GrowlMail 1.1.1 causes corruption with big IMAP delivery

[The_Tick]

If it's such a big issue that we need to modify the readme, which is a pretty ineffective measure seeing as most people simply don't read them, it's a much more responsible action on our part to remove a pain point entirely until we can address the issue.

You guys are making a big deal out of this, so we should take an appropriate action in response to that. I do not believe that modifying the readme in any way will effectively solve this issue, so what's left:

- We can leave GrowlMail there
- We can remove GrowlMail
- We can remove the entire Growl download
- We can post about it as much as possible everywhere we can.

We don't have enough manpower for the last. Removing growl entirely is not acceptable, neither is doing nothing.

Give me another option besides the readme file and I'd be glad to at least consider it. However, readme modification is not an acceptable approach to resolving this issue in the short term or the long term. Remember, anything we do is a short term stop gap measure until we resolve this for 10.5 users.

I would think that this stance would actually make you feel better about the project rather than hesitant. We'll take the necessary steps to stop something from affecting the largest population of Growl users, rather than something that'll affect only a small percentage of users, as you both are suggesting. Why is that something you would not want to have happen? You guys want us to do something obviously, I'm telling you from experience that what you're suggesting is just not enough. I don't get where the problem is here.

Anyhow, titles aren't important here, neither are roles, what's important is to decide what action to take. Readme modifications are not acceptable, come up with something else. I'll remove GrowlMail this weekend and then push 1.1.2.1 or 1.1.3 or something this weekend unless something else is thought up.

[charlesarthur]

If it's such a big issue that we need to modify the readme, which is a pretty ineffective measure seeing as most people simply don't read them, it's a much more responsible action on our part to remove a pain point entirely until we can address the issue.

First, a Readme obvious has a point. Modifying it ought to be your *first* resort. If you can't fix a bug, at least notify people of its existence. You can't be sure how many people read them, unless you've hidden something in there saying "reply to this and I'll send you $100."

I do not believe that modifying the readme in any way will effectively solve this issue

I disagree. That offers a fifth option besides the four you offered:

- We can leave GrowlMail there
- We can remove GrowlMail
- We can remove the entire Growl download
- We can post about it as much as possible everywhere we can.

Give me another option besides the readme file and I'd be glad to at least consider it. However, readme modification is not an acceptable approach to resolving this issue in the short term or the long term.

Why on earth not? What's the point of the Readme if you don't think anyone will read it? You've really baffled me on this one. You include a file secure in your belief that it goes unread? That borders on irrational.

I would think that this stance would actually make you feel better about the project rather than hesitant. We'll take the necessary steps to stop something from affecting the largest population of Growl users, rather than something that'll affect only a small percentage of users, as you both are suggesting. Why is that something you would not want to have happen?

Because it's disproportionate. Some people use GrowlMail and get no problems, evidently. Two of us have and have found one. Perhaps it's some very weird thing we have in our configurations. Perhaps we're the only two on the planet for whom it's a problem. Nobody responded to my requests on the previous page for explanations of what had changed in GrowlMail; nobody said anything about whether lots of IMAP mail might affect it differently. We've had no feedback from you Growlers, who might know. I'm not competent to read source code; I just know how to troubleshoot a bit.

Anyhow, titles aren't important here, neither are roles, what's important is to decide what action to take. Readme modifications are not acceptable, come up with something else. I'll remove GrowlMail this weekend and then push 1.1.2.1 or 1.1.3 or something this weekend unless something else is thought up.

Well, that will certainly save the village, won't it.
Option 1: edit a text file to point out a possible bug.
Option 2: remove a file that many find useful.

I'm perplexed. Honestly.

[The_Tick]

Option 1: edit a text file to point out a possible bug that can potentially cause data loss

This is how I would have typed it, and it is why I think removing GrowlMail is our best option. I don't know if this is in fact a data loss issue or not, but we haven't been able to test GrowlMail yet to find out if it is so I'd rather take the shotgun approach to this and do what's right for everyone and cause no chance of data loss, rather than believing people will read a text file prior to installation and actually comprehend it.

[NewHouseDD]

My earlier suggestion was actually to include a warning in the installer process itself, in one of those dialogue windows that the user inevitably passes through while loading GrowlMail. Could just be a notification along the lines of "PLEASE note: user feedback has reported possible major corruption risks with Leopard Mail: do you still want to continue or cancel the installation?". You could even use this dialog box to encourage people to consult the ReadMe for more details, or the forum/newsletter, etc.. This way, you are sure that all users will see it.

