Thunderbird crashing when I get online (Mac)

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Chemikyn
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Thunderbird crashing when I get online (Mac)

Post by Chemikyn »

Hi guys.

Today, I updated Thunderbird to the 3.1.5 version and when I re-launched it, it immediately crashed. I reopened it and it crashed again. I went offline and reopened Thunderbird and then it worked ok. But the moment I go online, it crashes. I removed my Hotmail account I had with the webmail plugin, as I read it could be the cause of the problem. But nothing has changed and Thunderbird keeps crashing the moment I open it if I'm online or the moment I go online if I opened Thunderbird while offline. Right now, I have a Gmail account, a Yahoo Mail account and another email account from my own website.

In every case, I get a Mozilla Crash Reporter window saying this:

We're Sorry

Thunderbird had a problem and crashed.

To help us diagnose and fis the problem, you can send us a crash report.
[Tick box] Tell Mozilla about this crash so they can fix it
['Details...' button]

['Add a comment' box]
[Tick box] Email me when more information is available
['Enter your email address here' box]
Your cash report will be submitted before you quit or restart.

['Quit Thunderbird' button] ['Restart Thunderbird' button]


I had never had such a problem with Thunderbird. I'm using a white MacBook and running Mac OS 10.6.4 Snow Leopard.

Has anyone had the same problem? Any ideas or thoughts about how we could fix it?

Many thanks in advance!
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Daifne
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Re: Thunderbird crashing when I get online

Post by Daifne »

Can you open Thunderbird in Safe Mode? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode

If so, then an extension of theme is causing the problem. You will need to determine which one and then either disable or remove it. If it's one you really need, contact the author of the extension for assistance.
Chemikyn
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Re: Thunderbird crashing when I get online (Mac)

Post by Chemikyn »

Hi Daifne, thanks for your reply :-)

I just tried opening it in Safe Mode but it was the same: it crashes immediately if I open it in Safe Mode when I'm online. And it opens ok in Safe Mode when I'm offline but then it crashes the moment I go online.

Also, I forgot to mention that I re-installed the latest version but nothing changed and it kept crashing. I guess I could uninstall it completely and then install it from scratch, but then I think I would lose all the emails and folders I've been keeping all this time, right?
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Daifne
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Re: Thunderbird crashing when I get online (Mac)

Post by Daifne »

Better would be to just create a new profile. If it works, then you can follow the rest of these instructions to migrate the data over.

Close Thunderbird and open the profile manager. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_manager or move your old profile out of it's default location ( http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder#Thunderbird ) to force Thunderbird to open in the profile manager. Create your new profile, naming it something other than "default", and setup your accounts. Make sure it's working including for sending and receiving mail.

Then I want you to install this extension: ImportExportTools: http://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html

When it's installed, first select the folder you want to import into and then go to Tools>Import/Export in Mbox/eml format and under it, Import Mbox File. In the next screen you will get a choice to either import a selected file or to select a directory. Select the third option and when you get to the Windows file navigation window, find your OLD profile User\Library\Thunderbird\Profiles\*random string.profile name*\Mail and then select each account folder one at a time. This means that you will need to go through the Tools menu once for each account. The messages will be in a new folder named for the original with three numbers, ex: Inbox123, which you can then move the messages out of and sort as you want.

For your address books, install the MoreFunctionsForAddressBook extension from the same website as ImportExportTools. When it's installed you will have some new menu items under Tools in the address book manager. First open the manager with Tools>Address Book. Now go to it's Tools and find Actions for addressbook. Under it, select Import addressbook from mab file. It will ask you to create a new address book by naming it. Do so. Then, in the file navigation window that opens, find your old profile and look for the files with the .mab extension. Your personal address book is abook.mab and the collected is history.mab. You may have others that you either imported from another program or created yourself. You will need to do them one at a time. Once in, you can drag and drop the addresses from the imported books into your new Personal/Collected address book.

If you have any filters set in your accounts, the files you want to copy is msgFilterRules.dat This goes in the Mail/*account* folder. For Junk controls training, the file is training.dat and it is kept in the top level of the profile folder.

When you have completed this, compact your folders now and regularly in the future. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders

That should be everything. Let me know how it turns out.
Chemikyn
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Re: Thunderbird crashing when I get online (Mac)

Post by Chemikyn »

Wow, thanks Daifne for such a thorough explanation. I have a pretty busy day today but will try to find time to look into this.

Also, and this must be useful, I found out many people seem to have the same problem after updating to 3.1.5: https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/ ... 71b2101020

What do you make of this?
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Daifne
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Re: Thunderbird crashing when I get online (Mac)

Post by Daifne »

Usually, this kind of problem is directly related to a corrupted profile or an incompatible extension rather than the program itself. A corrupted profile could have been building for a long time. An update will take that already somewhat corrupted profile and make it worse. This isn't really the fault of the update, but of either a poorly maintained profile or, sometimes, an OS or file system problem.

Good luck.
Chemikyn
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Re: Thunderbird crashing when I get online (Mac)

Post by Chemikyn »

While being offline, I unchecked the 'Global search and indexer'. Then I went online and now it seems to work ok...
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Daifne
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Re: Thunderbird crashing when I get online (Mac)

Post by Daifne »

Odd, but glad it worked.
hdulc
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Re: Thunderbird crashing when I get online (Mac)

Post by hdulc »

I had the same problem as Chemikyn. I followed Daifne's superb instructions and got everything back almost everything.

The only thing I can't find are some mailing lists. The abook.mab and history.mab files were there and transferred fine. However, some mailing lists that were subsets of my personal mailing list are nowhere to be found. Would they also be .mab files? Would they also be stored in my original profile folder? When I search for .mab in Spotlight, nothing comes up - not even the abook or history files that successfully transferred.

Any ideas on how to find and transfer those additional mailing lists?

Thanks!
hdulc
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Re: Thunderbird crashing when I get online (Mac)

Post by hdulc »

A little more information after additional experimentation:

When I import the abook.mab file, there are entries for the missing mailing lists, meaning that I see the names of those mailing lists. However, they are empty, i.e., have no addresses in them. If I drag all the addresses from the new address book I created with the import and drop them in the Personal address book, the names of the missing mailing lists go blank (and still have no addresses in them).

I'd like to get them back, since they're mailing lists for telling people about upcoming music performances.
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Re: Thunderbird crashing when I get online (Mac)

Post by wsmwk »

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/ ... 71b2101020 is a corrupted sqlite db file, which may occur again. if you had followed the link on that page you reach the bug that describes the issue and also the basic workaround - at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=552050

It is not necessary to recreate the profile. And http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_mess ... ly_3927758 describes the issue in more detail, which is important because the bug is not yet fixed, and deleting the bad db is not necessarily a permanent fix - the problem may recur.
touma
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Re: Thunderbird crashing when I get online (Mac)

Post by touma »

This worked for me too. I've deleted 'global-messages-db.sqlite' file too and enabled again the global search.

Chemikyn wrote:While being offline, I unchecked the 'Global search and indexer'. Then I went online and now it seems to work ok...
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