GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 215724
palm sync duplicates contacts and contact fields
Last modified: 2013-09-13 12:34:46 UTC
Description of Problem: Palm Sync duplicated many of my contacts and placed the email address into the business fax field Steps to reproduce the problem: 1. Sync palm with evolution using 2. Observe many new duplicate contact on palm 3. Actual Results: Each time the palm is sync'd a new set of duplicate contacts is created. Expected Results: Changed info in contacts should be updated on both sides How often does this happen? Everytime Additional Information: Some duplicate entries have multiple duplicate fields as well.
So after adding a record to the pilot or to evolution, and syncing there are two identical copies on the pilot and two identical copies in evolution?
No, adding an entry in the palm will create a single entry in evolution on the first sync. Any new entry that has been added within evolution does not show up in the palm at all. If I then edit the evolution entered entry it will show up in the palm on the next sync. Existing entries are the ones that get duplicated. In fact I have three entries for most, not all, of my contacts now. It does appear that it maxes out at three copies. Also, I am syncing up with a home and work computer, both running 0.99.2. Note also that this applies to all of the other conduits that I am using, the calendar and task list conudits.
Are you syncing with anything else between syncs to evolution? (jpilot, coldsync, windows, etc).
No, no other sync between evolution syncs. I had previously synced the palm with outlook a month ago and I had previously synced it with evolution 0.15 and 0.16. But once I started syncing wiht 0.99.2 both machines had that version.
Ok. I suspect part of the problem is that you are syncing with both a home and work computer, as this causes a "slow" sync to occur with record to record compares and if anything does not match, a copy of each record is placed on the device and in evolution (2 and 2) as prescribed by the palm syncing rules. To test though, can you do the following on a single computer: 1. Back up your evolution directory and palm pilot if you haven't already (if you don't know how to do this, let me know) 2. Disable all conduits except the address conduit, put it in Synchronize mode. 3. Remove duplicates from the palm (restore from an earlier backup). 4. rm ~/evolution/local/Contacts/pilot* 5. rm ~/evolution/local/Contacts/addressbook.db (this will kill all your contacts) 6. killall gpilotd 7. gpilotd 8. sync the contacts and attempt to duplicate the above behaviour, if it still exists, please send the output of gpilotd.
Rick?
Hi Luis, Sorry I haven't gotten back quicker, tied up with work. It is going to take me a little while to run the steps you outlined. I had several hundred contacts in my palm, so now I have close to a thousand. I am now trying to figure which of each of the duplicates is the correct one since in many there subtle changes to the record such relabling the email field as the home phone #. Stupidly of me I had not backed up my palm, that'll teach me :(. Rick
I've been hitting this problem as well. Again I used to have a duel sync (home on Evolution and work on PalmSync). However there seems to be a link if evolution is running or not. This is what I have done 1. Deleteded evolution/local/Contacts/addressbook and pilot-sync stuff 2. Opened and closed evolution (killev) 2. Set conduit "copy pilot to evolution" 3. Synced (which has some duplcates) 4. Opened evoltion. 5. Deleted some duplicates 6. Synced 7. Duplicates still exists on Palm and Evolution 8. Deleted some duplicates on Evolution 9. Exited evolution 10. Synced 11. Duplicates disapear from Palm and Evolution Hence I think one of the problems lies in changes to the contact book not having an imeadiate effect of the database.
Well part of the reason you will get duplicates is because you are syncing to multiple machines and palm dictates that if a record differs on the desktop and on the pilot, duplicates are made if they aren't identical. Things like the Outlook conduits add things like <location> fields and such.
Is this big related to bug 224115?
Unlikely.
*** bug 233398 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** bug 226408 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Tried the new 1.4 version to see if this has gotten any better and it still happens.
Retargeting
Well, I went through this again and still can't duplicate it, what a puzzling bug. Is it possible to get the output of gpilotd?
*** bug 241627 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I see this also, on a Tungsten T3, evolution 2.0.1 on sparc Solaris 8. Essentially, I can't use any of the conduits to sync, I can only trust them with the "copy from pilot" settings. Pilot-dedupe no longer works with the new T3 contacts database, so I have to manually delete 180 duplicated contacts. Frustrating.
Well it did it again (although I don't know if this was caused by upping evolution versions going from Mandrake 10 to 10.1). Anyway an example duplicate from the exported VCF (with redacted data): Processing VCARD 554 ###Found Duplicate!### Index: (Goth)\, Jenny ##Original## VERSION:3.0 FN:Jenny (Goth) N:(Goth);Jenny;;; X-EVOLUTION-FILE-AS:(Goth)\, Jenny ADR;TYPE=WORK:;## ###### ##;#### ###;;;## ###; TEL;TYPE=CELL:##### ### ### UID:pas-id-4190CC5800000002 END:VCARD ##Duplicate## VERSION:3.0 X-EVOLUTION-FILE-AS:(Goth)\, Jenny FN:Jenny (Goth) N:(Goth);Jenny ADR;TYPE=WORK;TYPE=PREF:;## ##### ##;#### ###;;;## ### LABEL;TYPE=WORK;TYPE=PREF:#### ###\n## ##### ##\n## ### TEL;TYPE=WORK;TYPE=FAX: TEL;TYPE=HOME;TYPE=VOICE: TEL;TYPE=CELL;TYPE=VOICE:##### ### ### TEL;TYPE=VOICE: EMAIL;TYPE=INTERNET: TITLE: NOTE: UID:pas-id-418F5AEC00000037 END:VCARD And you can see its the same data but slightly reformated in additional fields in the second example. BTW the duplicates where detected by a little perl script I wrote to process the exported VCF address book. I got tired of cleaning my address book by hand everytime this occurs. For interested people you can find the script @ http://www.bennee.com/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/src/perl/addrclean/
retargetting from 2.1 to 2.3, reassigning to varadhan.
Rising this to 'Major' so that this gains better attention fro 2.3.x.
I got this scenario when synching pilot between multiple computers. Sync pilot and evolution on one computer(comp1). Now sync it with evolution on another computer(comp2). Now change a contact in comp1 and sync. The modified record in evolution(comp1) get added to pilot and the corresponding record in pilot gets added to evolution. I dont see any records being duplicated.
alex, rick, peter, does anyone of you still see this issue with a current version of evolution? mohammed: don't set bug reports to NEEDINFO without telling which info you need!
comment from https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome-pilot-conduits/+bug/9284: "I have tried the same procedure again and it works fine for me now."
Closing this bug based on sebestien's comments. If any one the bug reporters of this bug still observes this issue reopen this bug.