Of course, I don't know how much work that entails so you may be right that it's not worth the effort, i.e. by the time you have this stop-gap done, you may already have the real fix worked out.

I was actually suggesting this as a more general procedural thing you might want to implement for the future: since you clearly do pay attention to user feedback (kudos indeed for this) it would be good policy whenever preparing a new release to check if any known issues are potentially serious enough to warrant a quick installer notification like what I suggest above...

(BTW, the rest of Growl 1.1.2 seems fine, so there's no point in killing that).

OK, the annoying non-programmer will quiet down for now. ;-)

Good luck with it!


NH

PS: this is probably not the right place for this, but I had a suggestion for a new feature: would be great to have a key that you can press to repeat the last notification in case you missed it (sticky notes don't answer the same need)... make sense?

[The_Tick]

PS: this is probably not the right place for this, but I had a suggestion for a new feature: would be great to have a key that you can press to repeat the last notification in case you missed it (sticky notes don't answer the same need)... make sense?

Feel free to make a new thread about this, I have a decent response already

[The_Tick]

My earlier suggestion was actually to include a warning in the installer process itself, in one of those dialogue windows that the user inevitably passes through while loading GrowlMail. Could just be a notification along the lines of "PLEASE note: user feedback has reported possible major corruption risks with Leopard Mail: do you still want to continue or cancel the installation?". You could even use this dialog box to encourage people to consult the ReadMe for more details, or the forum/newsletter, etc.. This way, you are sure that all users will see it.

Of course, I don't know how much work that entails so you may be right that it's not worth the effort, i.e. by the time you have this stop-gap done, you may already have the real fix worked out.

I was actually suggesting this as a more general procedural thing you might want to implement for the future: since you clearly do pay attention to user feedback (kudos indeed for this) it would be good policy whenever preparing a new release to check if any known issues are potentially serious enough to warrant a quick installer notification like what I suggest above...

That might work if we put it in 48 point font at the beginning. Using the standard installer it'd be a pain to have a popup window I believe, but perhaps. Sorry I missed this earlier, good idea.

[anonbeliever]

Growl is a great app over all. These developers are doing the best they can under the conditions of providing FREE software. Give them time. Forget about the whole thing for a couple months. Take a vacation. When you get back in January, it'll be working, and you'll all be happy. Till then, chillax.

[Senturion]

OK my Mail.app is now royally screwed up.

I uninstalled Growl and the Growl Mail plug-in, but Mail.app still crashes each time I start it.

Can someone help me resolve this please an perhaps make the incompatibility of the Growl Mail plug-in with Leopard a little more evident for future users.

[bgannin]

OK my Mail.app is now royally screwed up.

I uninstalled Growl and the Growl Mail plug-in, but Mail.app still crashes each time I start it.

Can someone help me resolve this please an perhaps make the incompatibility of the Growl Mail plug-in with Leopard a little more evident for future users.

If neither exists anymore it's not exactly likely that Growl is at fault.

[Senturion]

Well it is doing the exact same thing as before.

Perhaps there is something that doesn't get fully uninstalled?

[bgannin]

Note: "modifying" the readme isn't an option either, the product has shipped and the readme is a part of the download itself. For future versions the suggestions are all valid.

[bgannin]

Let's just pull GrowlMail out altogether until we fix it for 10.5 instead.

This puts Chris' comments for pulling GrowlMail in much better context than it was discussed.

[Senturion]

OK it definitely has something to do with Growl.



That is a screenshot of the error report after the crash, there is something from Growl that did not get uninstalled.

Can someone point me to where/how I can delete it.

Thanks.

[bgannin]

That was more difficult to locate than it should have been. We definitely need better documentation.

It's installed in /Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle

[charlesarthur]

Option 1: edit a text file to point out a possible bug that can potentially cause data loss

That's NOT what I wrote. Please don't misquote like that: I wrote:
>> edit a text file to point out a possible bug.

I've not seen any data loss - as I've pointed out, it is the **Envelope Index** of Mail which gets corrupted, NOT the actual messages. The Envelope Index tells Mail what messages are there.

