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Comment: Display Email User Agent
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<<TableOfContents()>>

== Tips ==
=== Display Email User Agent ===
 * access the "Config Editor" from Edit->Preferences->Advanced (click "I'll be carefull...")
 * search after mailnews.headers.showUserAgent and double click on it to activate it
 * restart Icedove and notice that, when viewing a message, below the "To" field the "User agent" is present now
<<TableOfContents(2)>>

= Tips =
== Display Email User Agent ==
 * Access the "Config Editor" from Edit->Preferences->Advanced (click "I'll be careful...")
 * Search after mailnews.headers.showUserAgent and double click on it to activate it
 * Restart Icedove and notice that, when viewing a message, below the "To" field the "User agent" is present now

== External Editor for Writing Mails ==
 * If you want to use a external editor for composing your message take a look at [[http://globs.org/articles.php?lng=en&pg=2|globs.org]]

== Icedove seems impossible to send mails via STARTLS after installation of libnss 3.14-1 ==
 * This problem is not really a Icedove bug ([[DebianBug:692886|#692886]] [[DebianBug:692491|#692491]]). With releasing version 3.14-1 of libnss no certificates with a md5 signatures are allowed. It's recommended to check your signatures if you are using md5 based signatures in case of problems. You can do this this{{{
openssl s_client -connect hostname:587 -starttls < /dev/null | sed -n '/BEGIN/,/END/p' | openssl x509 -text
}}}Search for "Signature Algorithm". For further information please take a look at https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:MD5and1024

== Shortcuts ==
Take a look at https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts

== Create Own Mail Headers ==
With editing (or creating) your own ~/.icedove/user.js file you are able to create own, not already shipped Mail Header entrys. It have to looks like that. The entry '{custom headers}' is a comma-separated list of the custom headers you want to be available. "Sender,X-Y" adds the Sender: and X-Y: headers, for example.{{{
// This is a comment
user_pref("mail.compose.other.header", "{custom headers}");
}}}
In detail take a look at the following example. More infos on this on [[http://kb.mozillazine.org/Custom_headers|mozillaZine]]
{{{
// my own Icedove settings in $HOME/.icedove/user.js
// add these headers to the list of possible headers
user_pref("mail.compose.other.header", "X-Debbugs-CC,X-Debbugs-No-Ack");
}}}

== Selecting Url in Icedove Causes New Page Open In Iceweasel To Take Focus ==
This problem is reported in [[DebianBug:496632|#496632]]. When selecting url in icedove, window focus is stolen by iceweasel when it loads the url. A temporary workaround is to set the browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground setting. This substantially changes the behaviour of iceweasel, so this may not be acceptable for everyone. To access this setting, enter 'about:config' in the url bar. This brings up a warning page, with a button labelled "I'll be careful, I promise!".
Scroll to the entry titled "browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground". Double clicking on this line toggles the setting. Setting this to "true" will prevent iceweasel from stealing focus in the described case. The instructions for changing this setting were originally found at [[http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-stop-firefox-stealing-window-focus.htm]]

== Problems with Indexing of mails/news ==
In rare cases it may happen that Icedove is permanetaly keeps indexing of your mails and messages. The reason for this behavior is mostly a broken or damaged SQLite database. This issue will be easy to fix, you have to delete the broken database. Icedove is creating a new database if not present.
 1. Close the Icedove application
 2. Remove the file `$HOME/.icedove/[Your_Profile]/global-messages-db.sqlite`
 3. Restart Icedove

== Icedove and the Mozilla Lightning Extension ==
The Lightning extension from Mozilla isn't usable with Icedove >= version 24! This happen because of different internally lifetime linking inside the extension. So please use the DebPkg:iceowl-extension from the Debian repositories.

== Open Address Book only ==
Create a launcher with the following command

{{{ icedove -addressbook }}}

----
= The future of Icedove =
What is the future of the upstream Thunderbird project and consequently the Icedove package(s) in Debian?

