GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 518876
Does not display recent messages in nntp
Last modified: 2010-04-19 23:12:21 UTC
Please describe the problem: For certain NNTP groups in GMane, recent messages are not displayed. Steps to reproduce: Running Evolution 2.12.1, set up a new NNTP account, using news.gmane.org as the server. Under Folder > Subscriptions, subscribe to gmane.comp.java.netbeans.devel. Actual results: Messages from the beginning of the list (April 2000) are displayed, up until Mar 29 2004. The group pane shows v GMane g.c.j.n.devel (49123) or some similar number in the 49000's. "Properties" on the folder shows Total Messages = 26322. Clicking on the group suddenly switches the message count to 26322, as if the more recent 23000 messages just vanished. Expected results: See all messages from 2000 up till present. (The list is active and gets at least several messages per day.) Other groups from the same NNTP server seem fine and show today's messages. Perhaps this only affects groups with very many messages? The list in question has a long history. g.c.j.ide.netbeans.user is also affected. Thunderbird displays the g.c.j.n.devel group just fine, including old and current messages. Does this happen every time? Seems to be reproducible. I even shut down Evolution, went into gconf-editor and ~/.evolution looking for any keys or files mentioning "gmane", deleted them, restarted Evolution and set up the server from scratch; same problem. I'm not sure how to prioritize this issue. For migration from Thunderbird, this is an adoption blocker. Other information:
For gmane.comp.java.ide.netbeans.user, group count shows 112577 messages initially. "Scanning new messages" goes to 136% complete (?!) before resetting to 100% at the end. It seems to show all messages. When you click on it again, the group count is down to 111228. Trying again with a fresh setup, accepting as many defaults as possible (do not compact group name, do not check for new messages on startup), and selecting a bunch of different NetBeans-related groups: gmane.comp.java.netbeans.devel initially shows 40942 messages unread. I click on the group. "Scanning new messages" goes to 100% and disappears. A 2000 message appears at the top. I scroll down to the bottom. Still stops at Mar 29 2004. Group now shows 26322 messages unread. gmane.comp.java.netbeans.modules.openide.devel initially shows 32803 unread. After scan is done, I scroll to bottom and see five messages from today. So this list is OK too. When I click on gmane.comp.java.netbeans.general, scanning stops as 2%. Clicking on other groups selects them but the messages pane does not respond. Trying to close Evolution makes everything gray out except the last-selected group and then nothing happens (the window does not close). I have to killall evolution. This latter problem I can reproduce just by selecting different news folders. Not sure if it is related.
I can still reproduce in 2.24.3 even after deleting my ~/.evolution dir and rebooting to ensure that I am working with a clean configuration. As before, gmane.comp.java.netbeans.modules.openide.devel looks fine but gmane.comp.java.netbeans.devel stops after 2004. Increasing severity as this is a blocker for usage by anyone working on the NetBeans project, assuming it affects others.
Still reproducible in 2.28.1.
as of today with actual master (~2.30.0) I see netbeans.devel with 45833 when I add it to gmane account, and after it finishes its fetch it's only 26322 for some reason. I guess it received some error on the fetch (it stopped here on 29/03/2004), and stopped any further processing. But it's just a guess, it needs more investigation. I'm confirming the bug, meanwhile.
Created attachment 157399 [details] [review] eds patch for evolution-data-server; They renamed the XOVER command to OVER in RFC 3977 [1], (search for XOVER there), about 4 years ago, and gmane seems to adapt to this, and returns "No articles" for XOVER, but correct information for OVER. Thus I renamed the command and did a fallback to XOVER if the OVER fails. It's working fine with gmane now. [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3977#section-8.3
Created commit 4203eaa in eds master (2.31.1+) Created commit 60a7262 in eds gnome-2-30 (2.30.1+)
Err, it stopped working again.
It seems to me like an issue with the server, I do not see any other explanation, because when I look on the conversation between server and client, then I do not see anything wrong on evolution's side: > [E]: 'group gmane.comp.java.netbeans.devel' > [S]: '211 45869 100 46040 gmane.comp.java.netbeans.devel' > [E]: 'over 26458-46040' > [S]: '423 No articles in 26458-46040' > [E]: 'xover 26458-46040' > [S]: '224 No articles in 26458-46040' More that that, if I disable xover for NNTP, by $ CAMEL_NNTP_DISABLE_XOVER=y evolution then I see pretty many > [S]: 423 Bad article number returned from the server, thus there is definitely something wrong with it. With xover disable it downloads whole messages, so it's pretty much unusable, just good for testing. I've no idea why it worked for me with the previous change, but stopped two weeks later.
(In reply to comment #8) > I do not see anything wrong on evolution's side So why does it work fine from Thunderbird, Pan, and XPN, from the welcome posting in June 2000 until the present day? If indeed there is some irregularity in the server implementation, other clients seem to handle it.
I tried with SeaMonkey 1.1.18, it asks me whether I want to download all the headers for about 45950 messages (the default offer is 500), and when I let it download all of them then it stops on 26322, same as Evolution. The same with Thunderbird 3.0b2. Thus server issue, not allowing to download all the group headers. I guess your other clients are not downloading all the headers, or they have them downloaded "in years". Try a fresh new account and let it fetch all the headers there.
(In reply to comment #10) > I tried with SeaMonkey 1.1.18, it asks me whether I want to download all the > headers for about 45950 messages (the default offer is 500), and when I let it > download all of them then it stops on 26322, same as Evolution. > > The same with Thunderbird 3.0b2. Confirmed with Thunderbird 2.0.0.24 on an Ubuntu guest account. But Pan works fine even from a guest account, so some clients do manage to handle it. I will contact GMane admins about this.