#1942 new
Forgetful

Crashed and virtual folders lost

Reported by Forgetful | February 12th, 2018 @ 03:03 AM

I used MailMate heavily everyday. Yesterday when I rebooted my MacOS without installing anything, Mailmate can no longer start. It crashed and crashed again . At last I disconnected the network when Mailmate start successfully. But Many of my virtual folders disappeared. As I had the Mailboxes.plists backuped, I tried to restore it. Then it crashed again. and when it start, the virtual folders disappeared. again and again .

Here are the crash report and the Mailboxes.plists . Please help to fix the problem.

Comments and changes to this ticket

  • benny

    benny February 12th, 2018 @ 02:05 PM

    The crash does not seem to be related to the Mailboxes.plist file (at least not the one you attached). I also tried using your Mailboxes.plist, but I did not get a crash. This might just be because I don't have the same set of sources as you have though.

    So, I'm not sure how to best figure this out. You wrote that “many of your virtual folders disappeared”. If something goes wrong with the file then it would usually mean that all customized folders are gone. This didn't happen?

    Does it work if you do not try to re-use your old Mailboxes.plist file?

  • Forgetful

    Forgetful February 12th, 2018 @ 03:19 PM

    I don't thing it is the Mailboxes.plist 's problem either. I wonder maybe one of the mail in the imap server lead to the crash.

    I've tried using the following steps:

    Use MailMate DB (~/Library/Application Support/MailMate) from Time machine backup.

    1. Disconnect the network.
      • MailMate start correctly without crash or virtual folder disappear
    2. Connect the network. MailMate start syncs mails from IMAP server.
      • After finished the syncing, I restart MailMate. Then it start to crash.
    3. Disconnect the network again, then MailMate can start.
      • Some virtual folders disappeared, and the Mailboxes.plist became "Mailboxes.plist.virtual_folders_disappeared" I attached.
      • Restore the Mailboxes.plist will not help at this moment. The virtual folders did not come back. And the Mailboxes.plist went to "Mailboxes.plist.virtual_folders_disappeared" again.

    Is there any way to find out what wrong ?

  • benny

    benny February 13th, 2018 @ 07:18 AM

    Because MailMate cannot control the ordering of files backed up then it's a possibility that the restored MailMate folder is corrupted in some way. That said, it's really weird that it doesn't crash before you relaunch MailMate.

    Have you enabled sending crash reports in the “General” preferences pane? I don't seem to be able to find anything using “forgetful” for the search. (I don't get the ones sent to Apple.)

    When you try the old Mailboxes.plist file and it fails, do you then have a file named like this:

    ~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/Mailboxes.plist.invalid
    

    (This is what happens if MailMate fails to parse the file.)

    I think it'll also be worth trying to let MailMate re-synchronize all accounts from the IMAP server to give it a clean start. You can do this by removing all files/folders except the ones with the .plist extension in this folder:

    ~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/
    

    If it still crashes after that then you are probably right that it's somehow triggered by one or more server emails and/or folders.

    Thanks for your patience.

  • Forgetful

    Forgetful February 13th, 2018 @ 01:42 PM

    I enabled sending crash reports just now. And I restart MailMate, let it crash a couple of times. Hope you got the reports.

    I did not find any Mailboxes.plist.invalid file :(

    Yes, I did a whole IMAP sync (all new ~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/ , with all plist file copied from the backup). Mailmate crashes as previous it did.
    And I trid rebuild the database, too. The same crashes happend :(

  • benny

    benny February 13th, 2018 @ 04:00 PM

    Thanks for the crash reports and for trying a clean start. I suggest taking a backup copy of this file:

    ~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/com.freron.MailMate.plist
    

    I might want to see the file, but first try the following before launching MailMate:

    defaults delete com.freron.MailMate MmWindows
    

    The crash reports do seem to indicate that something goes wrong while starting up -- specifically when setting up the windows.

    Thanks in advance.

  • Forgetful

    Forgetful February 13th, 2018 @ 04:50 PM

    I don't have that file : ~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/com.freron.MailMate.plist .
    And I don't have the setting either ...

    forgetful$ defaults delete com.freron.MailMate MmWindows
    2018-02-14 00:42:32.346 defaults[35602:3748633]
    Domain (com.freron.MailMate) not found.
    Defaults have not been changed.

  • Forgetful

    Forgetful February 18th, 2018 @ 02:28 AM

    Hi, Benny

    Do you mean ~/Library/Preferences/com.freron.MailMate.plist ?
    I've attached this file.

  • benny

    benny February 18th, 2018 @ 10:43 AM

    Yes, thanks for figuring that out yourself. I don't see anything suspicious in the file. I also revisited the crash reports I have from you. Most of them seem to have been triggered when you selected one or more emails in a mailbox which makes me think that I might not have the most recent ones. According to your description these happen without user interaction (other than synchronizing the accounts).

    I'm not sure how to best move forwards here. What about trying a completely clean MailMate folder and then add the accounts 1 by 1? As you state maybe the problem is related to a particular account/mailbox/email...

