Another 1.4 issue : Mail.App

[cryptooth]

After clean doctored (from 1.3.5.2) to 1.4 I have too many problem with my Pre

I have an Exchange Active Sync account and a Google mail account.

When I open the mail application, it doesn't open my default mailbox or the last mailbox that was open, It opens the main list of mailboxes.

Because of that, I need to double tap to access my mails.

I'm planning to downgrade to 1.3.5.2.

[trim81]

all the versions of webos I used always opened to list view, never to default.

only way to open the email directly is when the new mail notifcation appears and you tap the notification

[cryptooth]

No, it's different then default list view.

It looks like Add Account window. I will take a screenshot if problem persist again.

[damnregister]

I know which Screen you mean, its in fact the one with "Add Account" button on the bottom, is it? I don't have this bug, but just an idea, simply leave the E-Mail App open? Hooray for Multitasking...

[cryptooth]

Originally Posted by damnregister

I know which Screen you mean, its in fact the one with "Add Account" button on the bottom, is it? I don't have this bug, but just an idea, simply leave the E-Mail App open? Hooray for Multitasking...

Yes exactly that screen.

[sharpcroft]

Originally Posted by damnregister

I know which Screen you mean, its in fact the one with "Add Account" button on the bottom, is it? I don't have this bug, but just an idea, simply leave the E-Mail App open? Hooray for Multitasking...

Same here, iget the "add an account" and "done" buttons 7 out of 10 times when opening the email app, pressing done goes to my default account but i never had to keep doing this other than when first setting up my Gmail account??

[threed]

i get this too although not that often. i just press done and it brings me to my mailboxes. its just an extra tap so its no big deal but i understand how it can be annoying or frustrating.

[Insp_Gadget]

Originally Posted by threed

i get this too although not that often. i just press done and it brings me to my mailboxes. its just an extra tap so its no big deal but i understand how it can be annoying or frustrating.

I've never had this happen, EVER. Are you all running any kind of patch on your phones?

[Daemon]

I've seen the same behavior. It's not actually a screen you can
get to from anywhere else. It's not the Preferences and Accounts screen.
I have no email related patches.

It happens the first time the email app is opened.
If I close email and re-open it doesn't do it again immediately.
If I bring up JSTop and kill the email app (which will sit cached in memory
even when you close it), then it'll show this weird accounts
screen on the next launch.

Yes it's annoying, and yes I feel it is a legitimate bug since it's
functionality duplicated elsewhere and gives me a choice
to do something I only ever do once per email account
for the life of the phone.
[edit]In fact I just realized what this screen is really mean for.
It's supposed to only be seen the *very first time* the
email app is used on a new Pre before you have any email accounts configured,
since you can't go the mailbox list when you don't have any to display.
It's *possible* that removing an existing account and re-adding it
might make this go away, if this is just a state problem.

Another possibility is that this would have always happened if email
app were not loaded into memory, and prior to 1.4 the email app
was cached in memory at boot time. Perhaps someone with a 1.3.5 Pre
can try killing the email app from JSTop and see if they get the same
behavior.

ian

[Insp_Gadget]

Originally Posted by Daemon

I've seen the same behavior. It's not actually a screen you can
get to from anywhere else. It's not the Preferences and Accounts screen.
I have no email related patches.

It happens the first time the email app is opened.
If I close email and re-open it doesn't do it again immediately.
If I bring up JSTop and kill the email app (which will sit cached in memory
even when you close it), then it'll show this weird accounts
screen on the next launch.

Yes it's annoying, and yes I feel it is a legitimate bug since it's
functionality duplicated elsewhere and gives me a choice
to do something I only ever do once per email account
for the life of the phone.

ian

Hmm, interesting. The only time I've ever seen that screen was when I first got my phone back in June '09.

Curious... Does it do this when you have no patches OF ANY KIND installed? It seems, by your own experimentation, that whenever the Mail app's process is killed this screen will show up when the app is re-launched. Is it possible that something is killing the Mail process in the background without your knowledge?

BTW, I don't run any patches or homebrew. Is anyone that's having this issue also running a "virgin" config?

[Daemon]

Shame you don't have any HBs so you can test to see what happens
if you kill the email app from JSTop.

Anyway, I've been digging around the code and while I still don't
understand what criteria it uses to set the isFirstUseComplete flag
it's pretty easy to simply ignore it until someone can figure out
the underlying bug.

