popstate.dat files

[The.Purple.Hippo]

I keep getting tons of popstate.dat files. Whenever I close and reopen SM, I get more files. When I delete the files, they go into Trash, but when I reopen SM, there's more. I can't empty the trash because they don't exist. I read this: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popstate.dat. Most of its way over my head; but when I open the file, there's nothing in it; completely empty.

My questions are how do I get rid of them and how do I stop it from happening again?

Thanks

[LinuxUserSince1991]

I keep getting tons of popstate.dat files. Whenever I close and reopen SM, I get more files. When I delete the files, they go into Trash, but when I reopen SM, there's more. I can't empty the trash because they don't exist. I read this: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popstate.dat. Most of its way over my head; but when I open the file, there's nothing in it; completely empty.

I took a glance at the link to refresh my memory on what this file does--and you should not be deleting it because it holds important information about your mail, such as messages received and other stuff. I don't know why you're using a 'trash' feature rather than an actual, permanent 'delete' (like I do), but, whatever, if the files in trash "don't exist" and are "completely empty" I'm very confused!

If they don't exist, how are you opening them? And what are you opening them with? A plain text editor? That's the only thing you should use.

As for why you're getting tons of them, I have no idea, unless you mean you're deleting them--which causes SM to recreate its *one* necessary copy in its working directory, then you're trapped in an endless cycle of deleting/creating/deleting/creating. Do you see what I'm saying? Or do you really mean that SM is spitting out tons of them? It shouldn't!

My questions are how do I get rid of them and how do I stop it from happening again?

Well, if you want to use SM you're going to have to let it create and use the files it needs. But there should only be ONE of this file, in SM's directory. So if you could clarify exactly what is happening, that would help a lot.

As for not being able to delete files...all I can say is that on a REAL operating system, that would never be an issue!

[The.Purple.Hippo]

As

I keep getting tons of popstate.dat files. Whenever I close and reopen SM, I get more files. When I delete the files, they go into Trash, but when I reopen SM, there's more. I can't empty the trash because they don't exist. I read this: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popstate.dat. Most of its way over my head; but when I open the file, there's nothing in it; completely empty.

I took a glance at the link to refresh my memory on what this file does--and you should not be deleting it because it holds important information about your mail, such as messages received and other stuff. I don't know why you're using a 'trash' feature rather than an actual, permanent 'delete' (like I do), but, whatever, if the files in trash "don't exist" and are "completely empty" I'm very confused!

I have around 50 mail accounts. Each one of them contain between 5 and 50 .dat files. I click on them, hit the delete button and they go to trash. I go into trash, and click on File, Empty Trash. The trash doesn't get empty. When I close SM, and reopen it, the .dat files are back.

If they don't exist, how are you opening them? And what are you opening them with? A plain text editor? That's the only thing you should use.

I use a plain test editor to open them. When I look at them, there's nothing inside them. They're completely empty.

As for why you're getting tons of them, I have no idea, unless you mean you're deleting them--which causes SM to recreate its *one* necessary copy in its working directory, then you're trapped in an endless cycle of deleting/creating/deleting/creating. Do you see what I'm saying? Or do you really mean that SM is spitting out tons of them? It shouldn't!

As I said, every time I open SM, there's between 5 and 50 of those .dat files.

Well, if you want to use SM you're going to have to let it create and use the files it needs. But there should only be ONE of this file, in SM's directory. So if you could clarify exactly what is happening, that would help a lot.

Well, if you want to use SM you're going to have to let it create and use the files it needs. But there should only be ONE of this file, in SM's directory. So if you could clarify exactly what is happening, that would help a lot.

As for not being able to delete files...all I can say is that on a REAL operating system, that would never be an issue!

[LinuxUserSince1991]

I keep getting tons of popstate.dat files. Whenever I close and reopen SM, I get more files. When I delete the files, they go into Trash, but when I reopen SM, there's more. I can't empty the trash because they don't exist. I read this: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popstate.dat. Most of its way over my head; but when I open the file, there's nothing in it; completely empty.

I took a glance at the link to refresh my memory on what this file does--and you should not be deleting it because it holds important information about your mail, such as messages received and other stuff. I don't know why you're using a 'trash' feature rather than an actual, permanent 'delete' (like I do), but, whatever, if the files in trash "don't exist" and are "completely empty" I'm very confused!

