[SOLVED] Cinnamon Problems After Upgrade - Thunderbird & Favorites Menu

[OceanMan7]

Hello,
I just upgraded yesterday from Mint 19 to 19.1. I'v'e seen some strange behavior in Cinnamon with Thunderbird Mail and the Favorites Menu:

1) Thunderbird mail hangs Cinnamon whenever I post a message. The message goes out but Thunderbird hangs while displaying the send dialog. I have to kill Cinnamon to get the desktop to respond.

2) The "Favorites" menu of the menu doesn't relocate icons properly - it leaves a gap about 2 icons below where an icon is held rather than closer. That's where the icon goes if dropped.

All problems occur after system is updated, rebooted many times, etc. Nothing showing in the logs that I can see.
2) is an easy workaround. 1) is a serious problem for me.

Dell Latitude E5570, Core i5, 16 GB

TIA for advice and, if this behavior is also seen by others, please pass it back to the developers.

[OceanMan7]

Missing Information:
Thunderbird 60.2.1 (64 bit)

[Oblias]

Missing Information:
Thunderbird 60.2.1 (64 bit)

I use the same version of T-bird, and I have had no issues at all after doing the upgrade from 19 to 19.1 LM Cinnamon. I use TB several times a day, both sending and receiving, and it still works flawlessly.

Might I suggest that you backup your .thunderbird (profile containing emails, addons, etc..) folder to a safe place, just for peace of mind, and then uninstall TB from your system. Uninstallation should still leave the .thunderbird folder in your Home directory, but you'll have a backup just in case.

Reboot, re-install TB again, and see if anything improves. If not, post back, and I might have one more suggestion at that point....

[OceanMan7]

Thanks! Reinstalling Thunderbird after a reboot solved it.

Don't know why I didn't think of it - age I guess.

I'm still seeing minor weirdness on the Favorites menu, but that's not a big deal.

[smurphos]

I'm still seeing minor weirdness on the Favorites menu, but that's not a big deal.

It's a scroll box when you start adding lots of favorites. Try mouse scrolling whilst hovering over it or hovering over either end.

[Oblias]

Thanks! Reinstalling Thunderbird after a reboot solved it.

Don't know why I didn't think of it - age I guess.

I'm still seeing minor weirdness on the Favorites menu, but that's not a big deal.

You are most welcome! Wish all issues were that easy to resolve.

Also, regarding the menu, have you ever tried the Cinnamenu, available in the applets? It's very good, and you might just like the Favorites section better. I do, but of course, that's my personal preference..

[JRG]

I have the “Thunderbird problem”. I read this thread several days ago after getting frustrated rebooting my computer (I had forgotten there were keyboard shortcuts to restart the desktop environment).

I tried the uninstall/reinstall trick and, at first, it seemed to have resolved the issue. However, after a while the freeze appeared again. It is not consistent. I can send a few messages and then, BAM, sending one will cause a freeze. Restarting Cinnamon has the same (apparent) effect as uninstall/reinstall Thunderbird.

What is odd, is that the freeze occurs with the sending mail progress bar at different stages. So far, the message has always been successfully sent (even if the dialogue box doesn't say so). What I haven't tracked is whether it only occurs when the email message has an attachment — I will note that over the next while.

[Oblias]

Might I suggest that you make a backup of your profile folder, as described above, then uninstall Thunderbird. You should do a full and complete uninstall using the terminal, and the commands of

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get --purge remove thunderbird

and once that completes, just to be safe, run the command of

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get autoremove

. The above commands will remove all traces of the bin and dependencies.

Once you have done that, reboot, and delete the profile folder from your Home directory. Re-install Tbird, and do a quick setup just to get it up and running again. I have 8 different accounts I use with Tbird, but for this test, assuming you have more than one account that you use, just set up two or three real quick.

Then do some sending and receiving of emails, with and without attachments, between your personal accounts that you set up. See how things go. If you can make it a day or so without the problems you are having, then at that point you can copy over your old emails only into your new profile folder, and continue on from that point.

That procedure worked for me once, a while back. Might work for you.....

[JRG]

@oblias — I will keep your suggestion in mind. I would like to avoid going to that extreme (I've had to recover emails in the past and I find the process unsatisfactory). What I now do is keep an absolute minimum of emails in Thunderbird — generally only involving things I am currently working on. Any I want to keep for future reference, I use "Save selected emails..." —> "EML format".

