Open Bug 441710 Opened 16 years ago Updated 2 years ago

[meta/tracker] Thunderbird compose and/or UI occasionally freezes/slow ONLY when calendar/lightning is installed BUT no issue when calendar is NOT installed

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Mail Window Front End
Platform:
x86
All
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
critical

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: gschiro, Unassigned)

References

(Depends on 5 open bugs, Blocks 1 open bug,
URL
)

Details

(Keywords: meta, perf, Whiteboard: [see blocking bugs][not for users who do not have calendar installed])

User Story

1. Note well this bug's summary and whiteboard.

2. User has performance problem when calendar is installed AND no performance problem (or significantly reduced) when calendar NOT installed.

3. If user has problem when calendar is NOT installed, see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Memory_Usage_Problems to perform basic diagnosis, and then if necessary create a support topic or bug report as indicated in the wiki.

Attachments

(2 files)

about:buildconfig compiled on Gentoo
(deleted), text/plain
Details
about:buildconfig for mozilla binary
(deleted), text/plain
Details
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0 Build Identifier: version 2.0.0.14 (20080421) Hi, I'm using the most recent Thunderbird release. When I am typing a new email, Thunderbird freezes for about a minute and then re-activates. This happens frequently. I'm not sure if occurrence is related to time elapsed or to the number of characters typed. I use the BullGuard spam filter and the calendar plugin. I tried re-installing Thunderbird but it is still occurring. I also turned off the BullGuard spam filter but no luck. It is bad enough that I will have to go back to Outlook if I can't fix the problem. Any ideas? Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.begin typing a new email 2.after a while Thunderbird freezes for about a minute 3.Thunderbird unfreezes, but the problem occurs again after a few minutes or typing a few characters. Actual Results: You will see the same results Expected Results: Not frozen
have you tried safe mode? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_Mode#Windows
I can confirm this same behaviour; reproduces as described, although my freezes are shorter but annoying as well; 3 to 20 seconds. Thunderbird version 2.0.0.14 (20080421) Windows Vista Home Premium Intel Core2 Duo PC T7500 @2.2Ghz 3,00 Gb ram Best regards, Jeroen
Try "thunderbird.exe -safe-mode" (per comment 1). Also make sure your firewall and/or antivirus isn't causing it.
Is there any message in the status bar while it's frozen? I wonder if it's freezing while it's saving a draft, for instance.
Those freezes might be related to the calendar-plugin. At least I noticed the same behaviour every time lightning was updating its calendars. Setting a short update-delay with multiple calendars effectively results in a near-to-useless composing window.
(In reply to comment #0) > Steps to Reproduce: > 1.begin typing a new email > 2.after a while Thunderbird freezes for about a minute > 3.Thunderbird unfreezes, but the problem occurs again after a few minutes or typing a few characters. To S. George Schiro(bug opener): Same question as Bug 450215 Comment #4.
(In reply to comment #3) > Try "thunderbird.exe -safe-mode" (per comment 1). > Also make sure your firewall and/or antivirus isn't causing it. Safe-mode is indeed a workaround for this problem.
I too am experiencing this, and only within the last month. Nothing new added that I'm aware of. I do use calendar pluging and hotmail plugin. I have the exact same setup on my other computer, which does not have the hang condition. I read in some forum to try fixing address book, another to reinstall. I've tried everything. My most drastic was deleting everything (including the whole Thunderbird directory in profile area, after uninstall and reboot), and starting from scratch. Still happens. I have WinXP, Thunderbird 2.0.0.17, Lightning 0.9, Provider for Google Calendar 0.5.1, WebMail 1.3.2, WebMail-Hotmail 1.2.18, and PitchDark 2.0.3. Again, all the same as my other computer. I also compact folders and have basically no e-mails (since I deleted everything and started from scratch). From calendars I have 6 google calendars, some with quite a few events. I also have it checking 4 e-mail accounts (actually 3 at the moment since I have hotmail disabled until that plugin works again). I used to think the hangs were associated to calendar refresh or e-mail checking. I changed the calendar refresh to once every 3 hours, and e-mails from every 5 min to every 20 min. I changed the autosave while typing e-mails out a ways too. Nothing has worked, and Thunderbird continues to hang at regular (so it seems) intervals for 30 or so seconds. Again, the exact same Thunderbird config as my other computer, same accts and calendars, and no issues on that computer.
Forgot to add, it recreates in safe mode.
I was not able to reproduce in safe mode, though I remembered it was recreating in safe mode before I did the complete reinstall. Since it wasn't recreating now in safe mode, that did point back at something like plugins. I disabled WebMail 1.3.2 and WebMail-Hotmail 1.2.18 and now things seem to be running smoothly again. I'm not sure if the WebMail plugins are broke, or if it is because MS Hotmail is still not working with the plugins correctly (has been broken for the last month or so, due to MS Hotmail new updates).
Although, this still doesn't explain why my other computer with same setup and WebMail still enabled doesn't experience any issues.
Spoke too soon... still happens (the periodic hangs)... ugg!
Found solution... http://groups.google.com/group/provider-for-google-calendar/browse_thread/thread/fcdca534c04663ff?hl=en# The issue was Provider for Google Calendar running an invitation lookup every 3 minutes that was consuming CPU. To disable it, edit the configuration (Options/Advanced/Edit config), look for "calendar.invitations.autorefresh.enabled" and set it to "false".
Whiteboard: Tried to edit advanced config to set "calendar.invitations.autorefresh.enabled" to false, but that sting is not on the list.
