Description of problem: After I upgraded to Fedora 21 most of the configuration in Claws Mail was gone. I reconfigured it all, but since then I've been struggling to get some settings to stick, such as which mail folders should be shown as unread mail in the tray icon. Today I updated some packages, *not* including claws-mail, and rebooted, and now the configuration is mostly wiped out again. The mail accounts are still there, but all the plugins are gone, column widths are all crazy, the date format, fonts, whether to check for mail periodically, spell-check dictionaries and other settings are back to what I assume are the defaults. I will have to go looking for another email program yet again, because this is unusable. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): claws-mail-3.11.1-3.fc21.x86_64
Kindly visit the upstream website and tell the Claws Mail developers: http://www.claws-mail.org/ Visit the users@ mailing-list where the developers prefer to discuss problems before rushing off into bugzilla. But let me point out that your descriptions sounds very weird. And there are no details at all about your runtime environment. Have you done any trouble-shooting yet? What are the steps on how to reproduce the problem? What do you discover in your $HOME/.claws-mail folder when it happens? Save a backup of that folder (particularly the config files), reproduce the problem, draw conclusions. > I will have to go looking for another email program yet again, > because this is unusable. It's not a good idea to write something like that because people understand it as a threat, and that isn't helpful.
As should already be obvious from my description I don't know of a way to trigger the bug at will. Bugs that just happen sporadically for no apparent reason are very difficult for a user to troubleshoot. If I were familiar with the source I'd probably have an idea of where to start looking, but I'm not, so I don't.
Then you are just too lazy to collect some data. :-/ You are the first to report the problem at Fedora. We are aware of other Fedora users running Claws Mail for a long time. Apparently they are not affected. I've been using Claws Mail (and Sylpheed before that) for several years and have never encountered such an issue. I remember metadata handling issues from a few years ago (Preferences > Other > Miscellaneous > Metadata handling), but the default is "Safer" for a long time. Interesting and possibly relevant could be: - the desktop environment - the file system you use - your reboot/shutdown habits - do you quit Claws Mail before shutting down? [...] Look what I've just seen fly by on Claws Mail users@ list: http://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/users/2015-March/012622.html That user mentions: | I should add that I don't manually quit Claws-Mail at system shutdown. Perhaps there is some corner-case that isn't easy to trigger.
When I use claws mail I noticed it never saves options until you exit cleanly. And because it recentely was crashing quite often, I ofetn found myself w/o all the recent options I changed. I wanted to investigate it before reporting and then forgot. It seem quite easy to reproduce, just configure something then kill claws ... even minutes later.
That sounds different from "wiping out a previously saved configuration".
http://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/users/2015-March/012638.html
(In reply to Michael Schwendt (Fedora Packager Sponsors Group) from comment #3) > Then you are just too lazy to collect some data. :-/ If by "lazy" you mean "works 40 hours a week, must sleep, eat and do housework, and struggles in the little time that remains to solve the most disrupting computer problems faster than new problems appear". > Interesting and possibly relevant could be: > > - the desktop environment XFCE > - the file system you use ext4 > - your reboot/shutdown habits - do you quit Claws Mail before shutting down? Usually not. I tend to leave it running all the time, and let the logout procedure shut it down so that it will be started automatically after the reboot. > Look what I've just seen fly by on Claws Mail users@ list: > http://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/users/2015-March/012622.html That seems very similar to my greater problem, that large parts of the configuration get wiped out. Jérôme says that he can restore the configuration by renaming clawsrc.bak to clawsrc. When I first looked in ~/.claws-mail after the configuration had been wiped out, clawsrc contained a blank line followed by "[Plugins_GTK2]" and another blank line, and clawsrc.bak contained nothing but a single linefeed character, but by then I had already adjusted some column widths and clicked around in the Preferences window. clawsrc.backup contains lots of settings, but is over two years old. (In reply to Simo Sorce from comment #4) > When I use claws mail I noticed it never saves options until you exit > cleanly. > And because it recentely was crashing quite often, I ofetn found myself w/o > all the recent options I changed. That might explain my lesser problem, that recent configuration changes sometimes don't seem to stick. It hasn't been crashing all that often to me, but I probably won't notice if it crashes instead of shutting down cleanly when I log out. > It seem quite easy to reproduce, just configure something then kill claws > ... even minutes later. I can confirm that toggling the checkbox "Check for new mail on start-up" and clicking OK doesn't immediately update clawsrc or clawsrc.bak, but when I test shutting down Claws Mail it always saves clawsrc as clawsrc.bak and updates clawsrc. I have tested File → Exit, Ctrl-Q, Alt-F4, the × button, the TERM, INT and HUP signals, and XFCE's logout and reboot buttons. The QUIT signal made it dump core but that's probably normal. I think it should save settings immediately instead of when shutting down, but I haven't really reproduced any problem so far.