Mozilla has changed their approach to developing and managing Thunderbird. A very public [[http://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2012/07/adjusting-the-way-thunderbird-is-managed|anouncement]] was made about this on 8 July 2012. Since this announcement Mozilla decided to change the focus of their own contributions to the project and will put more emphasis on their web projects and of course on FirefoxOS. Mozilla plans to open the Thunderbird development to a more community driven project but will also be there for security and stability maintenance.
There are no plans to close the packaging of Icedove from the Debian side. There is a [[http://benjamin.smedbergs.us/weekly-updates.fcgi/project/thunderbird|project]] webpage from the developer Bejamin Smedbergs which shows the activity from the Mozilla project members.
See also the [[http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/img/esr/tb-esr-plan.png|Mozilla TB ESR Release Plan]] and on the [[https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar|Rapid Release Calendar]].
As long as Mozilla will provide ESR versions there will be packaged versions of those inside the various release of Debian. The current stable release Debian Wheezy is getting Icedove 17 versions as security updates from the Thunderbird 17 ESR releases. This happen because the Thunderbird 10 ESR circle is marked as end of life and no more security updated will be provided by Mozilla. After the Thunderbird 17 ESR cycle version 24 will be the next ESR release by Mozilla. If possible version 24 will replace version 17 in stable.

It is important to look at this situation in perspective:
 * Even though Thunderbird receives less attention from Mozilla than before July 2012, the long term support is still significantly stronger than the support for many other open source projects. There are several examples of popular open source projects that have been completely abandoned by upstream but lived on nonetheless, [[https://lwn.net/Articles/416901/|procmail]] is one such example.
 * The Mozilla announcement doesn't mean that any features will go away, it just means new ones may not be added so quickly. Users and potential users should make any decision about their use of Thunderbird/Icedove based on merit alone, e.g. comparing the features available now against the features in similar packages.

= Reporting Bugs =
Sometimes Icedove doesn't doing things as expected or some error happen. Then you need help or want to report the issue. '''Before''' you do this please visit the web pages [[http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?repeatmerged=yes&src=icedove|Bugs in icedove, calendar-google-provider, calendar-timezones, icedove-dbg, icedove-dev, iceowl-extension]] and/or [[http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?repeatmerged=yes&src=icedove-l10n|icedove-l10n-*]] and check if you find a solution for your problem or some other bug is closed to yours reported. Please do this careful! Because errors reported twice or more take a lot of time to coordinate!

Your problem isn't there or you want to provide extra information to an already opened bug? You can report it best with [[Reportbug|reportbug]], really! :-) But you can also use a EMail client to send bug reports. To do this please visit [[http://www.debian.org/Bugs/|Bugs]] and [[http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting|Reporting]].

Before you send your report, please check if you can append some useful information for the developer! Please read the following chapter for this.
If you use a version from testing or unstable/experimental please check also if a similar problem is reported to the [[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org|Bugzilla]] on Mozilla and provide the URL to that bug entry if possible. This helps the developer (and the reporter too) to get automatic notifications if the status of the upstream bug has changed.
If you are an advanced user and you can't find the bug in the database on Mozilla you can create there your new bug report and then open a bug report on the Debian with the upstream URL to this bug. This helps the package maintainers too.

