today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior.
mike wrote:
today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became
unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior.
Why do you need 15GB *in* the mailbox? Have you thought about creating folder(s) within Thunderbird's local storage,
and moving/archiving stuff out of the mailbox into there?
In Thunderbird and on your computer you should set a system of folders
that fit your interest. ie mom, dad, mary, jo, etc. Or school, work, country club, etc. Add additional subfolders in the primary folder, to further organize your letters.
today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became
unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior.
Why do you need 15GB *in* the mailbox? Have you thought about creating folder(s) within Thunderbird's local storage, and moving/archiving stuff
out of the mailbox into there?
Then, today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior.
On 03-05-2023 00:57 knuttle <keith_nuttle@yahoo.com> wrote:
In Thunderbird and on your computer you should set a system of folders
that fit your interest. ie mom, dad, mary, jo, etc.  Or school,
work, country club, etc. Add additional subfolders in the primary
folder, to further organize your letters.
The key question to ask you is whether you're suggesting I put the folders
on the local file system or if the folders stay on the Google GMail server?
My use model, which should be obvious, is that all the mail is in one
folder, but more to the point, all the mail is stored on Google servers.
Given I don't want any mail stored on the local machine, I don't really
even know what Thunderbird/Betterbird is doing when it sees a new email.
When I access email with Firefox, it doesn't download anything to the local machine, does it? All the mail stays where it belongs - on Google servers.
Doesn't it?
Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
I don't want that.
I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.
I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
On 02-05-2023 23:30 Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:
today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became
unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done
prior.
Why do you need 15GB *in* the mailbox? Have you thought about
creating folder(s) within Thunderbird's local storage, and
moving/archiving stuff out of the mailbox into there?
The problem is thunderbird/betterbird, not Gmail.
The Firefox GMail works just fine (which is why they're cc'd on this).
It's just the Mozilla TB/BB which was never tested in real life situations. But to answer your GMail question, I do not organize my email in any way.
I started with GMail when you still needed invitations and just kept it the way it was, LIFO, but even if I move stuff around, isn't the 15GB limit
still in force? (It doesn't go away if you move stuff around, does it?)
I want to keep all my mail on the Google servers if I can, in case I ever need it in the future, so if I use "local storage", isn't that equivalent,
in terms of the chance of losing your data when the disk crashes, the same essentially as POP?
If I wanted my mail to be local, I would have set it up as POP for example.
On 5/2/2023 1:36 PM, mike wrote:
Then, today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird
became
unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done
prior.
Sir, you win our daily "Glutton for Punishment" award :-)
If you know your "box" is a "case of dynamite",
why would you even *think* of doing that ?
First of all, a 15GB box ? You need to be running the
64-bit version of Thunderbird. 32GB of RAM might be useful now.
The box limit is supposed to be 4GB or some such value,
but this may have been based on some assumptions about
the 32-bit versions of TBird back in the day, and the
absolute limits of what RAM they could access.
Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
I don't want that.
I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.
I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
I want to keep all my mail on the Google servers if I can, in case I ever need it in the future, so if I use "local storage", isn't that equivalent,First I don't use gmail but assume it is similar to Yahoo Mail.
in terms of the chance of losing your data when the disk crashes, the same essentially as POP?
mike wrote:
[snip]
Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
I don't want that.
I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry
about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.
I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
A mail client (such as Thunderbird) downloads (in time) a ***COPY*** of
all the email from your server.
Depending on your settings. With POP it will then remove messages from
the server unless you tell it otherwise. With IMAP it will leave all
the messages on the server unless you go to some trouble to tell it to
delete some or all of them.
The purpose of this is to allow you to see ALL the historical messages
when there is no internet connection. In the past this would have been vital - perhaps now rather less so.
I think I'm closer to understanding why Thunderbird hangs in the
composition window because Betterbird just did the same thing now! https://i.postimg.cc/cCFV7ZHy/tbhanging.jpg
It's too long of a story, months in the making, where a quick summary is
that I gave up forever on Thunderbird because it was unusable in
composition windows and moved to Betterbird which worked fine for weeks.
Even though my Gmail storage has been at the 15GB limit for months now. https://i.postimg.cc/1tcZWMnR/compact.jpg
Then, today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior. https://i.postimg.cc/85bqd59j/bbhung.jpg
It seems Mozilla developers haven't fully tested their compaction process.
