Bug Thing
Thunderbird RSS feed does not update
RSS handling on Thunderbird 3.0.5 appears to be a crock of brown steaming stuff!
The problem I had was a feed not updating. It worked fine in RSSOwl and Firefox.
I tried to delete the RSS account and recreate it to no avail – it just seemed to pick up the old feed file (67 items at the time instead of 79).
Next I deleted the RSS account and then went into the profile folders –
Documents and Settings>user> Application Data>Thunderbird>Profiles>l9jei9sf.default>Mail
where I deleted the Feeds folder and the Feeds.msf (both in Mail folder) , I then restarted TB and recreated the RSS account – again the old 67 item feed was picked up!
Getting desperate I fossicked around a bit and found a Cache folder under –
Documents and Settings>user>Local Settings>Application Data>Thunderbird>Profiles>l9jei9sf.default>Cache
I duly deleted the RSS account,all the files in the Cache and restarted TB.
On creating the RSS account again the new feed (79 items) was indeed picked up – it looks like TB was always going back to old data in the cache instead of checking the website for the new feed.
I actually confirmed this prior to finding the cache by using Wireshark – the other Feed was doing the GET command OK
Excessive Memory Usage with Firefox 3
Problem: Memory usage by the browser seems to be excessive.
Most opinion seems to suggest that the problem largely lies with inefficient
add-ons but my feeling is that the browser itself isn't entirely blameless.
This wee tip certainly helps a bit -
Go into about:config and create a parameter called config.trim_on_minimize and set the value to true
After setting this I got the following result - (seen with Task Manager)
FF open - c. 139K
FF minimized - c. 4k
FF minimized - usage grew quickly to 60k and stabilized
CSS hover box truncated top with Opera 9.x
Problem: A CSS hover span is used within a content div which is inside
an outershell div. Outside the outershell div the hover span box works fine
but inside the hover box is truncated at the top. Opera 8.52 renders the hover
ok as do most other browsers (IE, Mozilla, etc).
Basically to fix the issue I had to alter the outershell top: from 25px to 0px
and the content div top; of 2px was changed to margin-top: 22px;
An example of the problem is shown - HERE
This is how the hover renders after the CSS is tweaked -
HERE
Thunderbird POP3 receive mail issue with Ipswitch servers
Problem: Thunderbird gets error when logging into V21mail.co.uk POP3
server, works OK into BT Yahoo mail server
Error: Sending of password did not succeed. Mail server
mail.v21net.co.uk responded:
Press OK and then get -
Please enter a new password for user aperson@v21net.co.uk on
mail.v21net.co.uk:
entered password and got -
Sending of password did not succeed. Mail server mail.v21net.co.uk
responded:USER
Logs: Following
Background: This problem occurred with TB on a Thinkpad running XP SP2
and only when a new ISP account was being used.
TB on a desktop P4 running XP SP1 worked OK to the new ISP. Mozilla Mail
1.7.5 worked fine on the Thinkpad.
Details:
Thinkpad R51 XP SP2
ISP v21.co.uk Mail server - Ipswitch IMail 8.00
TB 1.0 (20041206) No security selected for POP or SMTP
Troubleshoot: TB uninstalled from TP, all related folders deleted
(profiles,etc) then reinstalled fresh - still NBG
Note - NBG is No Bloody Good
Tried Ethereal network analyzer and tracked the POP messages. Logs
below.
It seems that TB requests a CAPA (capability list). The BT servers don't
understand this and TB then uses the standard USER/PW in clear text. The
V21 server however supplies a capability list and TB sends a mixture of
USER/PW in clear text and an encrypted form (I don't understand this as
I thought AUTH PLAIN would be in clear text also).
Unfortunately when the encrypted Request is being sent the USER/PW form
is fired out when the encrypted password would be expected and therefore
the authorisation breaks. Mozilla 1.7.5 doesn't appear to use the CAPA
feature.
V21 Capability List
+OK Capability list follows\r\n
TOP\r\n
USER\r\n
SASL LOGIN PLAIN\r\n
RESP-CODES\r\n
LOGIN-DELAY 120\r\n
PIPELINING\r\n
EXPIRE 30 USER\r\n
UIDL\r\n
IMPLEMENTATION Ipswitch_IMail_8.0\r\n
.\r\n
BT -ERR TB then sends USER/PW in clear
V21 +OK TB then sends AUTH PLAIN which fails. PW box pops up and sent
encrypted?