I tried editing the advanced edit list to set the string "calendar.invitations.autorefresh.enabled" to false as suggested. However, I could not find that string in the list.
I'm in no way an expert on Thunderbird, but here are the steps I took and versions I have: Thunderbird - 2.0.0.18 Lightning - 0.9 Provider for Google Calendar - 0.5.1 I started seeing the hang when I went to the latest Thunderbird or Provider for Google Calendar. Both about the same time, so I can't remember which. From Thunderbird menus, I went to Tools -> Options then to the Advanced tab and then the General tab, and then clicked Config Editor. Then in the Filter at the top I typed "calendar.invitations.autorefresh.enabled" and the item was the only Preference Name listed. It was set to true, so I clicked on it, which changed it to false. I then closed that window, and OK out of the Options menu. It still hangs a bit when I first start Thunderbird, but that is because it is checking 4 e-mail accounts and sync'ing 8 calendars. No periodic hangs noticed after that like i was before.
Prefs can be added by right clicking in the config editor. (No idea if changing the pref will help you.)
Whiteboard: Tried to edit advanced config to set "calendar.invitations.autorefresh.enabled" to false, but that sting is not on the list.
So strictly speaking this is not a thunderbird bug, but it would be good to keep open for searchability until the related issues are fixed. Shall we make this a meta to the relevant calendar and other bugs, some of which are mentioned in http://groups.google.com/group/provider-for-google-calendar/browse_thread/thread/fcdca534c04663ff?hl=en&pli=1 ?
Severity: critical → major
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Component: General → Mail Window Front End
Ever confirmed: true
Keywords: perf
QA Contact: general → front-end
Summary: Thunderbird freezes unexpectedly and continually when typing emails → Thunderbird compose and UI occasionally freezes for 3-60 seconds unexpectedly and continually
Wayne: sounds reasonable to me.
Done. Dependent on bug 455939, bug 456208, bug 449449, bug 387014 If there is a calendar+thunderbird integration bug that this should block, or similar perf bugs that this should depend on, please make it so.
Depends on: 455939, 456208, 449449, 387014
Keywords: meta
Summary: Thunderbird compose and UI occasionally freezes for 3-60 seconds unexpectedly and continually → Thunderbird compose and UI occasionally freezes for 3-60 seconds unexpectedly and continually - caused by calendar issues [meta]
Depends on: 505420
Hi All, I'm having the same problem running Thunderbird 3.0.1 on WinXP. Setting "calendar.invitations.autorefresh.enabled" to "false" didn't work; however turning off "Address Autocompletion" under "Tools > Options > Compose" appeared to work. Hence, what I experience is a thunderbird bug. Any suggestions? Thanks, Andrew
Hi all, the problem persists at my machine despite all the workarounds given above. (No Calendar caching, invitation-refresh disabled, also according to nanoboy's tip in Comment 21 adress completion was disabled). Perhaps this might help finding the crucial point: when looking at the thread-table, almost all the CPU-Consumption during a freeze is caused by a thread with starting point: "thunderbird.exe!nsTransform2D::TransformCoord+0x...." Persists both on WinXP and Linux: * Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.4) Gecko/20100608 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1) * Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070801 SUSE/2.0.0.6-22 Thunderbird/2.0.0.6 Mnenhy/0.7.5.0
sorry, the Linux part in Comment 22 should read: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 SUSE/3.0.4-2.3 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.4
Depends on: 569555, 576017
Summary: Thunderbird compose and UI occasionally freezes for 3-60 seconds unexpectedly and continually - caused by calendar issues [meta] → Thunderbird compose and UI occasionally freezes/slow for 3-60 seconds unexpectedly and continually - caused by calendar/lightning issues [meta]
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:6.0.2) Gecko/20110902 Thunderbird/6.0.2 Application Build ID: 20110902221921 Lightning, 1.0b5 Much more obvious when Lightning is refreshing remote calendars (locks up UI) under 6.0.x than under 3.x builds. Lockout time -seems- to be dependent on network speed, though this may be cognitive bias (I haven't timed it). Setting calendar refresh to 60 minutes makes lockups less frequent (as one would hope). Seems to be about 3-5 seconds for responsiveness to return to the UI.
I see same problem.
I get the same problem with Thunderbird 8.0 and Lightning 1.0. I completely recreated my profile in an attempt to fix the problem if it was caused by any corrupted files in my profile, but it wasn't. Whatever it is that is causing this critical failure of Thunderbird+Lightning, the default settings (eg turning off that invitation thing if required) then it should be done. The default settings should not allow such an unusable configuration. Why such a thing should block the GUI from accepting input I have no idea. At one time I think I was told that the Thunderbird secure connection (SSL etc) engine was not thread-safe, and for that reason SSL connections are set to run in the main thread. Could that be part of this problem?
Hi, I'm running: - Thunderbird 10.0.2 - Lightning 1.2.1 with 11 remote calendars - Windows 7, 64bit And experiencing exactly the same issue on several PS systems.
please note that the purpose of this meta is not really for comments bug to connect to bugs which cause problems, so it is the blocking bugs which need attention and assistance. If there is not a blocking bug, nor any other calendar preformance bug [1] that describes your problem, then you should please file a new calendar bug. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?type1-0-0=substring;keywords=perf;keywords_type=allwords;list_id=2416252;field0-0-0=short_desc;type0-0-1=substring;field0-0-1=keywords;type1-0-1=allwordssubstr;resolution=---;classification=Client%20Software;classification=Components;query_format=advanced;type0-0-0=anywordssubstr;field1-0-0=short_desc;product=Calendar;field1-0-1=short_desc
Whiteboard: [see blocking bugs]