And if you are an expert and can help to scaling down the bug list any help is appreciated! If you can provide some patches to improve Icedove or some other package please don't hesitate to write a mail to the packages maintainer!
----
= Debugging =
Sometimes you need some debug information for tracking down problems, for example to give the maintainer more useful information if you have some trouble with Icedove. To get a digestible output with gdb while debugging the application (Icedove and used libraries) must have so named "debugging symbols". For the normal use this symbols inside the application are not necessary. To track file actions there is the possibility to use strace to monitor this.
== Preparation ==
There some dependencies to get a proper debug output. May be you need to install some additional packages. Once the applications with the debugging symbols and the tools to get the output while debugging. Both are necessary. You will need to install the following packages.
{{{#!wiki note
'''additional packages'''

gdb icedove-dbg strace
}}}

== Starting Debugging ==
If these packages are installed you have to start Icedove from a terminal. This is quite simple, you have to give an argument `-g` to the starting wrapper script of Icedove if the version is <= v10.0.x (like Wheezy or Squeeze). If you use a version of Icedove if > 10.0.x (like `stable-security`, `testing` or above) the debugging call has changed. This should be true for all Wheezy installations with security update support (this the default setting while installation). The debugging must be called by the wrapper script `/usr/lib/icedove/run-mozilla.sh` with option `g` or `debug` and the Icedove binary `/usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin`.
If Icedove is crashing down please also append `-safe-mode` to prevent the usage of any extension or themes inside Icedove.
{{{#!highlight bash
# use this if you are running a plain Wheezy without security support (stable) or Squeeze (oldstable)
user@pc:~ $ icedove -g [-safe-mode] 2>&1 | tee /tmp/icedove-gdb-$(apt-cache show icedove | grep Version | awk '{ print $2 }')_$(date +%F_%T).log
}}}
{{{#!highlight bash
# use this if you are running stable-security, backports, testing or greater
user@pc:~ $ /usr/lib/icedove/run-mozilla.sh -g [-safe-mode] /usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin 2>&1 | tee /tmp/icedove-gdb-$(apt-cache show icedove | grep Version | awk '{ print $2 }')_$(date +%F_%T).log
}}}
This starts the gdb with Icedove as program to debug and logs all the output to `/tmp/icedove-gdb-[version]_[timestamp].log`. The file can be send to a bug report as attachment (consider about packing this file it before!). This is mostly needed if your Icedove is crashing at some action. Please check the output of the gdb! If you see something like `no debugging symbols found` check the packages you have installed. With no debugging symbols it's worthless to go further!
The next step is to start the Icedove inside the gdb with the "run" command.
{{{#!highlight bash
(gdb) run
}}}
The start of Icedove is taking a little time, after a few seconds you will see (hopefully) the normal GUI screen of Icedove. In the terminal there must be some information to see, in normal case the starting and terminating of Threads, this should looks like this.
{{{#!highlight bash
user@pc:~ $ # !!! use one of the above described command lines !!!
/usr/lib/icedove/run-mozilla.sh -g /usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin
MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/usr/lib/icedove
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/icedove:/usr/lib/icedove/plugins:/usr/lib/icedove
DISPLAY=:0
DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/icedove:/usr/lib/icedove
     LIBRARY_PATH=
       SHLIB_PATH=/usr/lib/icedove:/usr/lib/icedove
          LIBPATH=/usr/lib/icedove:/usr/lib/icedove
       ADDON_PATH=
      MOZ_PROGRAM=/usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin
      MOZ_TOOLKIT=
        moz_debug=1
     moz_debugger=
moz_debugger_args=
/usr/bin/gdb --args /usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.4.1-debian
Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "x86_64-linux-gnu".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>...
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin...Reading symbols from /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin...done.
done.
(gdb) run
Starting program: /usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
[New Thread 0x7fffe5993700 (LWP 9761)]
[New Thread 0x7fffe4ad0700 (LWP 9762)]
[New Thread 0x7fffe42cf700 (LWP 9763)]
[New Thread 0x7fffe36ff700 (LWP 9764)]
[New Thread 0x7fffe23ff700 (LWP 9765)]
[New Thread 0x7fffe1bfe700 (LWP 9766)]
[New Thread 0x7fffe03f6700 (LWP 9767)]
[New Thread 0x7fffdf7ff700 (LWP 9768)]
[New Thread 0x7fffdeffe700 (LWP 9769)]
[New Thread 0x7fffddfff700 (LWP 9770)]
[New Thread 0x7fffdc0ff700 (LWP 9771)]
[Thread 0x7fffe03f6700 (LWP 9767) exited]
[Thread 0x7fffdeffe700 (LWP 9769) exited]
}}}
If a crash occurs and Icedove stops working and quits, it's possible to get a backtrace of this. For this run the command `bt` in the terminal there the gdb runs. Remind that Icedove is programmed as a multithreaded program, because of this we want to see all these threads. For more information about gbd around this take a look on [[HowToGetABacktrace|How to get a backtrace]].
{{{#!highlight bash
(gdb) thread apply all bt
}}}
This gives out a collection of the last status from the stack. This information is needed if you reporting errors with a crashing Icedove.