Breakthrough: After much trawling and struggling to understand commands
that relate more to SMTP than POP I discovered a Mozilla Bugzilla
reference which is exactly the problem I had.
Bugzilla 259840
Summary: error retrieving POP3 mail from Ipswitch IMail servers when
using some security products
[Symantec, Norton, Computer Associates, CA, eTrust, antivirus]
It so happened that the Thinkpad had Norton AntiVirus 2004 installed.
Disabling NAV was proving too much of a mission so it was uninstalled
and SUCCESS!! - TB worked fine.
Resolution/workround:
Create or use user.js file with following line -
// Hack to work round bug with FF/Ipswitch Mail Server/AV mail combo -
avoids disabling AV mail screening
user_pref("mail.server.server3.auth_login", false);
eg:Documents and Settings/<user>/Application
Data/Thunderbird/Profiles/68hrtcvs.default/user.js
Outstanding questions:
Q. Why does TB appear to send encrypted USER/PW when no secure is
selected - does the CAPA influence this? I expected AUTH PLAIN to still
use clear text.
Answer: I would like to know more on this - most refs to AUTH PLAIN are
for SMTP not POP interaction.
Q. Why are the error windows giving truncated results?
Answer: Probably a low priority bug maybe?
Q. Ethereal didn't work on the Thinkpad and it looks like this can be
the case with Intel 2200BG wireless cards - it worked with the Intel
100baseT NIC.
Answer: It seems the Intel wireless drivers knobble the promiscuous
feature and somewhere in the bowels of Intel may be a patch ??????
Why the hell does NAV have to be so embedded that it can't just be
disabled ( I disabled the NAVAPSVC and some moronic process re-enabled
it for me and set it to Manual - the damn computers are owning us...)
The troubleshoot logs in text form are
HERE
Thunderbird RSS doesn't receive all items
It seems that if the content of the links field in a RSS item is identical to another item then only the first item will be downloaded.
Unfortunately TB does not appear to use the GUID field which should provide a unique ID for each item. This is an identified bug (BugZilla 260745 & 264482) and is still apparent in TB 1.5.0.5
Crude workround:
If the content is on the same page then use bookmarks to give a unique links
field.
Personally I feel this bug makes TB useless for RSS because if you cannot be
certain that 100% of a feed is being received then what good is it!
Alternatively use an RSS utility that works correctly. I found RSSOwl to be
excellent but does not give the HTML page review as TB does.
An example of the problem is available at www.wanderinghippo.org.nz/rss/test.xml
::::::::::::::::::: Update :::::::::::::::::
RSS 2.0 seems a bit of a crock - I find that most readers do not use the GUID field to
determine uniqueness of an item and therefore whether it is a duplicate item or
should be downloaded as a new item. Indeed, some editors I have tried don't bother
creating a unique GUID for each item.
The LINK field tends to be the decider and in many cases with an RSS feed the link
would normally be unique (as in different news articles, etc) but if it is used to
target a part of a web page (even bookmarked like #bookmark4) where the content may
alter then it is no good. More than one item using #bookmark4 will cause items not
to be downloaded by readers.
As I have found if the LINK points to a location where I have altered the content
then the link itself must be unique to allow the item to be accepted as a new item
by most readers.
eg: siteurl/webpage.html#23
where the hash designates a bookmark and the 23 is just the item's number within the
RSS file. This is enough to land the link on the required page and give uniqueness to
the items. For good measure I use a unique GUID for each item just in case it ever
gets used!
This method works fine with Thunderbird and RSS Owl.
A big whinge!
Not really a bug but annoying - this involves my favourite email client which happens to be Mozilla Mail - why can I not delete an attachment? It seems to me that it makes good sense to be able to save the body texts and discard unwanted attachments. I tend to want to save particular attachments to others areas of the filing system rather than end up with a bloated mail cache in the Mail client.
STOP PRESS: Thunderbird looks like being the saviour with an extension called Attachment Tools that allows deleting, etc of attachments -
http://www.supportware.net/mozilla/#ext9
Even more STOP PRESS: Thunderbird 1.5 supports the deletion of attachments - brilliant!