The issue for me is this problem seems clearly connected to Linux Mint 19.1 — it only happened after I installed 19.1 and started out always freezing after a "send". I would like to know the real cause of the problem — perhaps that is a characteristic caused by working in the software field my entire adult life (prior to retirement). So I will wait a while and see if the problem is resolved with an update. If not, I will do a complete replace as you suggest (but I will save any email messages I want to keep and not bother migrating them back into Thunderbird).

I do not do "upgrade"s to new releases. Instead I have my disk partitioned with a "/" partition and a separate "/home" partition. Instead of an upgrade I do a fresh install in which the "/" partition (i.e. the one that gets mounted as "/") gets reformatted and the "/home" one is left as-is (unless the install touches something).

[Oblias]

The issue for me is this problem seems clearly connected to Linux Mint 19.1 — it only happened after I installed 19.1 and started out always freezing after a "send".

<snipped>

I do not do "upgrade"s to new releases. Instead I have my disk partitioned with a "/" partition and a separate "/home" partition. Instead of an upgrade I do a fresh install in which the "/" partition (i.e. the one that gets mounted as "/") gets reformatted and the "/home" one is left as-is (unless the install touches something).

I completely understand your viewpoint. However, I would point out the obvious, that it seems that for 99% of 19.1 users, Thunderbird works flawlessly, myself included. I also use the exact same formatting that you do, a separate /, Home, and swap partition for all my installs. That is particularly why I suspect that the issue is in a left over file or setting located on your Home partition, that has been carried over from Mint 19 and the previous version of Cinnamon. Thus the reason for my suggestion of a full purge during uninstall. The new Cinnamon 4 may be in conflict with something left over from your previous install.

While knowing the exact cause of the issue, for you, on your system, may be of value to you for your own personal reasons, I would think that having a fully functioning Tbird would be of a somewhat higher value.. In any event, best wishes to you, and in getting the issue resolved in whatever manner you choose.

Also, if at some point you do choose to do a completely fresh install and setup of Tbird, getting your old emails back is quick and painless. No need to import or go thru any long-winded procedures.. you simply copy over the Mail and ImapMail folders from your backup profile folder, into your new one, and there you go. Job done...

[JRG]

The issue for me is this problem seems clearly connected to Linux Mint 19.1 — it only happened after I installed 19.1 and started out always freezing after a "send".

<snipped>

I do not do "upgrade"s to new releases. Instead I have my disk partitioned with a "/" partition and a separate "/home" partition. Instead of an upgrade I do a fresh install in which the "/" partition (i.e. the one that gets mounted as "/") gets reformatted and the "/home" one is left as-is (unless the install touches something).

I completely understand your viewpoint. However, I would point out the obvious, that it seems that for 99% of 19.1 users, Thunderbird works flawlessly, myself included. I also use the exact same formatting that you do, a separate /, Home, and swap partition for all my installs. That is particularly why I suspect that the issue is in a left over file or setting located on your Home partition, that has been carried over from Mint 19 and the previous version of Cinnamon. Thus the reason for my suggestion of a full purge during uninstall. The new Cinnamon 4 may be in conflict with something left over from your previous install.

While knowing the exact cause of the issue, for you, on your system, may be of value to you for your own personal reasons, I would think that having a fully functioning Tbird would be of a somewhat higher value.. In any event, best wishes to you, and in getting the issue resolved in whatever manner you choose.

Also, if at some point you do choose to do a completely fresh install and setup of Tbird, getting your old emails back is quick and painless. No need to import or go thru any long-winded procedures.. you simply copy over the Mail and ImapMail folders from your backup profile folder, into your new one, and there you go. Job done...

It seemed to me that other people, such as the opening poster, were having this problem and that it appeared to be associated with LM 19.1. I'm not sure where the figure of 99% of users having Thunderbird came from, but I accept it. So, assuming a measly 100,000 users (and I would guess it's really in the millions), we only have 1,000 users affected by this issue.

In any case, your advice was well meant and greatly appreciated. Since it cost me nothing to try it, I have. Except I did not bother with the email messages (I saved them first). So, my installation is brand, spanking new… well, I have to admit I copied my address book back (but not the whole profile as something in the profile could be the cause of the problem). Oh, I do not use IMAP as I prefer email messages to be stored on my computer.

I hope you had a great holiday season and the new year is a good one for you.

