Thunderbird bloating

[silence]

for those that didnt know, TB has pretty big problem with bloating, cause even if you delete mail and it doesnt show in your Inbox or any of mailboxes you have in your TB setup it is still in place where TB holds all mail....

and not only that....its still both in mailbox that received it and Trash folder, even if you emptied Trash....

only way to deal with this is to go to (example) :

C:\Documents and Settings\xxxxxx\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\default\xxxxxxx.slt\Mail\Local Folders

and clean for yourself.....you will find some files without extensions there and these are the ones where TB keeps the mail.....


how did i get this?...well, some time ago i made backup of my TB with MozBackup and it ended as 320 MB file, which was pretty big, so i decided to delete lots of stuff i saved on comp or i simply dont need at all.....
to my surprise after deleting LOTS of mail and attachments... new backup, using MozBackup ended as 540 MB file....

i deleted some 220 MB of stuff, but it became bigger....so i started to dig and found these files where TB keeps all the mail....

this means all the Junk and all the Trash you deleted is still there + much more....

each account you have in TB has same issue.....

____________________________________________

i been cleaning my Inbox today and this is only way to do it.
first you move what you need to other folders, then make completlly new folder in TB and move WHOLE Inbox there.... then delete file named Inbox at given location.... then return all the mail to Inbox from that new folder(which is temporary) and delete it also....
also delete Trash and Junk files, cause TB makes them as soon as something goes to these folders....

i just cleaned up some 50 MB of mail this way..... it may sound complicated or confusing, but it is only way to delete unwanted mail....specially if you use TB alot and get lots of large attachments....in that case your TB might have bloated to really BIG problem....

i know most people dont notice cause today's HDDs are big and there is always space for everything, but when you use utility like MozBackup you can see that when you make backup of TB before deleting lots of mail and then make another backup after deleting that mail you dont need....backup file is bigger.




just a little advice before you try playing with this and cause maybe i didnt explain good enough...copy-paste whole profile somewhere on your comp also, so you dont lose anything if you missunderstood this post....

i'll help if you have any questions and if you do it, i would like to hear how bloated it got and how much you managed to remove.....

its a bit of pain in the ass, but as i said, it bloody doesnt delete one single mail you received since you installed it....maybe you even have 2 copies of mail you think it was deleted months ago.....

 

[Zaphod]

Uhm... Big problem? Nah... Rather it's cause for a 'user error alert'. Try 'File' -> 'Compact Folders'. Or set it up to do it automagically when compacting will free up n KB of diskspace.

Sorry you went through all that trouble for nothing, but real men don't need no stinkin' documentation, right? 8)

 

[silence]

LOL.... but i read that there is chance it might not work.... anyway .... for suckers that dont read docs, here it is....

 

[Guden Oden]

I'd say it's a really big privacy concern if stuff you delete doesn't get deleted and in fact is now duplicated in TWO PLACES instead. Not good at all.

 

[silence]

I'd say it's a really big privacy concern if stuff you delete doesn't get deleted and in fact is now duplicated in TWO PLACES instead. Not good at all.

thats why u need to compact folders.... but i dont think that many people knew about that, i been using TB for over 6 months and just now, after i made this topic here i found out about "compacting".....

i remember using Eudora, at least all attachments were is separate folder, each file was bloody FILE as it came, it wasnt sticked into some megafile without extension named Inbox.

i just wanna know how many people acctually know that there is need to "compact" their mail folders....

 

[Zaphod]

I'd say it's a really big privacy concern if stuff you delete doesn't get deleted and in fact is now duplicated in TWO PLACES instead. Not good at all.

All e-mail software that use a 'solid' storage format have this 'issue', along with varying options for automatic compression. Including Outlook and Eudora. I'm pretty sure that a fresh install of Thunderbird 1.0 will ask about compacting folders. If one has upgraded from an older version and missed these settings, I'd say that's the price you pay for playing with prerelease software without reading the docs. The setup in Thunderbird might not be as streamlined as one would like with regards to inexperienced users, but thinking that this is some sort of security oversight is just FUD.

 

[silence]

heh....been using TB since it was 0.7.... and if i read docs about every software i installed...meh....

 

[Zaphod]

Hey... I didn't say I read the docs for all the software I have installed. I've probably spent (more than) my share of unnecessary time with problems that could have been avoided if not for rushing headlong into using some program, function, or whatever without reading up first. It's just that when using prerelease software that is clearly stated to have known issues there's really no exuse not to.