At least it seems they never tested it with an almost full Gmail account.
I don't remember if compacting caused the TB hang but it caused it for BB.
Given that both Thunderbird & Betterbird compaction causes the composition window to hang every time thereafter, I need to fix this problem pronto.
Is there an easy way to un-compact a Thunderbird/Betterbird installation?
On 2023-05-02 21:46, mike wrote:
I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry
about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.
I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
I don't have any gmail account with 15 gigs of email.
I keep a lot of email, old email, out of remote servers and stored
locally, in more than one computer.
Given I don't want any mail stored on the local machine, I don't really
even know what Thunderbird/Betterbird is doing when it sees a new email.
mike wrote:
[snip]
Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
I don't want that.
I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry
about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the past.
I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
A mail client (such as Thunderbird) downloads (in time) a ***COPY*** of
all the email from your server.
Depending on your settings. With POP it will then remove messages from
the server unless you tell it otherwise. With IMAP it will leave all
the messages on the server unless you go to some trouble to tell it to
delete some or all of them.
The purpose of this is to allow you to see ALL the historical messages
when there is no internet connection. In the past this would have been
vital - perhaps now rather less so.
I use both the portable version of Thunderbird and the computer version.
I have the portable version on a thumbdrive so can use my email from any computer I have access to.
HOW many emails do you keep? I periodically delete any email that has
no long term implications.
On 2023-05-02 21:25, Paul wrote:
On 5/2/2023 1:36 PM, mike wrote:
Then, today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird became >>> unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done prior. >>Sir, you win our daily "Glutton for Punishment" award :-)
If you know your "box" is a "case of dynamite",
why would you even *think* of doing that ?
First of all, a 15GB box ? You need to be running the
64-bit version of Thunderbird. 32GB of RAM might be useful now.
The box limit is supposed to be 4GB or some such value,
but this may have been based on some assumptions about
the 32-bit versions of TBird back in the day, and the
absolute limits of what RAM they could access.
Or FAT filesystem per file limit.
HOW many emails do you keep?  I periodically delete any email that has
no long term implications.
For Gods sake, can you people (mike for one) stop posting to 3+ groups
when 1 suffices!!!
On 5/2/2023 4:47 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2023-05-02 21:25, Paul wrote:
On 5/2/2023 1:36 PM, mike wrote:
Then, today, Betterbird asked to compact, and after that, Betterbird
became
unusable in the composition window exactly like Thunderbird had done
prior.
Sir, you win our daily "Glutton for Punishment" award :-)
If you know your "box" is a "case of dynamite",
why would you even *think* of doing that ?
First of all, a 15GB box ? You need to be running the
64-bit version of Thunderbird. 32GB of RAM might be useful now.
The box limit is supposed to be 4GB or some such value,
but this may have been based on some assumptions about
the 32-bit versions of TBird back in the day, and the
absolute limits of what RAM they could access.
Or FAT filesystem per file limit.
But we also speculate the limit is wrong, because the OP
is an example of such.
On 5/2/2023 4:39 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2023-05-02 21:46, mike wrote:What will happen to your email if you are forced to leave the gmail system?  What if a hacker access you account and destroys it?
On 03-05-2023 00:57 knuttle <keith_nuttle@yahoo.com> wrote:
In Thunderbird and on your computer you should set a system of
folders that fit your interest. ie mom, dad, mary, jo, etc.  Or
school, work, country club, etc. Add additional subfolders in the
primary folder, to further organize your letters.
The key question to ask you is whether you're suggesting I put the
folders
on the local file system or if the folders stay on the Google GMail
server?
My use model, which should be obvious, is that all the mail is in one
folder, but more to the point, all the mail is stored on Google servers. >>>
Given I don't want any mail stored on the local machine, I don't really
even know what Thunderbird/Betterbird is doing when it sees a new email. >>>
When I access email with Firefox, it doesn't download anything to the
local
machine, does it? All the mail stays where it belongs - on Google
servers.
Doesn't it?
Is TB/BB actually downloading the email onto my machine?
I don't want that.
Yes, it does.
And it tries to sync the local disk storage with the remote server,
which takes looooooooooooooooong.
And if you have everything in the inbox, it gets worse.
I want all my mail stored on the Google servers so I don't have to worry >>> about backing it up in case of a crash, which happened to me in the
past.