Thunderbird freezes for me when lightning is installed. I am using Lightning for google calendars. It freezes for both "Provider for Google Calendar" or "CalDAV" access. Furthermore, thunderbird does not show this when Lightning is disabled/uninstalled. What is even more interesting is that the compiled version of thunderbird, vie Gentoo e-builds, is freezing for LONGER times and uses the CPU more intense than the binary version made available by mozilla. For your reference, I will attach the compiled flags for both versions, maybe it is useful for developers.
Attached file about:buildconfig compiled on Gentoo (deleted) —
about:buildconfig for a Gentoo compiled version
Attached file about:buildconfig for mozilla binary (deleted) —
about:buildconfig for the binary provided by mozilla
Depends on: 592876
Depends on: 733039
please file new bugs for issues that are not in the blocking list nor in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?negate1=1;type1-0-0=substring;list_id=3239809;field0-0-0=short_desc;type0-0-1=anywordssubstr;field0-0-1=keywords;type1-0-1=allwordssubstr;resolution=---;classification=Client%20Software;classification=Components;query_format=advanced;value1-0-0=441710;value0-0-1=perf%20hang;type0-0-0=anywordssubstr;value0-0-0=perf%20slow%20freez;field1-0-0=blocked;product=Calendar;field1-0-1=short_desc
Summary: Thunderbird compose and UI occasionally freezes/slow for 3-60 seconds unexpectedly and continually - caused by calendar/lightning issues [meta] → Thunderbird compose and UI occasionally freezes/slow for 3-60 seconds unexpectedly and continually - tracking of issues caused by calendar/lightning [meta]
Whiteboard: [see blocking bugs] → [see blocking bugs][
I have exactly the same problem and it is NOT RELATED TO CALENDAR because I never used any calendar with Thunderbird (also if I look in "Tools -> Options" then "Advanced" tab, then "General" tab, then "Config Editor", if I filter at the top with the word "Calendar", or "calendar", nothing at all is listed). I have Thunderbird 13.0.1 on Windows XP, with the following extensions and plug-ins installed: * Extensions: - British English Dictionary 1.19.1 - CompactHeader 2.0.6 - Diccionario de Espanol/Espana 1.5 - Diccionario espanol Argentina 2.5 - Extra Polder Columns 1.1.4 - German Dictionary 2.0.2 - ImportExportTools 2.7.2.1 - Quicktext 0.9.11.1 - Russian Hunspell spellchecking dictionary 1.0.20120501 - Test Pilot for Thunderbird 1.3.9 - United States English Spellchecker 6.0 - Woordenboek Nederlands 3.1.0 * Plug-ins: - Adobe Acrobat 10.1.3.23 - DivX Web Player 1.4.0.233 - Express View 5.0.2.2248 - Foxit Reader Plugin for Mozilla 2.1.1.720 - iTunes Application Detector 1.0.1.1 - Java Deployment Toolkit 6.0.300.12 6.0.300.12 - LizardTech DjVu 6.1.1.1574 - MetaStream 3 Plugin 3.0.11.13 - Microsoft Office 2010 14.0.4761.1000 - Microsoft Office 2010 14.0.4730.1010 - Microsoft® DRM 9.0.0.4503 - Microsoft® DRM 9.0.0.4503 - QuickTime Plug-in 7.7.2 7.7.2.0 - RealJukebox NS Plugin 1.0.2.2629 - RealPlayer Version Plugin 6.0.12.1739 - RealPlayer(tm) G2 LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-in (32-bit) 6.0.11.2105 - Shockwave Flash 11.3.300.262 - Shockwave for Director 11.5.7.609 - Silverlight Plug-in 4.1.10329.0 - Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library 3.0.2.629 - Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5.30729.1
(In reply to François R-Champigneul from comment #34) > I have exactly the same problem and it is NOT RELATED TO CALENDAR > because I never used any calendar with Thunderbird Then this would not be the correct place to post, François :) Because this bug is all about calendar. You should instead have a search at http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/
Whiteboard: [see blocking bugs][ → [see blocking bugs]
I believe, at least as far as my system is concerned, nanoboy is on to something. What's interesting is that safe mode fixes it, specifically disabling Lightning fixes it, but -- surprise -- turning off the "Tools > Options > Composition > Addressing tab > Local Address Books" checkbox also fixes it, even with Lightning enabled! This assumes my results aren't random. Is there *any* point of interaction between those two pieces of code? For example, does Lightning make use of e-mail addresses in event invitee lists that might be triggering an autocomplete check deeper in a shared call by accident? (In reply to nanoboy from comment #21) > Hi All, > > I'm having the same problem running Thunderbird 3.0.1 on WinXP. Setting > "calendar.invitations.autorefresh.enabled" to "false" didn't work; however > turning off "Address Autocompletion" under "Tools > Options > Compose" > appeared to work. > > Hence, what I experience is a thunderbird bug. Any suggestions? > > Thanks, > Andrew
(In reply to Tom Guyette from comment #36) > > Is there *any* point of interaction between those two pieces of code? For > example, does Lightning make use of e-mail addresses in event invitee lists > that might be triggering an autocomplete check deeper in a shared call by > accident? Tom, how many total addresses in your various address books? Do you use google contacts or other addon to augment/sync your address book? What are you doing when you experience this slowness? Fallen, Stefan, is there a possible connection between calendar and address book?
The only connection I know of between Lightning and Addressbooks is that we also use the addressbook/ldap search in our attendees dialog. This doesn't interact with the addressing components in any way though.
1191 contacts in just the stock Thunderbird address book, some of which contain lots of text notes in "Other." Enabled add-ons are: Lightning 1.5.2 MoreFunctionsForAddressBook 0.6.7.4 Test Pilot for Thunderbird 1.3.9 Disabled (for a few weeks now): Zindus 0.8.38 (synch with Google address book). Under the slowdown conditions, the slowness is everywhere in the client -- it's most obvious when composing e-mail, where I would get bursts of approximately 10 characters typed before they appeared on the screen; the rest of the UI would also be slowed (Thunderbird took a similar amount of time to hear a button click to disable Lightning in the Add-ons Manager, for example). (In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #37) > (In reply to Tom Guyette from comment #36) > > > > Is there *any* point of interaction between those two pieces of code? For > > example, does Lightning make use of e-mail addresses in event invitee lists > > that might be triggering an autocomplete check deeper in a shared call by > > accident? > > Tom, how many total addresses in your various address books? Do you use > google contacts or other addon to augment/sync your address book? What are > you doing when you experience this slowness? > > Fallen, Stefan, is there a possible connection between calendar and address > book?