That beeing said: I really hope they resolve whatever issues that are preventing them form making this a background process - transparent to the end user - by default. You're definately not the first to have missed it.

 

[silence]

acctually, i started this topic, cause guy on Elitebastards (digi, you owe me one here) said how his AV program deletes whole Inbox in case he gets infected mail, which is really REALLY stupid....

the way i see it, these files where TB keeps mails are nothing more then weird folders, so i really dont know why they didnt use normal/proper folders to store mails instead of these....hybrids....

 

[Zaphod]

Never heard about a problem like that. I'd be inclined to blame the AV-program (or maybe user error). As for the folders: Thunderbird use the MBX-format. MBX is the standard UNIX-mailbox-format, and are in fact (supposedly) exactly the same as Eudora (allthough the Eudora implementation have been buggy at times). Lots of other software can read these files as well.

 

[silence]

dunno....if u check location i posted you will see files without extension (where the mail is kept) and .msf files which are prolly list of mails (my guess)....

Inbox (file without extension which isnt folder) == 7,34 MB currentlly on my comp and inbox.msf == 35,6 kB.....

so i wouldnt be surprised if AV finds virus in mail and deletes file where the virus is located....in this case your whole bloody Inbox....
(this is just my guessing from what i saw digging into this since i didnt read docs on prerelease software )

 

[Zaphod]

dunno....if u check location i posted you will see files without extension (where the mail is kept) and .msf files which are prolly list of mails (my guess)...

Kind of. It's basically an index of the actual mailbox to allow quick access. The Eudora equivalent is the .toc files. It's not a standard file and it will/can be recreated from the content of the actual mailbox if deleted.

Inbox (file without extension which isnt folder) == 7,34 MB currentlly on my comp and inbox.msf == 35,6 kB....

This file is the same as the Eudora .mbx file. I should probably have called the standard MBOX, to avoid confusion with the Edora files (which are the same standard files, except for the fact that they're (supposedly) somewhat non-conformant).

so i wouldnt be surprised if AV finds virus in mail and deletes file where the virus is located....in this case your whole bloody Inbox...

If the user has the AV set to delete any infected file outright i'd blame the user. Most cases of mail going missing seems to be that the original mailbox have been quarantined and moved by the AV software. This can be recovered from.

Also: If the AV software is smart enough to read an unexecutable file, understand the mime headers and decode the content - it should also by default be smart enough to remove only the offending attachment and/or email. All it would take is for the AV vendors to be aware of Thunderbird, and perhaps specialcase the mail files as they apparently do with Outlook and Outlook Express.

There does however appear to be a bug where if you are downloading new mail while the inbox is locked, by for example AV software, it will be recreated by Thunderbird thereby loosing mail. Don't know how common this would be and it's apparently now been worked around and is beeing tested in the developer builds. Read about the whole thing at bugzilla if you like.

So all in all maybe no easy fix is available. It's a combination of things that needs to be done ranging from: Raising user awareness, raising awareness with third party software developers so that they don't do stupid things that hurt Thunderbird compatability, and implementing workarounds/bugfixes from the developers. I'll be quick to admit that Thunderbird is far from perfect yet, but it hasn't been out and final for very long, and Rome wasn't built in a day or something like that...

 

[Richard]

the way i see it, these files where TB keeps mails are nothing more then weird folders, so i really dont know why they didnt use normal/proper folders to store mails instead of these....hybrids....

Assuming the default HD cluster size of 4kb that would make your "inbox" a lot larger not to mention people running non-standard (thus bigger) cluster sizes. All email clients that I know of (except one) use solid archiving because of this. Having said that, I hope longhorn will finally feature email as files integrated into the file system.

 

[silence]

hey....i dont complain....i wouldnt change TB for anything.... i simply love it

 

[mkillio]

TB 1.0.2 came out two days ago, I couldn't find out what the update changes though. Anyone have that information?

 

[suryad]

Not to be a troll or anything but is TB really the best alternative to have besides Outlook "The backdoor is open " Express and its other derivatives? I wish OpenOffice made a replacement.

 

[silence]

Not to be a troll or anything but is TB really the best alternative to have besides Outlook "The backdoor is open " Express and its other derivatives? I wish OpenOffice made a replacement.

well....if i read the docs i wouldnt have _ANY_ complain about TB.
it does what it is supposed to do and with extensions you can add extra features to your liking, making it much more powerfull then Outlook Express.

best thing is, when you install it for first time, you can just import all settings from OE and see for yourself....

 

[suryad]

I guess I will check TB out soon. Thanks silence.

 

[silence]

np. if u need anything, just ask.