I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
I don't have any gmail account with 15 gigs of email.
I keep a lot of email, old email, out of remote servers and stored
locally, in more than one computer.
The church had storage with an online provider when the account was
closed before the data was transferred, they lost everything. (Yes I
know it good practices would have prevented the problem) Some years ago thousands of people lost their on line genealogy data, when the site was discontinued.
Just because it is online does not mean it does is safe from destruction.
I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
A mail client (such as Thunderbird) downloads (in time) a ***COPY*** of
all the email from your server.
Depending on your settings. With POP it will then remove messages from
the server unless you tell it otherwise. With IMAP it will leave all
the messages on the server unless you go to some trouble to tell it to
delete some or all of them.
The purpose of this is to allow you to see ALL the historical messages
when there is no internet connection. In the past this would have been
vital - perhaps now rather less so.
And Thunderbird, when used in a FAT disk, had that limit as well.
On 03-05-2023 02:30 Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote:
I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
A mail client (such as Thunderbird) downloads (in time) a ***COPY*** of all the email from your server.
Depending on your settings. With POP it will then remove messages from the server unless you tell it otherwise. With IMAP it will leave all the messages on the server unless you go to some trouble to tell it to delete some or all of them.
The purpose of this is to allow you to see ALL the historical messages when there is no internet connection. In the past this would have been vital - perhaps now rather less so.
Good news.
I renamed the profile in the Portable Betterbird directory and it created a new one which only needed me to bring over the address book (abook.sqlite).
Thank God to whoever it was who said never use Thunderbird in any mode
other than in portable mode. That portable mode is a Godsend for sure.
I let Betterbird 102.10.1-bb34 (64-bit) run all day and, at some time
during the day, it finished downloading just under about 25K emails. https://i.postimg.cc/90qmhbq2/25-Kmessages.jpg
For whatever reasons, BB has NOT asked yet to compact anything, although I expect that question to pop up at any time - but it hasn't popped up yet.
At what point does BB consider the need to compact anyway? I don't know.
I've got plenty of disk space. But only 16GB of RAM.
Yet BB is only using 465.2 MB of RAM which I saw many people had predicted would be greater but I think that sounds pretty reasonable. Isn't it? https://i.postimg.cc/HxV3JzK2/ram465mb.jpg
Of course Google sends me "Your Gmail is out of storage" messages, which they've been warning me about for months now - as it has been approaching. https://i.postimg.cc/W3SPMrmr/gmailfull.jpg
By the way, what is that red 101% in the bottom of the TB/BB GUI?
What is 101% that BetterBird is trying to tell me about? It can't be GMail
as Betterbird doesn't know anything about GMail limits, does it?
It must be 101% of something else. But what?
Anyway, what hasn't happened yet is the Thunderbird/Betterbird hanging on composition windows, to the point that makes the MUA unusable.
This has been months of debugging but what seems to be the case is the hanging on composition only happens AFTER TB/BB runs a compaction process.
Hence, the question now morphs to how to ensure compaction never occurs?
On 03-05-2023 02:30 Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote:
I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
A mail client (such as Thunderbird) downloads (in time) a ***COPY***
of all the email from your server.
Depending on your settings. With POP it will then remove messages
from the server unless you tell it otherwise. With IMAP it will leave
all the messages on the server unless you go to some trouble to tell
it to delete some or all of them.
The purpose of this is to allow you to see ALL the historical messages
when there is no internet connection. In the past this would have
been vital - perhaps now rather less so.
Good news.
I renamed the profile in the Portable Betterbird directory and it created a new one which only needed me to bring over the address book (abook.sqlite).
Thank God to whoever it was who said never use Thunderbird in any mode
other than in portable mode. That portable mode is a Godsend for sure.
I let Betterbird 102.10.1-bb34 (64-bit) run all day and, at some time
during the day, it finished downloading just under about 25K emails. https://i.postimg.cc/90qmhbq2/25-Kmessages.jpg
For whatever reasons, BB has NOT asked yet to compact anything, although I expect that question to pop up at any time - but it hasn't popped up yet.
At what point does BB consider the need to compact anyway? I don't know.
I've got plenty of disk space. But only 16GB of RAM.