Ok if it happens everywhere thats another thing. Do you have Google Calendars subscribed? Try disabling them. Do you have the cache enabled for any of your calendars? How many calendars do you have and of what type are they? Does this happen every 30 minutes, or in whatever update interval you have configured in Lightnings Calendars? If you are using caldav calendars, try enabling the cache for them.
I think we're chasing multiple moving parts here ... the behavior isn't consistent enough to perform thorough tests in a reasonable period of time. I have two Google calendars. To my knowledge, I am using CalDAV. When Thunderbird was in an OK state, enabling caching seemed to toss it over the deep end again, though it seems to have cleared up after 5 minutes or so. This time, turning off address autocomplete during this seizure did not change the behavior. I'm out of ideas at this point.
(In reply to Tom Guyette from comment #41) > I'm out of ideas at this point. OK. And we should move this discussion out of meta bug. Please file a new bug. Or support topic at http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/
Depends on: 753297
Compare bug 753343. This bug almost led me to drop TB as my mail client, before I found out that Lightning is at fault.
Depends on: 753343
fallen, this really needs serious attention.
Assignee: nobody → philipp
This problem disappeared for a while and re-appeared a couple days ago with a vengeance. Is there any sort of debug logging I can turn on to see how long certain operations are taking so I can file something useful?
Hi Tom, there is the new Gecko Profiler… Details at http://mikeconley.ca/blog/2012/06/15/gecko-profiler-now-works-in-thunderbird-daily/ If you run it, please file a new bug with the results, and cc: Fallen and Wsmwk. Thanks, Blake.
@bwinton, I wasn't able to install this addon in the version of Thunderbird I'm using (it says it's not compatible). If I were to switch to a daily build there's no guarantee I'd still see the behavior I'm seeing. Thoughts?
No particular thoughts, other than perhaps try a daily build, and see if the behaviour crops up… (On the plus side, if it doesn't, problem solved. ;) mconley? Do you have any ideas?
(In reply to Tom Guyette from comment #47) > @bwinton, I wasn't able to install this addon in the version of Thunderbird > I'm using (it says it's not compatible). If I were to switch to a daily > build there's no guarantee I'd still see the behavior I'm seeing. Thoughts? The Profiler is our best tool to try to narrow down problems like this. What version of Thunderbird are you running, on which OS?
Flags: needinfo?(guyette)
@mconley: 17.0.2 on Windows 7 x64 Ultimate. @bwinton: Funny about "problem solved."
Flags: needinfo?(guyette)
(In reply to Tom Guyette from comment #50) > @mconley: 17.0.2 on Windows 7 x64 Ultimate. > > @bwinton: Funny about "problem solved." The Gecko Profiler version available on AMO is compatible with TB 16 and up - see https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/gecko-profiler/. It is also compatible with Windows. Where does it say it is not compatible? Will it not allow to download it from AMO, or does it complain via a notification bar within Thunderbird?
@mconley: The plugin linked in the blog post above gave a message when trying to install the .xpi file in Thunderbird. However, the link you posted worked. Now I can't figure out how to start it up -- I don't see anything extra in the status bar as the documentation says ... I assume the regular builds don't have hooks installed to run it? If it requires reinstalling Thunderbird there's obviously an issue ... installing a new version could lose whatever symptoms are being observed in the first place, and the whole point of Thunderbird is to have a stable mail client, so swapping to a daily build is a pretty heavy price to put on a casual user.
Make sure you are running 1.11.11, there are some issues with the latest public version. You can get it from the all versions page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/gecko-profiler/versions/1.11.11
@fallen, OK, 1.11.11 is installed as an add-on in Thunderbird 17.0.2. I still don't see anything in any toolbar that allows me to start / stop profiling. Please advise on how I can produce something useful.
just a friendly reminder folks - this is a meta bug. So ideally this recent activity should also be a "real" bug report. And for sure any fix activity wants a new bug which blocks this one, because this bug is going to stay open.
Summary: Thunderbird compose and UI occasionally freezes/slow for 3-60 seconds unexpectedly and continually - tracking of issues caused by calendar/lightning [meta] → [meta] Thunderbird compose and UI occasionally freezes/slow for 3-60 seconds unexpectedly and continually - tracking of issues caused by calendar/lightning
(In reply to Tom Guyette from comment #54) > @fallen, OK, 1.11.11 is installed as an add-on in Thunderbird 17.0.2. I > still don't see anything in any toolbar that allows me to start / stop > profiling. Please advise on how I can produce something useful. Yikes, not sure this is going to work. The Gecko Profiler 1.11.11, among other things, adapted to a change in one of the library paths that recently landed in our Daily builds. That change is not present in Thunderbird 17.0.2, so I don't know if that version of the profiler will work. The version listed on AMO, 1.10.17 should do the trick. It *should*, once enabled, put two items in your status bar. Make sure you have the status bar visible.
@mconley: Gecko Profiler 1.10.17 is installed in TB 17.0.2 -- Status bar is on (I turned it off and on to make sure), and there are no additional items in the status bar. When I can reproduce this again, I would actually propose someone do a TeamViewer session with me and they can investigate to their hearts' content with the bug in captivity. I ditched my sqlite cache (again) tonight and am hoping that will clear things up for a while. It took 5-10 minutes upon re-launching TB, accompanied by constant hard drive thrash, for my two calendars to load up again and for TB to unfreeze (offline support is still turned on). FWIW, total size of the cache.sqlite file upon completion is 3840 KB.
