TB Folder Compacting: Not Enough Disk Space.

[Sid007]

I'm running version 38.5.0 and, when I compact my folders, I receive a Compacting Alert telling me that "some folders can't be compacted because there is not enough free disk space." This is nonsense. Anyone know what is causing this behavior?

Sid007

[LIMPET235]

Moving to Thunderbird Support...

[Sid007]

Thanx, Limpet.

Sid007

[LIMPET235]

NP.
It seems to be a rather common error.
Perhaps a quick forum search may turn up a few hints? ----------------------->>

[tanstaafl]

viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2967449
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2965343

Your problem might be that your inbox folder is corrupt. Try moving most of its messages to other folders/child folders, emptying the trash, and trying again.

[Sid007]

Thanx, tanstaafl. Would archiving the inbox do the same? That moves them out of the Inbox into the Archive folder. After doing that, I still get that message relative to two of my other folders. Oh, and regarding trash, I empty the Trash folder on a regular basis.

I haven't looked at your two links, but, will soon.

Sid007

[Sid007]

And, one other question, tanstaafl. Can you describe exactly what happens when a folder is compacted?

[tanstaafl]

Archiving basically just creates a folder (its a ordinary folder despite the naming convention) and then moves the messages to it.

A mbox file is a plain text file named after the mail folder (but with no file extension) that contains all of the messages for the mail folder. For example, "inbox." is the mbox file for a inbox folder. "inbox.msf" is basically just a cache of the mail folder. "inbox.sbd" (if its exists) is a renamed directory used to create a folder hierarchy for child folders.

When a mail folder is compacted it physically removes all messages that had been marked deleted and then hidden from view. I believe (but the details could have changed) Thunderbird creates a temporary file, copies the messages it wants to keep from the mbox file to it, deletes the original mbox file, and then renames the temporary file to have the same name as the deleted mbox file. However, if Thunderbird gets confused where a message ends it may physically remove some additional messages after that deleted message when it compacts the folder. If you are extremely unlucky and the first message in the mbox file is deleted and Thunderbird can't find the end of that message it can get rid of all of the messages in that mail folder. This is rare but it has happened.

The reason messages are marked deleted and hidden from view when they are deleted, and physically removed afterwards when the folder is compacted (rather than immediately removing them when they are deleted) is to increase performance. I've described compacting a mail folder in a POP account or Local Folders. If you use a IMAP account, it can get more complicated as you're deleting a message in a remote folder and then synchronizing that folder with a corresponding optional offline folder (mbox file). IMAP also supports 3 ways to delete a message. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Deleting_mess ... P_accounts

[Sid007]

Many thanx, tanstaafl, for the comprehensive explanation. It's much more convoluted than I ever guessed.

[wolfie25]

Like most of you, I went bananas with this message. The solution was convoluted and I never found it, but this person did, and it worked super for me:

Credit goes to tjohnson on this post https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1091792

The solution...

I had this problem too and was able to find a solution to it. The error messages about not enough disk space mentioned the name of a folder like Junk or Deleted Items. When I looked at the ImapMail folder of my Thunderbird profile, I noticed that these folders had only .msf files and did not have files with no extension. After I created these empty files with no extension, the problem disappeared.

It works by going to the ImapMail folder as stated, and then copying an empty file if available, such as starred or spam, You then paste that into the same folder and rename it to whatever name the error message said was the problem.

If you do not have an empty file to use as the template file then it might work with a file that is full as well, but I did not try that as I had files that were with 0 KB. I also think that if this is the case that the following method would be better and safer.

Copy a file that is not full, say Starred or Trash or Spam, and again paste and rename it. The next step will be to use Notepad, to the exclusion of other editors, to delete everything in the new file, and then save it. Notepad is probably your preferred weapon as it will not add extraneous stuff as some other editors do.

You will then have an empty file that TB will find and I reckon use, In any case, it worked a charm for me and many thanks to the original poster!

[wsmwk]

A fix is in the works at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1174485
It will likely be a few months until it becomes available in a public release