Yet BB is only using 465.2 MB of RAM which I saw many people had predicted would be greater but I think that sounds pretty reasonable. Isn't it? https://i.postimg.cc/HxV3JzK2/ram465mb.jpg
Of course Google sends me "Your Gmail is out of storage" messages, which they've been warning me about for months now - as it has been approaching. https://i.postimg.cc/W3SPMrmr/gmailfull.jpg
By the way, what is that red 101% in the bottom of the TB/BB GUI?
What is 101% that BetterBird is trying to tell me about? It can't be GMail
as Betterbird doesn't know anything about GMail limits, does it?
It must be 101% of something else. But what?
Anyway, what hasn't happened yet is the Thunderbird/Betterbird hanging on composition windows, to the point that makes the MUA unusable.
This has been months of debugging but what seems to be the case is the hanging on composition only happens AFTER TB/BB runs a compaction process.
Hence, the question now morphs to how to ensure compaction never occurs?
On 03-05-2023 02:30 Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote:
I don't think I'm all that different from most people in that way, am I?
A mail client (such as Thunderbird) downloads (in time) a ***COPY***
of all the email from your server.
Depending on your settings. With POP it will then remove messages
from the server unless you tell it otherwise. With IMAP it will leave
all the messages on the server unless you go to some trouble to tell
it to delete some or all of them.
The purpose of this is to allow you to see ALL the historical messages
when there is no internet connection. In the past this would have
been vital - perhaps now rather less so.
Good news.
I renamed the profile in the Portable Betterbird directory and it created a new one which only needed me to bring over the address book (abook.sqlite).
Thank God to whoever it was who said never use Thunderbird in any mode
other than in portable mode. That portable mode is a Godsend for sure.
I let Betterbird 102.10.1-bb34 (64-bit) run all day and, at some time
during the day, it finished downloading just under about 25K emails. https://i.postimg.cc/90qmhbq2/25-Kmessages.jpg
For whatever reasons, BB has NOT asked yet to compact anything, although I expect that question to pop up at any time - but it hasn't popped up yet.
At what point does BB consider the need to compact anyway? I don't know.
I've got plenty of disk space. But only 16GB of RAM.
Yet BB is only using 465.2 MB of RAM which I saw many people had predicted would be greater but I think that sounds pretty reasonable. Isn't it? https://i.postimg.cc/HxV3JzK2/ram465mb.jpg
Of course Google sends me "Your Gmail is out of storage" messages, which they've been warning me about for months now - as it has been approaching. https://i.postimg.cc/W3SPMrmr/gmailfull.jpg
By the way, what is that red 101% in the bottom of the TB/BB GUI?
What is 101% that BetterBird is trying to tell me about? It can't be GMail
as Betterbird doesn't know anything about GMail limits, does it?
It must be 101% of something else. But what?
Anyway, what hasn't happened yet is the Thunderbird/Betterbird hanging on composition windows, to the point that makes the MUA unusable.
This has been months of debugging but what seems to be the case is the hanging on composition only happens AFTER TB/BB runs a compaction process.
Hence, the question now morphs to how to ensure compaction never occurs?
On 03-05-2023 17:55 Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
If you store only 25000 messages in a Mork file (just the headers),
then that might take 25MB, which is nothing really and not a scaling
issue.
Let's try not to blame the victim. Thunderbird works well.
It's _only_ the Thunderbird compaction (AFAICT) that has this nasty bug.
Thanks for those calculations though, as I thought I was a normal user.
You have to be aware though that both Thunderbird and Betterbird work perfectly well with the huge 15GB mailbox, even as you are asking me to
break it into chunks because that would be better design (which is fine).
But I must repeat, Thunderbird & Betterbird have NO PROBLEM AT ALL working with the huge 15GB mailbox, so they're both tested and designed well.
The only problem is there is a nasty bug in the compaction.
that's the real problem.
You can blame the victim, but the blame is on the compaction (AFAICT).
When the compaction bug is identified & fixed, the 15GB will be no problem.
I need to repeat. There is no problem with the 15GB mailbox.
The problem is simply that there is a bug in the Thunderbird compaction.
Today Betterbird asked to compact but there's no option for "never ask
again" that it gives you in the box that pops up to ask you to do it. https://i.postimg.cc/02s5npSX/bbcompact.jpg
Since Thunderbird/Betterbird has that nasty compaction bug, I don't want to do it (although with portable apps, it's easy to start over again at will).
Is there an about:config setting so that I can disable compaction forever?