Depends on: 841508
Depends on: 841995
Depends on: 918175
Moin Moin. (In reply to meincontainer from comment #5) > Those freezes might be related to the calendar-plugin. > > At least I noticed the same behaviour every time lightning was updating its > calendars. Setting a short update-delay with multiple calendars effectively > results in a near-to-useless composing window. As 1. many coleagues are reporting problems with the plugins, 2. the problems did not exist in Version prior to my 24.3 Update (I do believe I used TB17 until then, and am cursing me for updating it.), it does seem to be a thread-dispatchment-problem within the main-thread. Maybe some of the plugins are doing heavy stuff withing their doSomething(...) functions, maybe the main-thread does contain a semaphro-problem. As I have made this type of error for myself, I wanted to forward it to one of the developers. Does anyone know, how to perform such an action. _Tschuess, __Michael.
Will someone who has the necessary permissions please increase the priority of this bug? It is so annoying and frequent that it makes me want to pull my hair out. In my particular case, this issue is directly linked to the "Google Calendar Provider for Lightning" add-on. Disabling this addon makes the problem go away. The problem is so bad at this point that I am considering dropping Thunderbird (after 5+ years of use).
Changing the priority won't fix the bug, sorry. Performance isn't a matter of writing a few lines, there is much more to it and its an ongoing effort. There is a GSoC Project proposed to improve the situation.
Fallen, what's the current intended approach?
There are quite a few places I imagine could impact performance or at least perceived performance, but for starters I think the best thing to do is to double check and identify the bottlenecks using the gecko profiler. There have already been a few nice improvements you can feel in the nightly builds, namely WAL being enabled and a patch to load the items into the alarms dialog asynchronously. If the projects is chosen, the process will basicly be 0. write some perf tests 1. profile 2. identify bottleneck 3. fix it 4. Continue with (1).
Indeed. There are plenty of blocking bugs identified. Engage. Chip away.
Moin Moin. Apart from thinking a general performanceanalysis so be a good idea, maybe putting an SQL-Server beyond it, I did mention a specific trigger. > 2. the problems did not exist in Version prior to my 24.3 Update (I do believe I used TB17 until then > , and am cursing me for updating it.), . So, if I had a developmentenvironment (but I do not see a download for Visualstudio), I would be looking for version-changes in calls to something lengthy like opening some files.: For example, there are some 1. excessive 0.0246021s calls to IRP_MJ_FLUSH_BUFFERS on "Profiles\<profilename>.default\_CACHE_CLEAN_" 2. or explicitly non(!!!)-cached calls to IRP_MJ_READ on my inbox (all according to "http://download.sysinternals.com/files/ProcessMonitor.zip"). So, as it did function before (I am still biting myself for upgrading and asking myself, whether it might be safe to downgrade it to thunderbird 17 or so) switching to thunderbird 23, how about switching on the caching again, calling the buffering-flush asynchronously or whatever (the functionality must have been encoded in the former thunderbird versions, somewhen ). _Tschuess, __Michael.
Moin Moin. I am unsure, as to what helped, but I performed two actions.: 0. updated Thunderbird to 24.6. 1. removed global-messages-db.sqlite (1,8GB in length), which has been rebuilt to 84MB. _Tschuess, __Michael.
While I agree performance with Lightning should be improved, I don't think this is something fixed in a single bug like this one. I will be looking for ways to improve performance even without being assigned to this bug.
Assignee: philipp → nobody
Philipp, Nonsense. Users are not complaining about performance in general. We are complaining about a specific issue that is affecting us in a big way. Performance issues won't be fixed by waving that away. There is no excuse for running computationally-expensive tasks on the UI thread. From my point of view, I don't care if the actual task is slow, so long as it stops hanging the UI. Fix the threading problem first and you can optimize the actual task (so it runs faster) at a later itme.
Seriously, I am not trying to play anything down, or find an excuse to not work on performance. Aside from test coverage, performance is an important task on the roadmap and moving things off of the main thread is a good way to go about that. Its just not a matter of writing a single patch to attach to this bug. Its more likely a series of patches to make some of our old code asynchronous and then move off processing into workers. I just would like to remove myself as the assignee here, since I believe most of the work will be done in other bugs, which will each have their own developer working on it.
Philipp, Thank for you clearing that up. I apologize for the misunderstanding. Keep up the good work :)
I am using version 31.3.0 on OpenSuse. Thunderbird regularly freezes for quite a long time (>1 min) but I may have identified the cause. I have 3 accounts. It seems that it freezes while trying to get mail from one of the account but at this moment the pop server is not available. For example when I use my professional VPN and it cannot access any more pop.gmail.
Removed myslef. Bug is less relevant for me. Doing all my callendar administration on an Android phone.
So I am running Thunderbird under Fedora. It identifies itself as 31.6.0 I keep seeing this frustrating "lock-up" while I am composing a message. It "goes away" for 10-30 seconds (I should keep my stopwatch handy and time it). I tell myself, this is a quad core Pentium i7 running at 3.3 Ghz, why can't it keep up with my typing?? What could it possibly be doing other than being my mail client and helping me compose mail messages? OK, I am frustrated, but if I can do anything to help fix this let me know. I have done no customization of Thunderbird that I am aware of, but maybe there are things I can check for and disable ???