{{{#!wiki note
'''Note!'''

In some special cases a crash of Icedove can produce a crash of your X-Server. If this happen you have to start your Icedove from a screen session. Without this you can't see the output of the backtrace because the terminal is also cleaned up while the X-Server is crashed. After you relogin to your X-Sessions restart your terminal and reattach the screen session with `screen -r`.
}}}

== Debugging of file system activity ==
It is also possible to see what Icedove is trying do on the file system. For this you can use the tool `strace`. For this Icedove must also started from a terminal. strace logs every system call Icedove makes, and this is a lot! So it is useful to log directly to a file. Note that the file will growing very fast! Best practice is to write the file to the /tmp folder. The file will be dropped if you turn off your PC.
{{{#!highlight bash
user@pc:~ $ strace -e file -f -s2048 -o /tmp/icedove_dbg.txt icedove
}}}

== Debugging Icedove Activity ==
The activity of Icedove itself can be also logged. For this you have to tell Icedove what component with which level (1 to 5, but just use always 5!) into which file you are want to log. This can be done from the CLI (Command Line Interface -> the console) or via extra start script nor extra setting.
Possible components are the MCD ([[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MCD,_Mission_Control_Desktop_AKA_AutoConfig?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=MCD|MissionControlDesktop]]), SMTP or IMAP.

For example to log the MCD with level 5 to `~/icedove-mcd.log` from the console do this
{{{#!highlight bash
user@pc:~ $ NSPR_LOG_MODULES=MCD:5 NSPR_LOG_FILE=~/icedove-mcd.log icedove
}}}
{{{#!wiki note
'''Attention!'''
The log file can be growing fast and getting big. If you want to send this file to a bug report don't forget it to pack!
}}}
You can also put you requirements to a extra file and export/unexport the variables. You may want to do this
{{{#!highlight bash
# icedove-dbg.sh
# just execute this script to setup this variables
# other options for NSPR_LOG_MODULES are
# SMTP or
# IMAP

export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=MCD:5
export NSPR_LOG_FILE=~/icedove-dbg.txt
}}}
----
= Backports for Squeeze =
Right now the latest version in backports.debian.org for Icedove is 10.0.12-1 for Squeeze (old-bpo). If you wanna use this you have to add the [[Backports|Debian backport repository]] to your sources and just run an upgrade or reinstall of Icedove. Locales for this version are also available.

Newer versions then 10.0.x probably will never be available for Squeeze because of dependencies that can't be solved for squeeze.

= Backports for Wheezy =
For Wheezy currently there are no Debian backports available. The current version in stable-security is 24.4.0 so there are no needs for backports. If you use the Lightning extension from Mozilla please uninstall this first, the Lightning extension don't work with Icedove >= 24. Then install DebPkg:iceowl-extension to use the calendar functionality.

Mike Hommey provides unofficial backports for Icedove. You can install these versions to the current Debian stable release. Please visit [[http://mozilla.debian.net|mozilla.debian.net]] for further instructions and information. For locales support you have install the related language manually from the [[http://packages.debian.org/source/wheezy/icedove-l10n|wheezy pool]].

