MAX_PATH Limit NTFS

[dvareika]

I encountered a problem in my Windows XP Pro.
The limit of the path officialy by Microsoft is 256 caracters.
Considering that Thunderbird puts everithing in folders and mbox this could mean a real limit in either folders within folders and or limit of the length of the folder name.

I tend myself to be very tidy and to put everithing within folders with full descriptions whenever possible.
I come from Mac OS and this problem didn´t ocur to me ever in more than 15 years. But certainly arrived with Win XP.

The worst part is that NTFS supports longer paths than 256 caracters, thus eneabling you in some circumstances to creat paths longer than this, but then, you are unable to copy them through the explorer (something important for Backups as an example).

There are ways, but they are manual o nead some kind of user interaction.
I don´t know whether to consider this a bug, a limit feature or what, but it can be a real limit.

Yours,

Daniel Vareika

[hansen]

I've never run into the NTFS bug, but I do recall something from the FAT32 days.

Anyways, Thunderbird got it's own bug/feature, it can't add more sub-folders than 128 charaters, if you line it up on a string. Haven't tested this for a while, but I made a bug on it back in the days.

I'm not positive if it's exactly 128 characters, but it seems correct, when looking from a code-perspective.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=249807

[dvareika]

Thanks for your reply,

If you start creating nested folders will the limit come up and tell you that it is not possible?
Or will you be able to create nonetheless?

Thanks,

Daniel

[hansen]

It will create the folder on the machine/server, but you can't see it in Thunderbird.

[dvareika]

Thanks Hansen,

Daniel

[pljones]

<sad tester mode>
It's poor coding like this that lets security faults get into the source...
</sad tester mode>

[zetafunction]

Um. What are you talking about?

[rom]

Here's what Microsoft says about this. From http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=3200 ... 0121120120:

"Many Windows programs expect the maximum path length to be shorter than 255 characters. Therefore, these programs only allocate enough internal storage to handle these typical paths. NTFS does not have this limit and it can hold much longer paths."

[goa103]

I come from Mac OS and this problem didn´t ocur to me ever in more than 15 years. But certainly arrived with Win XP.

But were you using Thunderbird under Mac OS ? What was the file system format ?

The worst part is that NTFS supports longer paths than 256 caracters, thus eneabling you in some circumstances to creat paths longer than this, but then, you are unable to copy them through the explorer (something important for Backups as an example).

That's right, NTFS supports more characters. In the NTFS Wikipedia article we can read :

Maximum path length […] An absolute path may be up to 32767 characters long; a relative path is limited to 255 characters.

The Limits - Thunderbird KB article is also very enlightening :

Limitations of Microsoft Windows […] In some cases, Windows users may run into a hard limit placed on the maximum amount of characters any path can be. Symptoms may include, but aren't limited to, disappearing mail folders.

For more information on this, see this Microsoft Knowledge Base article regarding MAX_PATH. Also, see the following discussion on MozillaZine forums.

I don´t know whether to consider this a bug, a limit feature or what, but it can be a real limit.

It's a bug because Thunderbird shouldn't depend on the operating system limitations. More important it should warn the users when an error occurs.

It's also a feature limit and bad design issue, I think the mbox implementation has issues. For example what's the point of naming the file system folders as the Thunderbird ones ? Better name them after some database numerical ids (Primary keys). But using a file per folder is a wise decision, specially considering the Microsoft Outlook base limits (Personal folders, .pst file).

[dvareika]

goa103,

I was migrating from Apple OS 9.X (pre 10) to winXP.
There the problem arouse.

So, no problem at all at Apple OS, but a nightmare at winXP.

For me it's a bug definitively.

Thanks,

Daniel

[dvareika]

Finally after too many problems and mails lost I switched to Gmail through the webmail.
Not the best UI experience but fixed the spam problem that around 2005 was killing me so I got back to normal kind of.

Being able to tag a mail with more than one tag is a huge boon over the folder methaphore, though I miss nesting folders.
A mix would be (for me) the best solution.

I will never go back to Thunderbird (unfortunately) at least until this thing is fixed.
No more messing around.

On the other hand, having my mails backed up though the google server farm is a plus and the limit of viruses is another.

Hope this helps,

Daniel