[Bug 289278] [NEW] Thunderbird history.mab error

[Rene LeBlanc]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: thunderbird

I am using Thunderbird version 2.0.0.17. I have seen some other bug
reports for earlier versions, but never have seen a solution to a
problem that I think is a bug in Thunderbird that has been there a long
time, and it has several manifestations.

The most common situation is that when opening Thunderbird, it will report a problem that it can't open history.mab. Sometimes it can't open abook.mab. However, when this happens, sometimes I can open the Address book and everything shows up. Other times, it really can't find it. When it reports it can't open history.mab, I can always see the address book and read email. However when it is in this condition I always see two other anomalies:
1. If I try to write a new email, the spell checker marks every word as misspelled.
2. If I try to view certain folders, which may be compacted, such as the junk folder or the sent folder, Thunderbird just stalls and will never open the folder. If I quit Thunderbird and restart it, then everything works again... until the next time it enters this error state.

I don't have to close Thunderbird and open it again to get the
history.mab error again. After a period of time, Thunderbird just seems
to encounter some problem with its semaphores or something and it just
stops working correctly. Closing it and restarting it almost always gets
it going again, but over time, it just loses its grip again. :-(

I have seen at least one other report of these same symptoms. I don't
know how these bug reports get looked at by a programmer who has access
to the source files and knowledge of enough of the code to figure out
what is actually happening, but I think it is a long standing bug, and
it is quite disappointing in an otherwise very nice program. I hope
someone will figure this out and fix it.

** Affects: thunderbird (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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Thunderbird history.mab error
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/289278
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