But please remember! The packages from [[http://mozilla.debian.net|mozilla.debian.net]] not packaged by the Icedove maintainers! If you found issues please remember to write about the repo you use in your bugreport.

----
= Known Problems =
There are some problems that needs a lot of time to work on or some rethinking.
 * migration, transition of $HOME/.mozilla-thunderbird to $HOME/.icedove or $HOME/.mozilla/thunderbird and /etc/thunderbird to /etc/icedove
 * restructuring dependencies for locales of icedove (l10n)
 * wrong description in /etc/icedove/pref/icedove.js ([[DebianBug:486617|#486617]])
 * out of date backports ([[DebianBug:668578|#668578]])

----
= More useful informations =
There are more resources to find informations for working with Icedove.

 *[[Icedove/WhatsNew]] Information about the changes within the Icedove/Thunderbird versions
 *[[Icedove/Devel]] Development related things for Icedove

----
CategoryIcedove

Translation(s): English


Icedove is the Thunderbird email client rebranded by Debian.

Tips

Display Email User Agent

  • Access the "Config Editor" from Edit->Preferences->Advanced (click "I'll be careful...")

  • Search after mailnews.headers.showUserAgent and double click on it to activate it
  • Restart Icedove and notice that, when viewing a message, below the "To" field the "User agent" is present now

External Editor for Writing Mails

  • If you want to use a external editor for composing your message take a look at globs.org

Icedove seems impossible to send mails via STARTLS after installation of libnss 3.14-1

  • This problem is not really a Icedove bug (#692886 #692491). With releasing version 3.14-1 of libnss no certificates with a md5 signatures are allowed. It's recommended to check your signatures if you are using md5 based signatures in case of problems. You can do this this

    openssl s_client -connect hostname:587 -starttls < /dev/null | sed -n '/BEGIN/,/END/p' | openssl x509 -text

    Search for "Signature Algorithm". For further information please take a look at https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:MD5and1024

Shortcuts

Take a look at https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts

Create Own Mail Headers

With editing (or creating) your own ~/.icedove/user.js file you are able to create own, not already shipped Mail Header entrys. It have to looks like that. The entry '{custom headers}' is a comma-separated list of the custom headers you want to be available. "Sender,X-Y" adds the Sender: and X-Y: headers, for example.

// This is a comment
user_pref("mail.compose.other.header", "{custom headers}");

In detail take a look at the following example. More infos on this on mozillaZine

// my own Icedove settings in $HOME/.icedove/user.js
// add these headers to the list of possible headers
user_pref("mail.compose.other.header", "X-Debbugs-CC,X-Debbugs-No-Ack");

Selecting Url in Icedove Causes New Page Open In Iceweasel To Take Focus

This problem is reported in #496632. When selecting url in icedove, window focus is stolen by iceweasel when it loads the url. A temporary workaround is to set the browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground setting. This substantially changes the behaviour of iceweasel, so this may not be acceptable for everyone. To access this setting, enter 'about:config' in the url bar. This brings up a warning page, with a button labelled "I'll be careful, I promise!". Scroll to the entry titled "browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground". Double clicking on this line toggles the setting. Setting this to "true" will prevent iceweasel from stealing focus in the described case. The instructions for changing this setting were originally found at http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-stop-firefox-stealing-window-focus.htm

Problems with Indexing of mails/news

In rare cases it may happen that Icedove is permanetaly keeps indexing of your mails and messages. The reason for this behavior is mostly a broken or damaged SQLite database. This issue will be easy to fix, you have to delete the broken database. Icedove is creating a new database if not present.

  1. Close the Icedove application
  2. Remove the file $HOME/.icedove/[Your_Profile]/global-messages-db.sqlite

  3. Restart Icedove

Icedove and the Mozilla Lightning Extension

The Lightning extension from Mozilla isn't usable with Icedove >= version 24! This happen because of different internally lifetime linking inside the extension. So please use the iceowl-extension from the Debian repositories.