I went to Tools -> Add Ons and checked the Plugins. There were 4 (apparently configured by Fedora, because I didn't set them up). Namely: Gnome Shell, Iced Tea, iTunes, and Shockwave Flash. I selected "Never Activate" on all 4 of these, and we will see if this makes things better. If I should do something more aggressive about these or try something else entirely, let me know. For all I know it is checking iTunes, which would be hilarious because I don't have any kind of iTunes account.
Disabling the plugins didn't fix the problem. So I tried Safe mode. That didn't fix it either. In fact I got a 10 second freeze shortly after starting up in safe mode (I have the stopwatch handy now) when I began composing a message.
Well, this is clearly no priority in anyones book. The fix for me was the delete all of my mail prior to January 2015. This eliminated some 20,000 messages that I had "archived". After this I deleted my Thunderbird profile, saving just my contacts list and started from scratch. Now things run nicely, but clearly Thunderbird is badly engineered in terms of letting the user interaction thread (if there is one) get bogged down by what I would call routine housekeeping. Even with my small amount of mail, I just began using Thunderbird on a computer where I had not viewed mail in a few weeks and the compose window and mail view window are unresponsive while it is fetching new mail via IMAP. My guess is that some major strategic changes in Thunderbird are needed to make the user interface be decoupled from what ought to be background tasks.
I have the same problem. The UI freeezes. I have 4 mail accounts and one of them is gmail. The reason for the freeze is that I am in currently in China and gmail is blocked by Chinese authorities. But it is not OK that Thunderbird UI freezes when one of the mail accounts cannot be accessed. I have the workaround to work "offline" to access my old email.
(In reply to Tom Trebisky from comment #75) (In reply to Vania Joloboff from comment #76) This bug tracks performance issues with Lightning calendaring extension. Based on your descriptions I don't see any relation of your problems with the Lightning calendaring extension.
Using iMAC Retina 27" and can confirm the same problem. It's frustrating. UI freezes whenever I try to do something, then lets go. Are you guys running background tasks on UI thread?! Come on people! This sucks big time. It freezes typing emails, trying to open email, you never know when the timer (I imagine that's what you're using) will run its task.
But this hanging on writing is not a feature of calendar/lightning - it persists after calendar and lightning is turned off for almost everyone. The problem is a bug in the core thunderbird across platforms.
Depends on: 860822
OS: Windows XP → All
Summary: [meta] Thunderbird compose and UI occasionally freezes/slow for 3-60 seconds unexpectedly and continually - tracking of issues caused by calendar/lightning → [meta] Thunderbird compose and UI occasionally freezes/slow for 3-60 seconds unexpectedly and continually - tracking of issues caused ONLY when calendar/lightning is installed
Whiteboard: [see blocking bugs] → [see blocking bugs][not for users who do not have calendar installed]
What's worst for me is that key strokes inside the compose window are interpreted by the main window when compose freezes. Depending on what you type, random actions may be taken, for example: As an example if you happen to type "cares" during the time of the freeze, it will (a) archive, (r) mark as read (or unread), (s) star the message. I've seen messages deleted, starred, an entire folder marked as read, tags removed or added, ...
I have the same behaviour as Thomas, and it is driving me insane. Thunderbird is completely unusable, and I have been losing messages due to the random invocation of characters typed as hotkey commands. I thought the problem went away when I disabled AVG, but that turns out not to be the case. I have been using the following Add Ons, which I have just disabled to test if that helps: Compact Header 2.1.0 Folderpane Tools 0.6.1 Send Later 4.4.4
John, just now I disabled FolderPane Tools 0.6.1, but that didn't solve it for me. I don't have any other plugins that weren't already installed long before this started happening. However, I noticed that when this lagging behaviour happens, there's always a flash of a progress bar in the bottom right of the main window. I therefore decided to look into settings. Here's something that *might* reduce or even fix it for you: Go to settings Advanced tab General -> I turned on "Use hardware acceleration when available" Data Choices -> Uncheck "Enable Telemetry" I reckon the latter is the culprit to be honest. Some idiot is trying to get telemetry data, but running the data collection on the UI thread, thus locking it up. Afterwards it's not 100% smooth sailing, but so far it's been fewer lock ups with reduced severity! To back this up further, my wife has not experienced the issue, and as I look at her TB configuration just now, Telemetry was off.
Thanks, Thomas, Disabling the Add Ons has not helped, and your suggestions did not work for me either. I already had telemetry disabled. I am encountering this problem every few minutes and the impact is devastating. Not sure why I have not yet uninstalled Thunderbird, but so far I hate all the alternatives I have explored. John
This bug is not a support forum, or a general discussion list for freezing. IF you disable the Lightning extension and your issue continues, this is not the place to discuss it. In this Bug your comments amount to spam if they are not on topic. Your choices are File a bug describing your issues and the steps to reproduce them. or File a support request in the forum. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/thunderbird
In defense of recent commenters, even most of the initial comments from 5 years ago don't agree on whether this is caused by lightning/calendar, or even related to it. A number of commenters have reported the problem continuing through safe mode. I have filed a new bug here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1222691 I therefore invite anyone whose compose window still freezes randomly even after disabling the calendar to comment and vote there.
