Webmail/Roundcube issues

Posted at 2021-12-22T13:10:00-07:00 by Scott

Impact

Users may have experienced strange errors when sending mail or using filters in Webmail.

Timeline

  • The underlying issue was introduced via code change on Dec 18th at around 12:00 PM PST
  • A user noticed the issue and alerted staff around 11:34 PM PST
  • Problem was resolved via code revert about half an hour later
  • Impact report was written 4 days later due to holiday/family issues- sorry!

Technical details

An attempt to fix an issue with the Authentication Status plugin’s dependencies inadvertently broke dependencies for Roundcube itself. Staff misunderstood how the PHP Composer dependency loading mechanism worked and inadvertently overwrote autoload.php while copying vendor plugins from a plugin subfolder to the main vendor folder.

Remediation

  • We don’t have specific automated tests for Webmail functionality as it’s third party code and would have to be tested through browser, but some may eventually be merited. For now more manual care should be taken to ensure basic webmail functionality after making changes in Roundcube code.
  • Better error monitoring for Roundcube may reduce the time until issues are caught.