Open Address Book only

Create a launcher with the following command

 icedove -addressbook 


The future of Icedove

What is the future of the upstream Thunderbird project and consequently the Icedove package(s) in Debian?

Mozilla has changed their approach to developing and managing Thunderbird. A very public anouncement was made about this on 8 July 2012. Since this announcement Mozilla decided to change the focus of their own contributions to the project and will put more emphasis on their web projects and of course on FirefoxOS. Mozilla plans to open the Thunderbird development to a more community driven project but will also be there for security and stability maintenance. There are no plans to close the packaging of Icedove from the Debian side. There is a project webpage from the developer Bejamin Smedbergs which shows the activity from the Mozilla project members. See also the Mozilla TB ESR Release Plan and on the Rapid Release Calendar. As long as Mozilla will provide ESR versions there will be packaged versions of those inside the various release of Debian. The current stable release Debian Wheezy is getting Icedove 17 versions as security updates from the Thunderbird 17 ESR releases. This happen because the Thunderbird 10 ESR circle is marked as end of life and no more security updated will be provided by Mozilla. After the Thunderbird 17 ESR cycle version 24 will be the next ESR release by Mozilla. If possible version 24 will replace version 17 in stable.

It is important to look at this situation in perspective:

  • Even though Thunderbird receives less attention from Mozilla than before July 2012, the long term support is still significantly stronger than the support for many other open source projects. There are several examples of popular open source projects that have been completely abandoned by upstream but lived on nonetheless, procmail is one such example.

  • The Mozilla announcement doesn't mean that any features will go away, it just means new ones may not be added so quickly. Users and potential users should make any decision about their use of Thunderbird/Icedove based on merit alone, e.g. comparing the features available now against the features in similar packages.

Reporting Bugs

Sometimes Icedove doesn't doing things as expected or some error happen. Then you need help or want to report the issue. Before you do this please visit the web pages Bugs in icedove, calendar-google-provider, calendar-timezones, icedove-dbg, icedove-dev, iceowl-extension and/or icedove-l10n-* and check if you find a solution for your problem or some other bug is closed to yours reported. Please do this careful! Because errors reported twice or more take a lot of time to coordinate!

Your problem isn't there or you want to provide extra information to an already opened bug? You can report it best with reportbug, really! :-) But you can also use a EMail client to send bug reports. To do this please visit Bugs and Reporting.

Before you send your report, please check if you can append some useful information for the developer! Please read the following chapter for this. If you use a version from testing or unstable/experimental please check also if a similar problem is reported to the Bugzilla on Mozilla and provide the URL to that bug entry if possible. This helps the developer (and the reporter too) to get automatic notifications if the status of the upstream bug has changed. If you are an advanced user and you can't find the bug in the database on Mozilla you can create there your new bug report and then open a bug report on the Debian with the upstream URL to this bug. This helps the package maintainers too.

And if you are an expert and can help to scaling down the bug list any help is appreciated! If you can provide some patches to improve Icedove or some other package please don't hesitate to write a mail to the packages maintainer!


Debugging

Sometimes you need some debug information for tracking down problems, for example to give the maintainer more useful information if you have some trouble with Icedove. To get a digestible output with gdb while debugging the application (Icedove and used libraries) must have so named "debugging symbols". For the normal use this symbols inside the application are not necessary. To track file actions there is the possibility to use strace to monitor this.

Preparation

There some dependencies to get a proper debug output. May be you need to install some additional packages. Once the applications with the debugging symbols and the tools to get the output while debugging. Both are necessary. You will need to install the following packages.

additional packages

gdb icedove-dbg strace

Starting Debugging

If these packages are installed you have to start Icedove from a terminal. This is quite simple, you have to give an argument -g to the starting wrapper script of Icedove if the version is <= v10.0.x (like Wheezy or Squeeze). If you use a version of Icedove if > 10.0.x (like stable-security, testing or above) the debugging call has changed. This should be true for all Wheezy installations with security update support (this the default setting while installation). The debugging must be called by the wrapper script /usr/lib/icedove/run-mozilla.sh with option g or debug and the Icedove binary /usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin. If Icedove is crashing down please also append -safe-mode to prevent the usage of any extension or themes inside Icedove.