If you store only 25000 messages in a Mork file (just the headers),
then that might take 25MB, which is nothing really and not a scaling issue.
What is the advantage of portable mode that you see? :-?
Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote in
news:u2rtmg$tna2$1@dont-email.me:
Depending on your settings. With POP it will then remove
messages from the server unless you tell it otherwise.
With IMAP it will leave all the messages on the server
unless you go to some trouble to tell it to delete some or
all of them.
I was under the impression that with IMAP, if you delete the message in your e-mail client,
it automatically deletes it from the server.
Depending on your settings. With POP it will then remove
messages from the server unless you tell it otherwise.
With IMAP it will leave all the messages on the server
unless you go to some trouble to tell it to delete some or
all of them.
I need to repeat. There is no problem with the 15GB mailbox.
On 03/05/2023 11:20, Carlos E.R. wrote:
What is the advantage of portable mode that you see? :-?
The advantage is he was chosen by the god to use portable version.
DanS wrote:
Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote in
news:u2rtmg$tna2$1@dont-email.me:
Depending on your settings. With POP it will then remove
messages from the server unless you tell it otherwise.
With IMAP it will leave all the messages on the server
unless you go to some trouble to tell it to delete some or
all of them.
I was under the impression that with IMAP, if you delete the message in your e-mail client,
it automatically deletes it from the server.
No. Per default mostly it is only *marked* as deleted (and hidden).
To physically delete emails with an IMAP connection you have to "expunge"
the folder on the server.
Some mail clients have an option to do this automatically, named for example "expunge inbox on exit" or "expunge on disconnect" or similar.
Thank God to whoever it was who said never use Thunderbird in any mode
other than in portable mode. That portable mode is a Godsend for sure.
What is the advantage of portable mode that you see? :-?
I need to repeat. There is no problem with the 15GB mailbox.
I thought there was a 15GB file named "Inbox" on your hard drive.
I did not consider it was just IMAP, and a much smaller index
file was on your drive instead. My mistake.
In your discussion, you uncovered a performance anomaly
when switching between text mode composition and HTML composition.
The Betterbird input into the Bugzilla, was that some routine
call could be changed, to improve the performance. My contention
though, when things like this happen, is it started as a
dumpster fire in the first place, and then they're arguing
about how to piss on it to damp it down. Does it really
have to do the computational work it is doing ? Dunno.
Sometimes, these things are easier to understand, if
I can reproduce them, or, if I can find a test sample
we can all agree on.
I did try to emulate your giant inbox, at some point in the past.
But as it turned out, I used 9 million messages in my Pending
boxes, and attempted to send those emails to my test email server.
The "send" process was running dog slow, and it would never have
finished. I used an assumption of "small" average message size,
for a box that big. And as we now know, you have a large average
message size. Even if I modified my email generator, I can tell
just from the behavior generating an index for my Pending MBOX,
it would have taken a long time to generate an index. The sending
might have worked though. But I still would not be reproducing
your situation, because I don't understand what is going on
with the HTML emails. And grabbing web pages and using them
as HTML samples isn't correct either. If I used the Yahoo News
page as a "message", that's full of advertising .js and is not
representative of your privately-crafted HTML.
Paul wrote:
I need to repeat. There is no problem with the 15GB mailbox.
I thought there was a 15GB file named "Inbox" on your hard drive.
I thank you very much for keeping tabs on this problem as it has been
months and months in the making, spread over three different threads.
I'm just trying to use TB/BB in as close to the default manner as makes sense, with my only differences being my Google GMail is full and that I don't move things around and that I dislike the TB HTML composition tool.
On 03-05-2023 15:50 "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
Thank God to whoever it was who said never use Thunderbird in any mode
other than in portable mode. That portable mode is a Godsend for sure.
What is the advantage of portable mode that you see? :-?
The question is what's the advantage to the non-portable mode.
What I like about the portable mode is I can put it anywhere and everything goes in that one location, and I don't have to worry about where things are because they're all in the same spot.
I can also switch out the portable executable from TB to BB and keep the
same profile and everything 'should' work (I haven't tested that though).
I never noticed how much easier it was until I had to do a lot of tests.
Now I'll never use Thunderbird or Betterbird any other way than portable.
I can't think of any advantage in the non-portable mode. Can you?