    Make sure that MailMate is still configured to send crash reports in the General preferences pane.

    (Sorry about the late response.)

  • Forgetful

    Forgetful February 18th, 2018 @ 06:36 PM

    It's curious that it worked again . I just did nothing to it except that I used the after-crashed backup of ~/Library/Application Support/MailMate .
    Thank you for all your doing.

  • Forgetful

    Forgetful February 19th, 2018 @ 08:19 AM

    Sigh, Mailmate lost the virtual folders again when I restart it .

    Yes, I've done something before it worked again.

    PS: I have two accounts in Mailmate, one for archive and one for work . Both of them are in my VPCs .
    I pop3 mail from my work account to my dovecot server in VPC. Dovecot server is my work IMAP4 server.

    1. I do a snapshot of my work VPC.
    2. Clean all the dovecot mails before 2018-02-07
    3. Create a new ~/Library/Applications Support/MailMate directory, copy the plist files into the new MailMate directory.
    4. Start MailMate to let it sync the mails.
    5. MailMate act like normal.

    6. Repeat the above procedure, to see if mails between 2018-02-01 and 2018-02-07 containing any mistake.

    7. MailMate still act like normal.

    So I guess should it be the problem of I having too may mails ? Anyway, I then try to replace the MailMate directory with a previous backup one and rollback my VPC. That's how my MailMate came back to live last night.

    But today when I try restart MailMate, to confirm if everything are fine, it lost the virtual folders again. And I noticed that it crashed when it finish syncing the mails .

    Do MailMate access files/directories other then the following two ? Should it correct something when I do the steps 1 ~ 7 , then it came back to live ?

    ~/Library/Applications Support/MailMate
    ~/Library/Preferences/com.freron.MailMate.plist
    

    Is there any debug level settings that I can set higher, so that I can know and report to you, to know more about what it done before it crashed ?

  • benny

    benny February 19th, 2018 @ 08:58 AM

    Let's focus on the crash first and then we'll take the virtual folders issue afterwards.

    Try this:

    1. Update to the latest test release of MailMate to make sure we are using the same version (hold down ⌥ when clicking “Check Now” in the Software Update preferences pane).
    2. Enable this hidden preference:

      defaults write com.freron.MailMate MmDebugScripts -bool YES

    3. Launch MailMate from a Terminal window:

      /Applications/MailMate.app/Contents/MacOS/MailMate

    There should then be some output before the crash. It is somehow related to when an account/mailbox is fully synchronized.

    To answer your questions:

    • No, those files are the only ones used by MailMate, but note that the Preferences file is not easily deleted/reset because of some system caching.
    • No, I don't think the issue is the number of emails.
  • Forgetful

    Forgetful February 19th, 2018 @ 09:12 AM

    Here is the messages when it crashed:

    forgetful$ /Applications/MailMate.app/Contents/MacOS/MailMate
    Event type “account.synchronized” for 1 messages
    Segmentation fault: 11
    
  • benny

    benny February 19th, 2018 @ 01:52 PM

    Thanks for the output. It's interesting because of what wasn't output. I've looked into it and it appears that this might explain both the crash and the truncated Mailboxes.plist file. I think something goes wrong when setting up the mailboxes, but MailMate doesn't crash at this point. Instead several things are uninitialized leading to various types of seemingly inexplicable issues/crashes.

    I'd like you to try the latest test release: Hold down ⌥ when clicking “Check Now” in the Software Update preferences pane and then repeat the experiment (launching from Terminal).

    Also, I've attached an altered Mailboxes.plist file based on a hunch. You can try to see if that works better.

    Thanks in advance.

  • Forgetful

    Forgetful February 19th, 2018 @ 03:09 PM

    The last console output did come from the newest test release : r5457

    I tried your Mailboxes.plist with the test release of MailMate. MailMate still crashed with nothing output.

  • benny

    benny February 20th, 2018 @ 08:57 AM

    It should be r5458. Hold down ⌥ when clicking “Check Now” in the Software Update preferences pane.

  • Forgetful

    Forgetful February 20th, 2018 @ 12:04 PM

    Got the r5458 version, and it crashed with output in the attachment

    After synced all accounts, it stopped at " Scripts manager missing!" .
    Then I clicked at a mail, and it crashed with Segment fault error.
    The Mailboxes.plists is the one you gave me.

  • Forgetful
  • Forgetful

    Forgetful February 21st, 2018 @ 11:53 AM

    Previous ticket was marked as spam. Try post it again.

    The r5458 MailMate crashed and output in the attachment "MailMate.debug.2018-02-20.txt".
    I used the Mailboxes.plists you gave me.

    When I started it and saw it finished sync all the accounts, it stopped at " Scripts manager missing!" .
    I clicked at any mail, and it crashed with Segment fault error.

  • Forgetful

    Forgetful February 22nd, 2018 @ 03:08 PM

    A funny thing happen that I can launch MailMate now. I've attached the output to a new file. Please have a check of it.
    I guess this bug is time relatived. I managed to run it during late night or something.

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