This bug is EXPLICITLY only for users affected by calendar as stated in whiteboard and bug summary. And now detailed also in the user story.
User Story: (updated)
Summary: [meta] Thunderbird compose and UI occasionally freezes/slow for 3-60 seconds unexpectedly and continually - tracking of issues caused ONLY when calendar/lightning is installed → [meta/tracker] Thunderbird compose and/or UI occasionally freezes/slow ONLY when calendar/lightning is installed BUT no issue when calendar is NOT installed
Windows 10, TB 38.3.0, Lightning 4.0.3.1 I have the same experience as all of the others: while composing an email, TB regularly freezes for many seconds (5-30). When Thunderbird locks up, it hits Memory and Disk very hard (according to the Task Manager). The issue goes away if I disable Lightning. Something in Lightning appears to be blocking the main (UI) thread for Thunderbird.
Fedora 21, Tb 38.1.0 (38.1.0-1.fc21), Lightning 4.0.2.1 Tb UI Freezing on nearly every action (switch to main window, switch to different folder, scroll inside email, compose new email) -- but not every time. Works fast immediately after Tb restart -- but if Lightning is enabled, slow response reappears after a few dozen minutes. While the UI is frozen, 1 CPU core (out of 4+4) is maxed out Please let me know if there are any reasonable debug/diagnostic tools I can use to help figure this out (GDB is probably too low level for this)
Depends on: 1192209
A lot has changed in 2 years' time. Is this still the case with current TB/Lightning?
this Problem does still persist and nobody seems to work on it for years - also at the duplicate? of this bug 733039 nothing is happening - it is even not assigned to somebody. Dear Mozilla-Foundation, you would make me and a lot of other users really happy if you could fix this issue! It makes Thunderbird almost unusable because after every click on an Mail i have to wait a second until it is displayed. also, when i am writing some text, it sometimes hangs for a couple of seconds. so it is not possible to work effective with thunderbird! you introduced multithreaded behavier for Firefox some days ago - maybe you could do that for Thunderbird aswell? Or maybe there would be just a way to "extract lightning" to a separate thread? whatever can be the solution, i beg you, please find it!
The issue is that it is really hard to pinpoint this to a specific issue. I'm not sure anymore if this is about those random freezes, or if it is a general "fix performance" bug. In the latter case, this bug isn't really actionable and we should probably close it. Again (from earlier comments), this doesn't mean it is not important, just that given we don't have a single issue to pinpoint, it would just turn into a catchall for everyone that has performance issues in Lightning. For the former case, for a short while I was having these issues, but they went away again after a few days before I could debug them. There is no sense in making random threading and process changes that would maybe fix this issue, it would be necessary for someone that is a developer to experience/reproduce this and then figure out where the issue is. A side note, the Mozilla Foundation is the Umbrella for Thunderbird, but the project is separate. We do not get additional developer resources and can't tap into the expertise from the team that did multithreading in Firefox, aside from asking them questions. The work will have to be done by the Thunderbird project. I know this doesn't really change your premise, you (and probably all of us!) want this issue fixed. Thank you for your understanding!
I can reproduce "Thunderbird intermittently takes over 10 seconds to delete email" with all updates installed fairly reliably, at least a few times a week. I would be glad to assist with debug if you would like to connect privately and advise on methods. I'm a former programmer so savvy enough to understand instructions, I just don't know this framework to enough depth to operate on my own.
This is what makes it so difficult, I don't think I'd have any specific instructions. My approach would be purely explorative, disabling parts of the code until it stops happening, then figuring out if there is anything in that code that could cause delays, and possibly re-enabling it to see if that was really it or it was just a coincidence. You could try to use the devtools profiler, although I am not sure how much information you could pull from that without combining it with explorative testing.
I can reproduce this problem - i would say, everyday - not only while deleting mails. it happens whenever i write a longer mail. also me, i am a "former" programmer, and i could assist, but unfortunatelly, i dont have the time and knowledge to run that deep into the project to debug by myselfe. Philipp, i have no idea about the devtools profiler and how to use it and if it is possible to point out the source, but wouldn't it be an option, to create some logfiles that just log the time-ammount a function/method used? instead of disabling code, you could just insert something like timestart = now; function/method(); timeend = now; write_to_speed_logfile(timeend-timestart); before and after every call to point out the problem? while this application is not multithreaded this should be relative simple to point out. we just need to write that logs to a file if it will hang for more then a second while typing text (which could be detected relative simple, i guess). it's just an idea... another attempt will be to recreate my thunderbird-profile. i talked to my college right now, they have the same calendars (but less email-adresses) inside lightning, and my newer colleges dindn't recognized a problem like this. so i will create a complete new thunderbridprofile and monitor, if the problem still occurs than.. maybe that will help. i will let you know in case. by the way, i can use another browser, switch to chrome or whatever wouldn't be that big problem. there are a lot of alternatives, but thunderbird is - for me - a musthave without alternatives! there is no opensource-tool for calendar/mails, that is strong and modern like thunderbird. maybe the mozilla-foundation should change the focus a little? ;-)