On 2023-05-03 07:38, mike wrote:
On 03-05-2023 02:30 Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote:
By the way, what is that red 101% in the bottom of the TB/BB GUI?
What is 101% that BetterBird is trying to tell me about? It can't be
GMail
as Betterbird doesn't know anything about GMail limits, does it?
Of course it can know.
Imap servers can tell the quota. For example:
<https://forum.rebex.net/91/how-to-get-quota-of-imap-account>
<https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/996618>
I don't have any gmail account with 15 gigs of email.
Go into Tools, Settings, scroll down to Network & Disk Space and, under
Disk Space, uncheck the box labeled Compact all folders when it will
save over 20 MB in total. That should disable automatic compacting based
on disk space.
These articles explain why compacting is necessary: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/compacting-folders#thunderbird:win10:tb102
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders
On Thunderbird, right click on a imap folder, then "Properties".
On 06-05-2023 04:22 "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On Thunderbird, right click on a imap folder, then "Properties".
Thanks for that suggestion where it was unexpected, by me, that Thunderbird would know how to query Google servers to ask Google what my quota was.
But there it is, in the "Quota" tab, where mine now says the "Storage=88% full -- 13.5GB / 15GB" after I took people up on the suggestion to move the "Sent" mail to a "Local Folders" location.
I didn't think it would work - but TB/BB seems to know all about GMail.
Now that I've moved the sent mail to a local folder, that saved me from having to delete incoming mails going back years on the GMail server for
the Inbox - but now I have to save sent mail forever on my own, don't I?
Of course I did all that BEFORE I learned to change from MBOX to MAILDIR. Does this switch from MBOX to MAILDIR change the typical archive strategy?
DanS wrote:
Graham J <nobody@nowhere.co.uk> wrote in
news:u2rtmg$tna2$1@dont-email.me:
Depending on your settings. With POP it will then remove
messages from the server unless you tell it otherwise.
With IMAP it will leave all the messages on the server
unless you go to some trouble to tell it to delete some
or all of them.
I was under the impression that with IMAP, if you delete
the message in your e-mail client, it automatically
deletes it from the server.
No. Per default mostly it is only *marked* as deleted (and
hidden). To physically delete emails with an IMAP
connection you have to "expunge" the folder on the server.
Some mail clients have an option to do this automatically,
named for example "expunge inbox on exit" or "expunge on
disconnect" or similar.
Does this switch from MBOX to MAILDIR change the typical archive strategy?
If your inbox had 9,000,000 messages, we know the Windows file system
does not handle such directories at all well. The Windows Search Indexer is rated for "1,000,000 files" by the designers.
TB has GLODA for indexing
messages (something to do with a Search feature?), and that's just another copy of the Windows Search Indexer in a sense.
While NTFS has the
structure to hold 4 billion files, nobody said anything about actually interacting with a folder of that size, which would suck. The only practical way for me to store 4 million files on an NTFS volume, was to arrange
them in a tree, and tree storage is not at all easy for humans
to wrangle by hand (when you want to move individual files).
Since your box storage only had around 25000 messages, the "tax" at the
file system level should be manageable.
But to estimate the effect the change would make, it really depends on
what flags are stored (artificially) in the headers of the messages.
When a message comes into your Inbox, three lines are added to it
for message management. Whether those flags are a match for .msf or
.sqlite flags, I don't know. If those flags get updated on a regular
basis, there might not be that much difference between doing backups
on the two schemes.
You'd need to get into the TB source tarball
and try and find a .h file that defines the flags, to understand
the potential implications. An example of a flag might be "Read"
versus "UnRead". That could be tracked in a .msf or a .sqlite,
a little more cheaply. If the status were tracked in the Inbox
itself (no matter how it was stored), that would be "expensive".
And then there might not be that much difference to the user,
if every flag is duplicated.
It depends on how often an individual EML file got changed,
as to what that would cost at backup time.
I don't know the answer, because my attempt to get TB into the
alternate mode, failed, and it flipped back to the default
mode on its own. We might not even have a choice in the matter.
On 02-05-2023 16:39 "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
I don't have any gmail account with 15 gigs of email.
Thanks to all and most recently to gym & Paul for helping with the tests.
My conclusions, so far, are that portable apps are the way to go when
you're running tests, as everything is easily self contained & you can
rename the profile and start fresh under new test conditions.