Cheers,
John

[Oblias]

In any case, your advice was well meant and greatly appreciated. Since it cost me nothing to try it, I have. Except I did not bother with the email messages (I saved them first). So, my installation is brand, spanking new… well, I have to admit I copied my address book back (but not the whole profile as something in the profile could be the cause of the problem). Oh, I do not use IMAP as I prefer email messages to be stored on my computer.

I hope you had a great holiday season and the new year is a good one for you.

Cheers,
John

Thank you for the well wishes, and I wish you the same!!

Would you mind sharing your experience with Thunderbird, now that it's been purged and re-installed? I realize it's still early days, but so far, any hangs etc... ? The information will be of use to others in the future, I'm thinking. BTW, the 99% figure was an educated conclusion on my part, gleaned from information from the Thunderbird forums, the LM forums, and the Ubuntu forums. As you say, no way to be certain of that amount, however..

[JRG]

Would you mind sharing your experience with Thunderbird, now that it's been purged and re-installed?

Certainly, though I will wait a few days so I have some real experience (I do not receive or send a large volume of email messages).
John

[Oblias]

Alright, thanks! I would have thought if it was going to hang and freeze as described, it would do it right away. If you sent an email to yourself, with a large attachment, then you'd know in short order. In any event, we shall see what the future holds..

[smurphos]

Re the thunderbird issue there is a pending fix. It's a bug in the original window-list applet that current thunderbird exposes. You can apply the fix in advance of it being rolled out as outlined here

https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/8196

[JRG]

Re the thunderbird issue there is a pending fix. It's a bug in the original window-list applet that current thunderbird exposes. You can apply the fix in advance of it being rolled out as outlined here

https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/8196

Thank you for a fix that tackles the root cause. I have applied it.

Maybe the original poster will mark this thread as "Solved".

[WA4HWN]

I have three computers all upgraded from 19.0 to 19.1 and have encountered freeze up when sending an email. It requires a 'hard' reboot; I have found that the issue relates to lightning and the cinnamon desktop.
Here is my OS information:
1) Mint 19.1 both x64 and x32
2) Thunderbird versions 52.9.1 then 60.2.1 and finally (currently) 60.4.0
3) Compatible versions of lightning with all 3
4) Through the process of elimination I found that there was improvement with 60.4.0 and lightning installed via terminal command "sudo apt-get install xul.ext.lightning". However, the issue still shows up occasionally.
5) I finally installed the Mate desktop environment alongside Cinnamon on one of the 3 computers. So far no issues with the Mate Desktop environment and TB 60.4.0 along with lightning. (My life would be intolerable without lightning!!.)

I have arrived at the conclusion that the issue is within the Cinnamon desktop, but will continue operating both systems as a comparison. I use a lot of sound files so prefer the cinnamon desktop. Hopefully, someone will solve this problem which seems to be widely encountered. I love 19.1 as well as TB and Lightning!

[bking]

I'm seeing the same hang when sending emails - VERY annoying. Any update on this??

UPDATE: I applied the applet.js fix, and everything seems to be fine now.

Oddly enough, I was about to post another issue where mouse focus seemed to switch windows during a highlight/retype scenario, where the newly typed text would appear in another app's window instead of replacing the highlighted text, and that now seems to be fixed as well. Any idea if that might actually have been connected somehow?

[smurphos]

I'm seeing the same hang when sending emails - VERY annoying. Any update on this??

UPDATE: I applied the applet.js fix, and everything seems to be fine now.

Oddly enough, I was about to post another issue where mouse focus seemed to switch windows during a highlight/retype scenario, where the newly typed text would appear in another app's window instead of replacing the highlighted text, and that now seems to be fixed as well. Any idea if that might actually have been connected somehow?

This particular bug should have been fixed with the update to Cinnamon 4.09 at the beginning of January.

[bking]

I'm seeing the same hang when sending emails - VERY annoying. Any update on this??

UPDATE: I applied the applet.js fix, and everything seems to be fine now.

Oddly enough, I was about to post another issue where mouse focus seemed to switch windows during a highlight/retype scenario, where the newly typed text would appear in another app's window instead of replacing the highlighted text, and that now seems to be fixed as well. Any idea if that might actually have been connected somehow?

This particular bug should have been fixed with the update to Cinnamon 4.09 at the beginning of January.

Cinnamon updates don't appear in Update Manager, right? It's an "out of band" update unless you wait for next Mint update?