 10 Contributor

1/29/24, 8:09 PM

The crash is associate with "empty trash" and "expunge inbox" enabled in Account Settings.

Answer 2 · 2024-01-29 04:36:32.290813

Nikita Question owner

1/30/24, 6:55 AM

Thank you Wayne. It's peculiar that caused a crash then, as I don't have "empty trash" or "expunge inbox" enabled in Account Settings for any account. I'm using IMAP for all of them and let the server take care of expiring items from trash.

I hope someone can shed some light on the consequence of the crash being my blank tabs.

Answer 3 · 2024-01-29 04:36:32.290813

Nikita Question owner

2/7/24, 2:04 PM

Chosen Solution

I've finally found time to work this out for myself. Tabs are in session.json not history.sqlite. The file contains 86 null references which should have message URIs within the braces following "state": and there is a session.json.backup file, which, if it had been copied and preserved by the crash handler, would have allowed me to recover the state from the time of the crash. As soon as you restart Thunderturd, it gets overwritten.

That's 86 out of 100K+ emails that I now need to find and deal with. It is effectively an impossible task. I evidently made a bad bet with this email client. Given the impact of this data loss, it's time to reconsider.

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