Inbox grows without limit

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Thunderbird
dcarrera
Posts: 14
Joined: March 13th, 2004, 2:42 pm

Inbox grows without limit

Post by dcarrera »

Hello all,

I've been checking the file size of the Inbox files:

~/.thunderbird/.../Mail/.../Inbox
~/.thunderbird/.../Mail/.../Inbox.msf

These files keep growing in size, to a level that doesn't match the size of the emails inside it. In particular, moving all emails to another doesn't decrease the size of the Inbox. It's as if none of the emails had been moved. This only happens with this folder.

I wanted to ask here before reporting this as a bug.

Does anyone know where Tbird stores the data for the bayesian junkmail fiters? In particular, can someone confirm that this data is *not* sotred in the Inbox?

Thanks.

Cheers,
Daniel Carrera.
sboulema
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Joined: May 20th, 2003, 12:34 am
Location: Amstelveen, The Netherlands

Post by sboulema »

File-.Compact Folders
old Neil Parks
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Re: Inbox grows without limit

Post by old Neil Parks »

dcarrera wrote:Does anyone know where Tbird stores the data for the bayesian junkmail fiters? In particular, can someone confirm that this data is *not* sotred in the Inbox?


That's correct--it is not stored in the inbox. Whenever you mark a msg as junk the information is added to the file training.dat .
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Doomday
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Post by Doomday »

You can also enable the option: compact folders when it will save over ... kb. You can find it by going to file => offline => offline settings. I really don't understand why it isn't enabled by default. Last time I had a mailbox with 8 mails in it. It did toke 100 MB diskspace. After compacting it, it only toke 2 MB.
nodomain
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Joined: May 12th, 2004, 4:47 pm

Post by nodomain »

I guess searching DID pay off as this answers my query. I was wondering, myself, when this will be fixed. Seems to me that there's no logical reason for the file size to be so huge even after emails are deleted. I get about 10,000 a day, so I have to keep deleting the whole file every time it gets to 2GB. This is because Tbird just stops downloading mail when I get to 2GB. Thanks, sboulema for providing the answer.
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Selim
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Joined: July 6th, 2004, 6:11 am
Location: Germany

Post by Selim »

Just noticed a few days ago how big my TB-profile is...
I did not even thought about to compact them... LOL!
Thanks to this post!

*bump*
Last edited by Selim on July 13th, 2004, 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
got a big TB-profile? -> File -> Compact Folders;
mailto-links not working? try this, if using XP: Control Panel, Add/Remove, Set Program Access;
my favourite theme: Noia
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hansen
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Location: denmark

Post by hansen »

it'll speed up thunderbird a lot, if you're on a slow machine...

http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?t ... ng_Folders

*bump* :)
kmawds
Posts: 7
Joined: February 22nd, 2005, 3:08 am

Post by kmawds »

I was compacting my sent and inbox but didn't realize that every email that goes into the trash and then gets deleted also causes a massive file for the Trash Folder! adding the /prefetch:1 to the shortcut speeds things up a bit also but it still needs to be faster displaying emails and deleting. I have now turned on the compact option to compact all folders at once. Good tip! thx
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abbafan1972
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Post by abbafan1972 »

Well, my compact option never works properly and always seems to stick saying "compacting inbox". I usually go in and delete the .msf files and this rectifies it. But the next time I go to compact folder I have to do the same thing all over again!
Apparently I'm not allowed coloured text in my signature. This is 2012 and not 2001 you know!
kmawds
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Joined: February 22nd, 2005, 3:08 am

Post by kmawds »

Major speed boost - hit F8 to remove the preview pane - seems to have speeded up deleting and moving etc.
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Freee!!
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Post by Freee!! »

kmawds wrote:Major speed boost - hit F8 to remove the preview pane - seems to have speeded up deleting and moving etc.

It may not only be a speed boost, but also a nice security boost. I don't know how Thunderbird really handles previews, but the preview was enough to launch most viruses under Outlook and Outlook Express.
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tanstaafl
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Post by tanstaafl »

The preview pane is not an issue if you set "view->message body as->plain text". A script/virus can't do any damage unless its executed/interpreted and "view->message body as->plain text" doesn't call any display helpers regardless of whats in the message body (unless you click on a link or an attachment).

I use the "HTML!" button (from the buttons! extension) to toggle the setting if I want to view a HTML message as HTML after taking a quick look at the message (as plain text).
joshlitt
Posts: 13
Joined: September 21st, 2004, 12:07 pm

Post by joshlitt »

I am having problems with mailboxes not completing compaction. I recently enabled downloading all messages on my IMAP inbox, which is large (175MB), and compaction almost never complete. The result of this is that the INBOX file continues to grow, even more than if I had never compacted it at all. In short order (like a couple of days) it will be 1.5GB. I think there is a race between compacting and retrieving new messages or other operations. If the compaction ever fails to complete (which is quite easy to trigger doing almost anything in the inbox while compacting), it appears things are spooged from that point forward, and compaction will never complete again. Instead, the mailbox grows, and one accumulates nstmp-* files.

So, am I the only one seeing this because most people are smart enough not to keep 175MB in their inbox? Is this my laziness penalty?
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Freee!!
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Post by Freee!! »

I suggest you start working off-line for one or two hours and move everything away from you Inbox (subfolders under "Read" in "Local Folders" is my standard). When your Inbox is empty, close Thunderbird, locate the Inbox-file and delete that together with Inbox.msf. Create a new empty Inbox-file and start Thunderbird again. At this point you can tell Thunderbird (if necessary) that you want to work on-line again. In the future, keep your Inbox empty, saves lots of trouble.

A backup before you start is recommended.
joshlitt
Posts: 13
Joined: September 21st, 2004, 12:07 pm

Post by joshlitt »

Thanks for the advice on avoiding this bug by emptying my inbox. Deleting the inbox and inbox.msf files is something I've been doing far more than I want in trying to get this to work. I finally turned off saving the inbox for offline use (and removed the inbox files). At this point I can easily move stuff around to local folders and without having to be offline to do it. This is IMAP, so moving messages around and zeroing out the inbox offline just means the changes aren't communicated to the IMAP server, so I don't think that makes a lot of sense. Anyway, If I manage to reduce my Inbox, I can turn on downloading again.

But I'd really prefer to see if this bug fixed (though I can't find specific reference to others having encountered it). There's clearly a locking issue with mailbox access between the compaction and other operations.
Locked