#1024 Lightning Addon makes Enigmail/OpenPGP column appear at program start

[Gregor Mueckl]

The Enigmail/OpenPGP column appears automatically in the Inbox view a few seconds after Thunderbird starts. Hiding the column only persists until the next start of Thunderbird. Then it will re-appear. Curiously, this happens a few seconds after the rest of the UI is shown and responsive. Disabling the Lightning plugin stops this behaviour.

Both Enigmail and Thunderbird are provided by my distribution (Artix, derived from Arch). Only Enigmail and Lightning are installed as add-ons.

[Patrick Brunschwig]

According to my experience, this has nothing directly to do with Lightning.

I recommend you do this:

1. Quit Thunderbird
2. delete all files in ~/.cache/thunderbird/*/startupCache/
3. delete ~/.thunderbird/<your profile>/xulstore.json

[Gregor Mueckl]

Doing this does not work. The behaviour stays unchanged. Something is that specific column and it ends up quite wide on screen. The curious part for me is that the column visibly pops into view seconds after the message list is already shown and seems to be fully populated with data. Some kind of background initialization seems to be messing with column visibility.

[Patrick Brunschwig]

That's not surpising to me. Enigmail is initialized lazily and takes a few moments to complete. Are you sure that Enigmail 2.1.2 is installed? If yes, then I suspect that you will see some error message in the Error Console (menu Tools > Developer Tools > Error Console).

[Gregor Mueckl]

Below is what is displayed in the Error Console after startup. Is this helpful in any way? Do you need more info on any part of this?

WebExtensions: Loading packed extension from /home/gregor/.thunderbird/4tppmusp.default/extensions/{e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}.xpi ext-legacy.js:157
WebExtensions: Loading add-on preferences from /home/gregor/.thunderbird/4tppmusp.default/extensions/{e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103}.xpi ext-legacy.js:190
WebExtensions: Firing profile-after-change listeners for {e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103} ext-legacy.js:194
XUL box for statusbarpanel element contained an inline #text child, forcing all its children to be wrapped in a block. 151 messenger.xul
XUL box for statusbarpanel element contained an inline #text child, forcing all its children to be wrapped in a block. folderDisplay.js:990:6
XUL box for statusbarpanel element contained an inline #text child, forcing all its children to be wrapped in a block. 2 messenger.xul
XUL box for statusbarpanel element contained an inline #text child, forcing all its children to be wrapped in a block. mailWidgets.js:986:29
XUL box for statusbarpanel element contained an inline #text child, forcing all its children to be wrapped in a block. 95 messenger.xul
Stylesheets without CSSOM changes reparsed to check for errors. Refresh the page to also see errors from stylesheets changed from CSSOM and from style attributes. 13
Unknown property ‘user-select’. Declaration dropped. reps.css:23:15
Stylesheets without CSSOM changes reparsed to check for errors. Refresh the page to also see errors from stylesheets changed from CSSOM and from style attributes.

[Patrick Brunschwig]

From my experience, this only happens if something disturbs the startup phase in Enigmail. Lightning doesn't disturb Enigmail, but other add-ons may do that. Did you install anything else apart from Lightning and Enigmail?

[Gregor Mueckl]

No, Lightning and Enigmail are the only two addons in the affected Thunderbird installation.

[Patrick Brunschwig]

What bugs me is that your console log is quite different from mine. I test with various profiles on Linux and Windows, and the console log is always the same.

Do you use the Thunderbird version distributed by your Distro, or from https://thunderbird.net?

If you use your Distro's TB, it would be interesting to see if there's any difference if you'd use the official download.

[MrFlibble]

Hi guys, I also have this problem with Thunderbird 68.1.2 and enigmail 2.1.3 on Ubuntu 19.10.
There is also a mention of the same problem with manjaro (not sure what version but is from last month). I also have Lightening installed. Adding and removing other columns in the message list works fine and survives restarts. For me this is a recent install of the distro.
Thunderbird 68.2.0-1.2 on OpenSuse Tumbleweed doesn't seem to have this problem, but not sure what version I have of Lightning or Enigmail.

[Patrick Brunschwig]

See above - do you also have the problem on the same PC, using the same profile if you use the official version from https://thunderbird.net? Please download and install this version and let me know if that works OK or not.

[Patrick Brunschwig]

OK, by coincidence, I have a virtual (Windows) machine that all of a sudden has the same issue. I can thus reproduce it, and consequently fix it.