[Synce-devel] CRITICAL sync-engine bug

[John Carr]

Hi all

(on irc) I've had 3, possibly 4, reported cases of sync-engine
deleting /ALL/ contacts.

One victim was me. All I did was connect my phone (WM6), fire up
sync-engine, delete an old partnership and create a new one. At some
point in the next few hours I was getting texts with no names and to my
horror my address book was empty :-(

This was SVN version of sync-engine. No syncing was attempted.

Another user ran the do_sync.py script, not realising its something of a
NOP. I don't no if that triggered it too or not.

I would attempt to debug this further but am somewhat afraid of losing
the 10 or 12 numbers I actually managed to recover... I know a few of
you have had more experience poking sync-engine that me - any ideas?

John

[Dr J A Gow]

Post by John Carr
Hi all
(on irc) I've had 3, possibly 4, reported cases of sync-engine
deleting /ALL/ contacts.
One victim was me. All I did was connect my phone (WM6), fire up
sync-engine, delete an old partnership and create a new one. At some
point in the next few hours I was getting texts with no names and to my
horror my address book was empty :-(
This was SVN version of sync-engine. No syncing was attempted.
Another user ran the do_sync.py script, not realising its something of a
NOP. I don't no if that triggered it too or not.
I would attempt to debug this further but am somewhat afraid of losing
the 10 or 12 numbers I actually managed to recover... I know a few of
you have had more experience poking sync-engine that me - any ideas?
John

Noted, and now on my priority to-do list to check. I have not seen this
behaviour myself so just to confirm the sequence of events:

- start sync-engine
- delete partnership
- create partnership

and no external sync trigger was issued (this may not be reliable as the
devices seem to trigger syncs at regular intervals). Is this correct?

Also:

- I am assuming that sync-engine was started immediately before the
partnership change - is this correct?

- events and tasks are unaffected?

- Did the new partnership specify to sync just contacts, or contacts,
with one or more of tasks or events?

Importantly, can anyone confirm if this is a WM6 issue or affects both
WM5 and WM6. I have carried out exactly this same manoeuvre many times
with WM5 with no ill-effects. At the moment, I can't think how contacts
could be specifically being deleted on the first device-side sync after
new partnershiop creation unless the phone is behaving differently.

John.

[John Carr]

Post by Dr J A Gow
Noted, and now on my priority to-do list to check. I have not seen this
- start sync-engine
- delete partnership
- create partnership

I think so.. I may have reconnected the device after creating a
partnership. Again, I didn't manually sync anything.

Post by Dr J A Gow
and no external sync trigger was issued (this may not be reliable as the
devices seem to trigger syncs at regular intervals). Is this correct?

No external sync in my case, but in one other case tools/do_sync.py was
called. My device was definitely connected long enough for an automatic
sync as I was poking around with Windows Mobile HAL for Conduit.

Post by Dr J A Gow
- I am assuming that sync-engine was started immediately before the
partnership change - is this correct?

Yes

Post by Dr J A Gow
- events and tasks are unaffected?

I don't really use events and tasks that much. Ok, at all :)

Post by Dr J A Gow
- Did the new partnership specify to sync just contacts, or contacts,
with one or more of tasks or events?

Contacts/Events/Tasks

Post by Dr J A Gow
Importantly, can anyone confirm if this is a WM6 issue or affects both
WM5 and WM6. I have carried out exactly this same manoeuvre many times
with WM5 with no ill-effects. At the moment, I can't think how contacts
could be specifically being deleted on the first device-side sync after
new partnershiop creation unless the phone is behaving differently.

The most recent case was WM6. My case was WM6. I think an older case was
also WM6...

WM6 was definitely working at some point because I used SynCE for WM5 to
file, file to WM6... But the contacts might be cleared first... and then
its ok...

It looks likely that this is WM6, and I have no choice but to go to
Windows, backup my contacts and then take a fall...

John

[Dr J A Gow]

Post by John Carr
WM6 was definitely working at some point because I used SynCE for WM5 to
file, file to WM6... But the contacts might be cleared first... and then
its ok...
It looks likely that this is WM6, and I have no choice but to go to
Windows, backup my contacts and then take a fall...

This is what I was afraid of - a WM6 issue. I'll be getting a WM6 device
for testing in a few days so I will evaluate with this device and see if
I can get to the bottom of the problem but I have a gut feeling this may
be a problem with WM6 itself - maybe a subtle difference in the way
partnerships are created/destroyed. I'll know more when the device
arrives.

John.