A response to comment 6 would have been great. To sum up, please quit Claws Mail when you want the preferences to be saved to disk, and as a work-around for this issue also quit Claws Mail before rebooting/shutting down. [...] Some of what you write in comment 7 sounds like different symptoms (e.g. a truncated clawsrc). And for the crashes you refer to, Fedora usually runs ABRT to intercept them and offer submitting reports in bugzilla. It could be that ABRT is not enabled in XFCE.
(In reply to Michael Schwendt (Fedora Packager Sponsors Group) from comment #8) > A response to comment 6 would have been great. Well, I haven't managed to confirm or disprove anything, but if it sometimes crashes between those two renamings, then that would be a plausible explanation for my greater problem. Copying instead of renaming in the first step will prevent a race condition only if the OS offers an atomic operation that replaces a file with another. Otherwise the second step becomes two steps – delete clawsrc and then rename clawsrc.tmp – and the race condition is back. I don't know whether there is such an atomic operation on all of the OSes where Claws Mail runs, but if not, then I suggest instead to automatically look for clawsrc.bak if clawsrc is missing. > And for the crashes you refer to, Fedora usually runs > ABRT to intercept them and offer submitting reports in bugzilla. It could be > that ABRT is not enabled in XFCE. ABRT seems to be nonfunctional on this box since I moved to Fedora 21, but it works in my other Fedora 21 system.
> Copying instead of renaming in the first step will prevent > a race condition only if the OS offers an atomic operation > that replaces a file with another. Which is _not_ the goal of copying clawsrc to clawsrc.bak. If Claws Mail gets killed or crashes while copying clawsrc to clawsrc.bak, you've lost anyway. Crashes are fatal. And getting killed while processing a shutdown handler is similar. However, if the copying succeeds, the current clawsrc would still be available, and the final atomic rename from clawsrc.tmp to clawsrc would not start with a missing clawsrc that has been renamed earlier.
It happened again: I rebooted, and when Claws Mail restarted the column widths were all wrong. (I haven't yet managed to replace Claws Mail entirely. Kmail was still unable to get attachments in signed messages right when I last checked.) As I now recognize the symptom with the column widths I didn't touch anything in the GUI but immediately listed the contents of ~/.claws-mail. It contained these files: -rw-------. 11446 19 jan 2013 clawsrc.backup -rw-------. 11061 27 jun 13.55 clawsrc.bak -rw-------. 11061 27 jun 13.55 clawsrc.tmp clawsrc was missing, and clawsrc.bak and clawsrc.tmp were identical. I closed Claws Mail, and then ~/.claws-mail contained these files: -rw-------. 9361 27 jun 15.08 clawsrc -rw-------. 11446 19 jan 2013 clawsrc.backup -rw-------. 11061 27 jun 13.55 clawsrc.bak I copied clawsrc.bak to clawsrc and started Claws Mail, and now the configuration is back to how it was. This seems to confirm that what I've called my greater problem happens when Claws Mail crashes or gets killed after renaming clawsrc to clawsrc.bak but before renaming clawsrc.tmp to clawsrc. It should be quite possible to look for clawsrc.bak or clawsrc.tmp if clawsrc is missing when the program starts, and do this recovery automatically.
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