If you want to hack your email app to not launch to that screen at all
this is how you do it.
Open a root command shell.
mount -o remount,rw /
cd /usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.email/app/controllers
cp app-assistant.js app-assistant.js.bak

Then edit app-assistant.js with whatever unix editor you know and love..
Looking at lines

91:         if (this.depot.isFirstUseComplete() !== true) {
92:                launchHandler = new FirstUseLaunchHandler(this, params);
93:        } else {
94:                launchHandler = new LaunchHandler(this, params);
95:        }

Comment out line 92 and copy line 94 up to just below 92 so when you're
done it looks like this.

        if (this.depot.isFirstUseComplete() !== true) {
                // launchHandler = new FirstUseLaunchHandler(this, params);
                launchHandler = new LaunchHandler(this, params);
        } else {
                launchHandler = new LaunchHandler(this, params);
        }

And no, I won't make this a patch. It is totally a *hack*. It will break
the email app if you don't have any existing email accounts and could
interfere with email related patches. If you do have accounts
though, it'll launch normally. Someone will figure out how to
fix this properly. Maybe me, eventually.

When you're done run
mount -o remount,ro /
and then restart luna to ensure email app is reloaded (or kill email in JSTop
and relaunch).

ian

[Insp_Gadget]

Originally Posted by Daemon

Shame you don't have any HBs so you can test to see what happens
if you kill the email app from JSTop.

Anyway, I've been digging around the code and while I still don't
understand what criteria it uses to set the isFirstUseComplete flag
it's pretty easy to simply ignore it until someone can figure out
the underlying bug.
...snip...

I'll take your word for it. Since I don't have the problem, it makes little sense for me to run JStop to try to reproduce the issue.

Now, if people that ARE having the problem will chime in, and try that, perhaps you'll get closer to a solution.

I was merely wondering if anyone that is having this problem is NOT running any patches/homebrew. If it can be confirmed that this problem is happening without patches, then it can be called a legitimate bug. Otherwise, and until then, I would hesitate to blame it on the OS.

[Daemon]

The isFirstTimeComplete flag *should* be set from the app's depot
which is an interface to the palm database for persistent app specific settings.
That means it should be set only once after the first account is set up
and you should never have to see this screen again. The fact that we
are seeing it, indicates either a corrupt depot interface or a corrupted
database.

I tried adding a new pop mail account from the first time use screen
to try to get it to set the flag again. Synced new account successfully, and
then closed email app and killed it. Restarted, and it came back to first time
use screen.

I just dug through the email app database file
/var/palm/data/file_.usr.palm.applications.com.palm.app.email_0/0000000000000001.db
and confirmed that the firstUseComplete flag is set to true as it should be,
and that the syntax is same as my backup of the same db file from 1.3.5.
Means the problem appears to be on the depot read side in the email app.

ian

[Daemon]

Saw something interesting happen this evening.
Left JSTop running all day so I could keep an eye on what is running
in the background. Usually I see email, contacts, phone etc,
hanging around even when their cards are closed.
Was out eating dinner, got an email. Read it, and dismissed it.
Got home later, and noticed in JSTop all of the normal background
processes not running. No contacts, no email, no phone.
See attached.. ("FuturePr0n" is battery monitor app)

I've sent an email to myself from my PC to see if I get the notification
on the Pre but I suspect I will not. Something is killing off processes
that don't normally get killed. I have a sneaky suspicion that it
has something to do with moving between Wifi and EVDO
but will take more testing.

ian

[Arthur Thornton]

Originally Posted by Daemon

Saw something interesting happen this evening.
Left JSTop running all day so I could keep an eye on what is running
in the background. Usually I see email, contacts, phone etc,
hanging around even when their cards are closed.
Was out eating dinner, got an email. Read it, and dismissed it.
Got home later, and noticed in JSTop all of the normal background
processes not running. No contacts, no email, no phone.
See attached.. ("FuturePr0n" is battery monitor app)

I've sent an email to myself from my PC to see if I get the notification
on the Pre but I suspect I will not. Something is killing off processes
that don't normally get killed. I have a sneaky suspicion that it
has something to do with moving between Wifi and EVDO
but will take more testing.

ian

Yes, I have been having intermittent issues with texts and emails not coming in as they should and when I check JSTop, the processes are dead, so I reboot. I do not know why they get killed.

I have auto garbage collection on, so maybe that's doing it.

I also killed the email process and got the add new account dialog (got it several times since updating to 1.4 so I figured I would give it a try).

[Daemon]

You shouldn't have to reboot. Just fire up each respective app and then
dismiss it. They should hang around in the background.

I'm not running JSTop with auto-GC turned on. Besides it's happening
even when JSTop is not running so I think we can rule it out.

ian