Delete the Envelope Index, delete /Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.bundle and restart Mail, and it should be OK once it's re-imported all the messages. (I did find once that GrowlMail.bundle found itself from somewhere and reloaded itself;

This is how I would have typed it, and it is why I think removing GrowlMail is our best option. I don't know if this is in fact a data loss issue or not

Don't think you should dress is as that, then. I've never said I had data loss - only time loss.

but we haven't been able to test GrowlMail yet to find out if it is so I'd rather take the shotgun approach to this and do what's right for everyone and cause no chance of data loss, rather than believing people will read a text file prior to installation and actually comprehend it.

As I've said, removing software because of a bug would lead to us counting on our hands. Then again, we'd not have to bother with Windows any more.

[NewHouseDD]

Senturion,

If you scroll back up in this thread, you'll see that both charlesarthur and I got the same issue. It is indeed definitely due to GrowlMail.

Here is the step-by-step procedure that he suggested to me, which completely fixed my Mail in about 5 mins, and I had over 25,000 mails to re-import... I would strongly suggest that the "official devs" monitoring this thread should point future victims to this solution):

(I've slightly tweaked the order of some of this)

0) Quit Mail. But it's quit itself anyway. You could at this stage make a backup of your system. I certainly wouldn't stop you. (Or just back up your user/Library/Mail folder.)

1) Make sure you've removed GrowlMail, which may be lurking at Hard Disk/Library/Mail/Bundles, even if you tried uninstalling it. If it's there, move it to your Desktop (will suffice). Make sure in the Growl Preference Pane you've unticked Mail as one of the applications that uses Growl (in case it's still listed).

2) Go to your user space (we'll call it ~ here)

3) Go to ~/Library/Mail

4) There you should see lots of files, and one called "Envelope Index", and possibly one called "Envelope Index - Journaled". Move these to your Desktop, or the Trash (doesn't matter).

5) Deep breath. Launch Mail. It will say "We need to import messages." Don't worry: what it's saying is "I can't find the Envelope Index, shall I make a new one?" Your mail messages are all still there, and this won't hurt them. Click "Import". It'll chunter through for a while (depends how large your mail files are) and then say it's done. Click OK.

6) Miss GrowlMail, but realise that you miss working email even more.

7) Once you're sure Mail is behaving OK, and has found all your mail (if you run Activity Monitor, you'll probably notice mds - which indexes stuff - using a lot of CPU: it's indexing the new Envelope Index), you can trash the old Envelope Index.

BTW, even though I had tried to uninstall GrowlMail, this didn't work smoothly either, and I did end up with the bundle files still "lurking in there". The uninstall script had ended up asking ME to find where the relevant files were: isn't this supposed to be the point of an uninstall program, i.e. that avoid having users routing through system files? So the advice to check for the bundle is certainly relevant.

Many thanks again to charlesarthur on this.

Good luck.


NewHouse

[charlesarthur]

BTW, even though I had tried to uninstall GrowlMail, this didn't work smoothly either, and I did end up with the bundle files still "lurking in there".

Note to devs: adding
do shell script "rm -rf /Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.bundle" with administrator privileges

at the end of the "Uninstall Growl" script would solve this. It fails silently if there's no such file. (Tested.)

Don't know if one would need to quit Mail first; I'd have thought not, since if it's running it will have loaded this into memory. Don't know the effect of deleting the bundle while the app is running, but since you're stopping Growl anyway, it won't be called any more - right?

[The_Tick]

That's NOT what I wrote. Please don't misquote like that

This is how forums work, typically. I was showing you how I would have written that. Seriously dude, you need to chill.

[bgannin]

So, on those steps (which are perfectly fine otherwise)...

1b) [turn off in Growl] Unneeded. If GrowlMail isn't posting notifications, it doesn't matter if the app is enabled.

6) Unneeded commentary.

[charlesarthur]

This is how forums work, typically.

Not in the hundreds I've been on down the years - never seen someone take an original quote and then add to it while leaving it looking as though it was a direct original quote.

I was showing you how I would have written that. Seriously dude, you need to chill.

Then saying "I would have said ..." would do it, surely.

I'm not angry - I'm bemused by how (a) nobody has yet suggested why the bug that provides this thread's title would occur (b) you're all being so "let's destroy the village to save it" about this, when a text file called "Known Bugs" (or an addition to the Readme) would at least get you out of jail free.