This bug depends on Bug 1502923 which explained in detail the cause of current ongoing UI occasionally freezes/slow ONLY when calendar/lightning is installed (but I don't have the power to indicate in the meta information of this bug for improved tracking/follow up). Currently observed in TB stable version and TB version 66.0b1 (32-bit).

Depends on: 1542423
Depends on: 1502923

i want to add something: today i noticed thunderbird getting almost unresponsible after changing the search-dropdown from "dates in the next to weeks" to "all dates". it stayed that slow until i changed it back.

Severity: major → critical

I forget if it was Firefox or Thunderbird, but somehow I found some "statistics" showing how processor or memory is used (troubleshooting?). Anyhow, it seemed a lot of the overhead was with search engines I don't even use. I removed the Bing one for the time being. Just a little input, not sure if it helps here.

To be helpful, please bring hard numbers to the conversation. Regardless, typically if you are not using a feature (even if it is an "installed" piece) then the code isn't exercised and it doesn't cause a resource load on your system, whether it is memory, disk or CPU.

Anything without numbers or facts is speculation, and doesn't help move us forward.

Help:Troubleshooting Information
Memory Use about:memory

9 (100.0%) -- extensions
├──1 (11.11%) ── Extension(id={e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}, name="Lightning", baseURL=moz-extension://ef332bf1-f78a-4e00-a6e0-23053384b878/)
├──1 (11.11%) ── Extension(id=amazondotcom@search.mozilla.org, name="Amazon.com", baseURL=moz-extension://76efb915-5839-4896-8e70-c258e1deaab1/)
├──1 (11.11%) ── Extension(id=bing@search.mozilla.org, name="Bing", baseURL=moz-extension://249e2836-8ae9-4854-a3e6-b3296fc61c64/)
├──1 (11.11%) ── Extension(id=ddg@search.mozilla.org, name="DuckDuckGo", baseURL=moz-extension://7f9c2301-8ffa-4481-891b-a91368eb30f1/)
├──1 (11.11%) ── Extension(id=default-theme@mozilla.org, name="Default", baseURL=moz-extension://22895743-7696-454d-bb8e-8e627d3dbb71/)
├──1 (11.11%) ── Extension(id=google@search.mozilla.org, name="Google", baseURL=moz-extension://c8a9ab22-622c-4492-8b09-bd7ab41170af/)
├──1 (11.11%) ── Extension(id=twitter@search.mozilla.org, name="Twitter", baseURL=moz-extension://56f15e46-52e4-48ce-8f1a-593d62ecc403/)
├──1 (11.11%) ── Extension(id=wetransfer@extensions.thunderbird.net, name="FileLink for WeTransfer", baseURL=moz-extension://d2825087-0895-4036-83b2-bb735cd5690a/)
└──1 (11.11%) ── Extension(id=wikipedia@search.mozilla.org, name="Wikipedia (en)", baseURL=moz-extension://749e5c37-740f-4cd8-ba92-a27fa89f619f/)

1 (100.0%) -- ghost-windows
└──1 (100.0%) ── about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox

148,312,064 B (100.0%) -- heap-committed
├──137,030,864 B (92.39%) ── allocated
└───11,281,200 B (07.61%) ── overhead

...
137,030,864 B ── heap-allocated
1,048,576 B ── heap-chunksize
182,452,224 B ── heap-mapped
174,172 B ── imagelib-surface-cache-estimated-locked
174,172 B ── imagelib-surface-cache-estimated-total
0 ── imagelib-surface-cache-overflow-count
2,682,880 B ── js-main-runtime-temporary-peak
263,004,160 B ── private
305,684,480 B ── resident
288,112,640 B ── resident-unique
6,825,571 B ── system-heap-allocated
0 ── unresolved-ipc-responses
3,242,967,040 B ── vsize
4,414,125,178,880 B ── vsize-max-contiguous
0 B ── wasm-runtime

I am experiencing this same problem with Thunderbird 60.8.0 using apple ical on the cloud with 25 years of events. I read on a similar post, link below, that there are several integration issues, such as async abilities, that would separate the UI from the background tasks. It appears that certain clicks in Thunderbird email cause the app to scan history files and slows down and delays UI processing. Doesn't cause me any difficulties, just have to wait and be patient for the app to display the UI.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=733039

Depends on: 1642292
Depends on: 1678802
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