   1 # use this if you are running a plain Wheezy without security support (stable) or Squeeze (oldstable)
   2 user@pc:~ $ icedove -g [-safe-mode] 2>&1 | tee /tmp/icedove-gdb-$(apt-cache show icedove | grep Version | awk '{ print $2 }')_$(date +%F_%T).log 

   1 # use this if you are running stable-security, backports, testing or greater
   2 user@pc:~ $ /usr/lib/icedove/run-mozilla.sh -g [-safe-mode] /usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin 2>&1 | tee /tmp/icedove-gdb-$(apt-cache show icedove | grep Version | awk '{ print $2 }')_$(date +%F_%T).log 

This starts the gdb with Icedove as program to debug and logs all the output to /tmp/icedove-gdb-[version]_[timestamp].log. The file can be send to a bug report as attachment (consider about packing this file it before!). This is mostly needed if your Icedove is crashing at some action. Please check the output of the gdb! If you see something like no debugging symbols found check the packages you have installed. With no debugging symbols it's worthless to go further! The next step is to start the Icedove inside the gdb with the "run" command.

   1 (gdb) run

The start of Icedove is taking a little time, after a few seconds you will see (hopefully) the normal GUI screen of Icedove. In the terminal there must be some information to see, in normal case the starting and terminating of Threads, this should looks like this.

   1 user@pc:~ $ # !!! use one of the above described command lines !!!
   2 /usr/lib/icedove/run-mozilla.sh -g /usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin
   3 MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/usr/lib/icedove
   4   LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/icedove:/usr/lib/icedove/plugins:/usr/lib/icedove
   5 DISPLAY=:0
   6 DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/icedove:/usr/lib/icedove
   7      LIBRARY_PATH=
   8        SHLIB_PATH=/usr/lib/icedove:/usr/lib/icedove
   9           LIBPATH=/usr/lib/icedove:/usr/lib/icedove
  10        ADDON_PATH=
  11       MOZ_PROGRAM=/usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin
  12       MOZ_TOOLKIT=
  13         moz_debug=1
  14      moz_debugger=
  15 moz_debugger_args=
  16 /usr/bin/gdb  --args /usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin
  17 GNU gdb (GDB) 7.4.1-debian
  18 Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  19 License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
  20 This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
  21 There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show copying"
  22 and "show warranty" for details.
  23 This GDB was configured as "x86_64-linux-gnu".
  24 For bug reporting instructions, please see:
  25 <http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>...
  26 Reading symbols from /usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin...Reading symbols from /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin...done.
  27 done.
  28 (gdb) run
  29 Starting program: /usr/lib/icedove/icedove-bin 
  30 [Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
  31 Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
  32 [New Thread 0x7fffe5993700 (LWP 9761)]
  33 [New Thread 0x7fffe4ad0700 (LWP 9762)]
  34 [New Thread 0x7fffe42cf700 (LWP 9763)]
  35 [New Thread 0x7fffe36ff700 (LWP 9764)]
  36 [New Thread 0x7fffe23ff700 (LWP 9765)]
  37 [New Thread 0x7fffe1bfe700 (LWP 9766)]
  38 [New Thread 0x7fffe03f6700 (LWP 9767)]
  39 [New Thread 0x7fffdf7ff700 (LWP 9768)]
  40 [New Thread 0x7fffdeffe700 (LWP 9769)]
  41 [New Thread 0x7fffddfff700 (LWP 9770)]
  42 [New Thread 0x7fffdc0ff700 (LWP 9771)]
  43 [Thread 0x7fffe03f6700 (LWP 9767) exited]
  44 [Thread 0x7fffdeffe700 (LWP 9769) exited]

If a crash occurs and Icedove stops working and quits, it's possible to get a backtrace of this. For this run the command bt in the terminal there the gdb runs. Remind that Icedove is programmed as a multithreaded program, because of this we want to see all these threads. For more information about gbd around this take a look on How to get a backtrace.

