Bug 148498

Summary: Disabling interval mail checking of an account causes loop of checks
Product: [Unmaintained] kmail Reporter: Al Muckart <silver>
Component: IMAPAssignee: kdepim bugs <kdepim-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED    
Severity: normal CC: bjoern, dima, dominik.tritscher, kollix, marcobrancalion, orivej
Priority: NOR Keywords: triaged
Version: 1.9.7   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: unspecified   
OS: FreeBSD   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments: Script session showing the terminal output described above.

Description Al Muckart 2007-08-04 09:42:46 UTC 
Version:           1.9.7 (using KDE 3.5.7, compiled sources)
Compiler:          gcc version 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305
OS:                FreeBSD (i386) release 6.2-STABLE

I am logging this as a crash rather than a bug because there is an eventual crash.

I have checked Bug 28623 and Bug 27848 both of which sound similar (but not identical) and are listed as being closed against older versions of kmail, but I am seeing this on version 1.9.7 using KDE 3.5.7.

I have an IMAP account pointing to a courier IMAP server. I disabled automatic mail checking because I am generating tcpdump logs trying to gather information on a different bug. Previously mail checking had been configured with a 5 minute check interval.

Intervail mail checking still happened and not only did it still happen, it got stuck in a loop of checks, immediately that one check finished another one started. I clicked the up arrow button to see the detailed progress and I could see it repeatedly looping through checks on the same folders over and over. Attempting to abort the checks did not work I had to quit kmail to stop it. 

This is repeatable on my install. When I did File > Quit the kmail process stuck around spawning kio_imap4 processes untill I killed the PID, only then (I think) did the kmail icon dissappear from my system tray but the main app window had gone.

When I restarted kmail after the first time it did this and then clicked on my IMAP inbox it started a check and then the application crashed. There was no drkonqui crash log either, the app just dissappeared - literally without a trace. Unfortunately despite having WANT_KDE_DEBUG=yes in my /etc/make.conf on FreeBSD it doesn't seem to have built with debugging symbols so I don't have a backtrace for you. I tried running it out of gdb the second time but it crashed instantly with the following output:


(gdb) run
Starting program: /usr/local/bin/kmail
warning: Unable to get location for thread creation breakpoint: generic error
[New LWP 100052]
ERROR: Communication problem with kmail, it probably crashed.

Program exited with code 0377.


It did this every time I tried to run it from gdb. It ran fine though from the command line. Was I doing something wrong with gdb?

I have attached a script session of the terminal output showing the repeated IMAP checks and the gdb output.

Thanks.
Comment 1 Al Muckart 2007-08-04 09:43:33 UTC 
Created attachment 21325 [details]
Script session showing the terminal output described above.
Comment 2 Philip Rodrigues 2007-08-05 19:23:13 UTC 
does "kmail --nofork" in gdb get you a better backtrace?
Comment 3 Thomas McGuire 2007-08-06 20:50:29 UTC 
Sounds like bug 122199 or bug 147178 to me.
Please try --nofork in gdb as Philip said.
Comment 4 Al Muckart 2007-08-07 12:13:28 UTC 
I will try and reproduce this with --nofork tomorrow night.
Comment 5 Al Muckart 2007-08-12 05:12:31 UTC 
I've run this with --nofork and I can reliably reproduce the infinite checking loop and the kmail & kio_imap processes hanging around even after ctrl-Q and the window and system tray icon have gone but I can't reproduce the crash on the subsequent startup, sorry.
Comment 6 Thomas McGuire 2007-08-12 12:58:06 UTC 
>I can't reproduce the crash on the subsequent startup, sorry. 
OK, changing severity to normal.
Comment 7 Thomas McGuire 2008-01-19 19:09:00 UTC 
*** Bug 155878 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 8 Thomas McGuire 2008-01-19 19:10:21 UTC 
Changing summary, as the this also happens to POP3 accounts according to the duplicate report.
Comment 9 Dominik Tritscher 2009-04-05 13:50:09 UTC 
I can confirm this issue testing with kmail 1.11.90 from trunk. I disabled the intervall checking on an imap account and now kmail is checking this account over and over again, but no crash.
Comment 10 Martin Koller 2009-08-29 11:49:55 UTC 
can not reproduce with POP3 on KDE 4.3.0. Changing to IMAP
Comment 11 Marco Brancalion 2009-12-23 12:02:59 UTC 
KMail
Version 1.12.2
With KDE 4.3.2 (KDE 4.3.2)

I confirm the infinite loop bug after changing "retrieve interval time" to "switched off".
I stopped the loop by re-setting some interval time > 0, and then again putting it off, and clicking "apply".
Comment 12 Björn Ruberg 2010-01-09 15:20:39 UTC 
I cannot reproduce this loop with dIMAP in KDE 4.3.4
Comment 13 Orivej Desh 2010-02-06 22:44:23 UTC 
Marco Brancalion (comment #11), thanks! This is the bug I've experienced all along KDE SC 4.4 RC 3 (with pop3, others not tested).
Comment 14 Laurent Montel 2015-04-12 09:57:49 UTC 
Thank you for taking the time to file a bug report.

KMail2 was released in 2011, and the entire code base went through significant changes. We are currently in the process of porting to Qt5 and KF5. It is unlikely that these bugs are still valid in KMail2.

We welcome you to try out KMail 2 with the KDE 4.14 release and give your feedback.