Spin off from Bug 253886(a DUP of Bug 228649). Bug 127461 introduced mail.pop3_response_timeout(default=45sec.) to resolve "forever wait" problem on 2004-10-26. This has made symptom of Bug 228649 improved. - "forever wait" is improved to "RETR error due to timeout" However, this timeout is not notified to user, then problem such as Bug 270014 or Bug 273369 are reported. The only way to know "timeout" is "get POP3 protocol log" currently. The timeout should be notified to user by error message. Note: Component is set to "Networking: POP" initially. But "timeout" is not POP3 only problem as Bug 127461 Comment #65 says. Error message when timeout should be notified to user for any networking protocol.

taking

fix for 189363 will fix this.

OK, mail.pop3_response_timeout is now obsolete/deprecated. mailnews now uses one pref, mailnews.tcptimeout for all our timeouts (imap/pop3/nntp/smtp...). And now you should get an alert on a timeout. I'm sorry I had to deprecate mail.pop3_response_timeout, but now the timeout is more general.

Was this fixed by bug 189363 (which is still not resolved), or is it actually WORKSFORME or even INVALID at this point?

yes, as I said in Comment #2 - the fix in bug 189363 will fix this as well. bug 189363 is still open because I have to check in the imap fix. The pop3 fix was checked in earlier, and this bug is about pop3.