   1 (gdb) thread apply all bt

This gives out a collection of the last status from the stack. This information is needed if you reporting errors with a crashing Icedove.

Note!

In some special cases a crash of Icedove can produce a crash of your X-Server. If this happen you have to start your Icedove from a screen session. Without this you can't see the output of the backtrace because the terminal is also cleaned up while the X-Server is crashed. After you relogin to your X-Sessions restart your terminal and reattach the screen session with screen -r.

Debugging of file system activity

It is also possible to see what Icedove is trying do on the file system. For this you can use the tool strace. For this Icedove must also started from a terminal. strace logs every system call Icedove makes, and this is a lot! So it is useful to log directly to a file. Note that the file will growing very fast! Best practice is to write the file to the /tmp folder. The file will be dropped if you turn off your PC.

   1 user@pc:~ $ strace -e file -f -s2048 -o /tmp/icedove_dbg.txt icedove

Debugging Icedove Activity

The activity of Icedove itself can be also logged. For this you have to tell Icedove what component with which level (1 to 5, but just use always 5!) into which file you are want to log. This can be done from the CLI (Command Line Interface -> the console) or via extra start script nor extra setting. Possible components are the MCD (MissionControlDesktop), SMTP or IMAP.

For example to log the MCD with level 5 to ~/icedove-mcd.log from the console do this

   1 user@pc:~ $ NSPR_LOG_MODULES=MCD:5 NSPR_LOG_FILE=~/icedove-mcd.log icedove

Attention! The log file can be growing fast and getting big. If you want to send this file to a bug report don't forget it to pack!

You can also put you requirements to a extra file and export/unexport the variables. You may want to do this

   1 # icedove-dbg.sh
   2 # just execute this script to setup this variables
   3 # other options for NSPR_LOG_MODULES are
   4 #       SMTP or
   5 #       IMAP
   6 
   7 export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=MCD:5
   8 export NSPR_LOG_FILE=~/icedove-dbg.txt


Backports for Squeeze

Right now the latest version in backports.debian.org for Icedove is 10.0.12-1 for Squeeze (old-bpo). If you wanna use this you have to add the Debian backport repository to your sources and just run an upgrade or reinstall of Icedove. Locales for this version are also available.

Newer versions then 10.0.x probably will never be available for Squeeze because of dependencies that can't be solved for squeeze.

Backports for Wheezy

For Wheezy currently there are no Debian backports available. The current version in stable-security is 24.4.0 so there are no needs for backports. If you use the Lightning extension from Mozilla please uninstall this first, the Lightning extension don't work with Icedove >= 24. Then install iceowl-extension to use the calendar functionality.

Mike Hommey provides unofficial backports for Icedove. You can install these versions to the current Debian stable release. Please visit mozilla.debian.net for further instructions and information. For locales support you have install the related language manually from the wheezy pool.

But please remember! The packages from mozilla.debian.net not packaged by the Icedove maintainers! If you found issues please remember to write about the repo you use in your bugreport.


Known Problems

There are some problems that needs a lot of time to work on or some rethinking.

  • migration, transition of $HOME/.mozilla-thunderbird to $HOME/.icedove or $HOME/.mozilla/thunderbird and /etc/thunderbird to /etc/icedove
  • restructuring dependencies for locales of icedove (l10n)
  • wrong description in /etc/icedove/pref/icedove.js (#486617)

  • out of date backports (#668578)


More useful informations

There are more resources to find informations for working with Icedove.


?CategoryIcedove