I have around 50 mail accounts. Each one of them contain between 5 and 50 .dat files. I click on them, hit the delete button and they go to trash. I go into trash, and click on File, Empty Trash. The trash doesn't get empty. When I close SM, and reopen it, the .dat files are back.

Now you're talking about .dat files, but before it was specifically, and only, popstate.dat. Are there others besides popstate.dat?

If they don't exist, how are you opening them? And what are you opening them with? A plain text editor? That's the only thing you should use.

I use a plain test editor to open them. When I look at them, there's nothing inside them. They're completely empty.

Not necessarily. But since you're on window$ it's hard to say. What size(s) are they? In bytes, Kb, MB, whatever, what's their size?

As for why you're getting tons of them, I have no idea, unless you mean you're deleting them--which causes SM to recreate its *one* necessary copy in its working directory, then you're trapped in an endless cycle of deleting/creating/deleting/creating. Do you see what I'm saying? Or do you really mean that SM is spitting out tons of them? It shouldn't!

As I said, every time I open SM, there's between 5 and 50 of those .dat files.

Okay, they CANNOT all be named popstate.dat because you can't have more than one file with the same name in the same directory. If duplicates of this file are being created in the same directory, they're named something like popstate-1.dat, popstate-2.dat, and so on. Other than popstate, the only .dat files I have in any of my numerous mail directories are msgFilterRules.dat and rules.dat. None of them is larger than 40Kb; my largest are: popstate.dat 245B, msgFilterRules.dat 40Kb, rules.dat 27B.

When I open popstate.dat with a text editor, I see.........TEXT! For example:

Code: Select all

# POP3 State File
# This is a generated file!  Do not edit.

*mail.earthlink.net <username>
k 1lZ0gH43X3Nl34a1 1241051917
k 1lZ3Ga6623Nl36v1 1241051918
k 1lZGfI6IZ3Nl36F0 1241145683
k 1lZUxa5NU3Nl36L1 1241192224
k 1lZDli3tG3Nl34d1 1241145682

So where do we go from here? First we need to figure out what files we're actually talking about. I have no idea how you'd do this on your OS, but can you provide a list of .dat files like this, showing each file's size, date last modified, and name?

Code: Select all

41116 Oct 15  2021 msgFilterRules.dat
  245 Jun 18 17:58 popstate.dat
   27 Nov  5  2020 rules.dat

That would help A LOT!!

Now back to deleting files that are there but aren't there. It sounds like you're doing everything using GUI tools, right? Can you get to a command line? Maybe there's a way to actually delete files at a command prompt. I don't know--we need a window$ person to chime in for that. All I can say is that on *nix there's no such thing as not being able to delete files...

[Rob_S]

Most people on windows use the built-in file explorer to view and delete files.

Windows does not have "Trash" but it does have a "Recycle bin", from which accidentally deleted files can be restored.

If a file is selected "Delete" sends it to the recycle bin, and "shift-delete" vanishes it.

As you say, a file listing showing multiple files of the same name in one location (one folder = directory) is impossible.

Deleting popstate will often cause duplicate messages to be downloaded.

There should be exactly one popstate.dat file in each mail account folder. If you have 50 accounts, then you SHOULD have 50 of them, each in the separate mail account folder.

Seems to me the issue above must be either a corrupted disk, or some other technical malfunction of the file system.

Restart windows, perform scan-disk, restart again, and report back.

[The.Purple.Hippo]

I have around 50 mail accounts. Each one of them contain between 5 and 50 .dat files. I click on them, hit the delete button and they go to trash. I go into trash, and click on File, Empty Trash. The trash doesn't get empty. When I close SM, and reopen it, the .dat files are back.

If they don't exist, how are you opening them? And what are you opening them with? A plain text editor? That's the only thing you should use.

I use a plain test editor to open them. When I look at them, there's nothing inside them. They're completely empty.

Not necessarily. But since you're on window$ it's hard to say. What size(s) are they? In bytes, Kb, MB, whatever, what's their size?

Okay, they CANNOT all be named popstate.dat because you can't have more than one file with the same name in the same directory. If duplicates of this file are being created in the same directory, they're named something like popstate-1.dat, popstate-2.dat, and so on. Other than popstate, the only .dat files I have in any of my numerous mail directories are msgFilterRules.dat and rules.dat. None of them is larger than 40Kb; my largest are: popstate.dat 245B, msgFilterRules.dat 40Kb, rules.dat 27B.