Also I've assessed that there's practically no difference in most of my
tests between portable Thunderbird & portable Betterbird, once I had
realized belatedly that the compaction process got corrupted somehow.
Speaking of compaction, the Mozilla press is all abuzz about compaction errors, so they provide a switch to turn off compaction (thanks to gym). http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders#Compacting_does_not_seem_to_work
Go into Tools, Settings, scroll down to Network & Disk Space and,
under Disk Space, uncheck the box labeled Compact all folders when it
will save over 20 MB in total. That should disable automatic
compacting based on disk space.
But eventually, with MBOX format, compaction is part of your fate.
These articles explain why compacting is necessary:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/compacting-folders#thunderbird:win10:tb102
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders
To answer the question of whether or not Thunderbird/Betterbird compaction
is required, the answer is no, it's not required if you use Maildir format. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/maildir-thunderbird
So what I did was switch both Thunderbird & Betterbird to Maildir format. Tools | Settings |Â Advanced | General | Message Store Type | File per message (maildir)
It was simple to switch to Maildir by deleting the profile and copying over the abook & history sqlite files - and leaving cookies turned on briefly. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/thunderbird-from-mbox-to-maildir.389599/
The cookie problem I only noticed because the initial oauth requirement of Gmail for a new profile requires cookies - but then you can turn them off.
I have only used Maildir for a few hours, but so far, even with a 15GB
GMail inbox, I see no performance problems yet - even with HTML to TEXT.
The advantage of Maildir over MBOX is compaction is no longer a thing.
Each message is supposedly it's own file (and I don't use any Windows AV).
No compaction. No corruption. I hope.
On 06-05-2023 04:22 "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On Thunderbird, right click on a imap folder, then "Properties".
Thanks for that suggestion where it was unexpected, by me, that Thunderbird would know how to query Google servers to ask Google what my quota was.
But there it is, in the "Quota" tab, where mine now says the "Storage=88% full -- 13.5GB / 15GB" after I took people up on the suggestion to move the "Sent" mail to a "Local Folders" location.
I didn't think it would work - but TB/BB seems to know all about GMail.
Now that I've moved the sent mail to a local folder, that saved me from having to delete incoming mails going back years on the GMail server for
the Inbox - but now I have to save sent mail forever on my own, don't I?
Of course I did all that BEFORE I learned to change from MBOX to MAILDIR. Does this switch from MBOX to MAILDIR change the typical archive strategy?
On 06-05-2023 06:34 Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
Does this switch from MBOX to MAILDIR change the typical archive
strategy?
If your inbox had 9,000,000 messages, we know the Windows file system
does not handle such directories at all well. The Windows Search
Indexer is
rated for "1,000,000 files" by the designers.
I never use Windows search for anything so I've always turned off that
stupid wasteful useless indexer since day 1, which solves that problem.
services.msc | Windows Search | Stop | Startup type => Disabled
TB has GLODA for indexing
messages (something to do with a Search feature?), and that's just
another
copy of the Windows Search Indexer in a sense.
Turned off that long ago also.
thunderbird.exe | Tools | Settings | General | Inexing | Uncheck "Enable Global Search and Indexer."
While NTFS has the
structure to hold 4 billion files, nobody said anything about actually
interacting with a folder of that size, which would suck. The only
practical
way for me to store 4 million files on an NTFS volume, was to arrange
them in a tree, and tree storage is not at all easy for humans
to wrangle by hand (when you want to move individual files).
Since your box storage only had around 25000 messages, the "tax" at the
file system level should be manageable.
Thank you for that advice as I am only using the MAILDIR format because of the compaction bugs in the MBOX format when switched from HTML to TEXT.
But to estimate the effect the change would make, it really depends on
what flags are stored (artificially) in the headers of the messages.
When a message comes into your Inbox, three lines are added to it
for message management. Whether those flags are a match for .msf or
.sqlite flags, I don't know. If those flags get updated on a regular
basis, there might not be that much difference between doing backups
on the two schemes.
The problem there is I don't want to do any backups if I don't need to.
I want Google to spend their money storing my old email on their servers.
If I need to search the email, I can use Google's search mechanism.
By moving the SENT mail into a "Local Folders", now the onus is on me to
have to back up and save that folder - but I had to do it due to quota.
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 297 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 08:01:53 |
| Calls: | 6,666 |
| Files: | 12,213 |
| Messages: | 5,336,189 |
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