When I open popstate.dat with a text editor, I see.........TEXT! For example:

Code: Select all

# POP3 State File
# This is a generated file!  Do not edit.

*mail.earthlink.net <username>
k 1lZ0gH43X3Nl34a1 1241051917
k 1lZ3Ga6623Nl36v1 1241051918
k 1lZGfI6IZ3Nl36F0 1241145683
k 1lZUxa5NU3Nl36L1 1241192224
k 1lZDli3tG3Nl34d1 1241145682

So where do we go from here? First we need to figure out what files we're actually talking about. I have no idea how you'd do this on your OS, but can you provide a list of .dat files like this, showing each file's size, date last modified, and name?

Code: Select all

41116 Oct 15  2021 msgFilterRules.dat
  245 Jun 18 17:58 popstate.dat
   27 Nov  5  2020 rules.dat

That would help A LOT!!

Now back to deleting files that are there but aren't there. It sounds like you're doing everything using GUI tools, right? Can you get to a command line? Maybe there's a way to actually delete files at a command prompt. I don't know--we need a window$ person to chime in for that. All I can say is that on *nix there's no such thing as not being able to delete files...

I guess I should have explained better. I see popstate-1.dat, popstate-2.dat, popstate-3.dat, etc to popstate-50.dat. Thats for 1 account. Some accounts contain 5 of these while others contain 20 and some contains 50 of them. The file sizes contain 0KB. I'm using SM to delete the files. But whenever I restart SM, there they are again.

Looking at them closer, in SM they're not files but folders. In windows file manager they come across as files because they have a .msf file attached.

BTW I'm not using windows 5 anymore. I've upgraded to windows 10.

[LinuxUserSince1991]

I guess I should have explained better. I see popstate-1.dat, popstate-2.dat, popstate-3.dat, etc to popstate-50.dat. Thats for 1 account. Some accounts contain 5 of these while others contain 20 and some contains 50 of them. The file sizes contain 0KB. I'm using SM to delete the files. But whenever I restart SM, there they are again.

Thanks for the clarification. That's definitely not normal behavior; as noted, there should be precisely one popstate.dat file per mail account directory. The only times I see variants like you're seeing, i.e., popstate-1.dat, popstate-2.dat, etc., is when I've done something to trigger SM thinking it's new, like when I'm in the process of setting up SM on a new computer. Starting and restarting SM as I'm getting its mail settings in order can create these files. (At least I THINK that's where they're coming from!) But I've never, ever seen more than one or two--definitely not fifty!!

Looking at them closer, in SM they're not files but folders. In windows file manager they come across as files.

Yes, I verified that [on Linux] and it's very odd. SM definitely sees them as a directory (folder), but they're actually just plain text files.

BTW I'm not using windows 5 anymore. I've upgraded to windows 10.

So it's still as buggy as it ever was?!

I found one popstate-1.dat file in one of my mail directories and deleted it, using SM. It did not come back when I restarted SM. There's something very weird happening with your SM, but at this point I'm not sure what to try next. If I were having a problem like yours, I'd do a fresh install of SM in a different location and see if the behavior continued. Can you do that on window$? If so, maybe give that a try. Do a fresh, clean install of SM, then gradually add e-mail accounts, testing after each one by closing and restarting SM to see if the phantom files reappear.

Just wondering: why do you have 50 e-mail accounts? I have thousands of e-mail *addresses* but only a few e-mail *accounts*. If you explain why you have so many, I may be able to offer help on paring them down. I'd absolutely HATE to have to deal with 50 different accounts!

[therube]

-1, -2, -3... typically indicates a permissions issue.

In that when SM goes to write to the file, it can't, so it creates a new, numerically incremented file name instead.

[The.Purple.Hippo]

I keep getting tons of popstate.dat files. Whenever I close and reopen SM, I get more files. When I delete the files, they go into Trash, but when I reopen SM, there's more. I can't empty the trash because they don't exist. I read this: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popstate.dat. Most of its way over my head; but when I open the file, there's nothing in it; completely empty.

My questions are how do I get rid of them and how do I stop it from happening again?

Thanks

Update: when I deleted the files in SM, they would reappear when I reopened SM. So I tried something different. With SM closed, I used my file manager and went into the mail section of the SM Profile, and deleted the files from there. Its been a couple of weeks now, and they haven't showed up.