156587 - disappearing news article headers

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(MailNews Core :: Database, defect)

Description

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

The last few days I've been noticing a strange phenomenon.  When I access a
newsgroup (f.e. n.p.m.xpfe on news.mozilla.org) and click on a new article, I
get an error message saying that the article has already expired, even though
it's only a few days old.

If I then click the "purge expired articles" link, a bunch of headers disappear
and stay gone.  In particular, the last n months of headers (where n is a number
between one and three) disappear, as do blocks of older headers.

Once the headers have disappeared, getting new messages doesn't bring them back,
nor does restarting.  I haven't tried deleting and re-creating the news server
configuration yet; I'll try that next.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

that means the article has expired on the news server, not that there's a client
problem.

Comment 2

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Well, that's the problem; the articles have *not* expired on the news server. 
To confirm, read n.p.m.xpfe and see that the last few months of articles have
not expired.  On my system, however, their headers have been removed.

This morning as I went to read that newsgroup I found that new article headers
are appearing as normal, but the last few months worth of article headers (the
ones that disappearing when I removed "expired" articles) are still missing *on
my system only*.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

deleting your .msf file will get them back, if they truly aren't missing from
the server. Have you turned on the pref to limit the number of headers we'll
keep for newsgroups? Edit | Mail & News Account Settings, then select Offline &
Diskspace for your news server, and look at the "when it's time to cleanup
messages" settings. If you have it set to "keep all messages", then that's not
the problem.

Comment 4

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

My pref is set to "keep all messages".  Deleting the .msf file did indeed bring
them back.

Comment 5

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Myk, was this trunk or branch?  

Comment 6

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

This was trunk.  The problem hasn't recurred with the last several nightlies,
including today's (2002071911 Linux).

Comment 7

[Felix Miata]

Several times I've seen what may be the same problem. I go to a group, read
some, reply to something, then compose a message for a new thread. Today it
happened again. I was using my local spool (news server 127.0.0.1). I read some,
then replied to one message. When done with that, I created a message to start a
new thread. After finishing, I clicked "get new messages". That retrieved my
reply message, but not my new message. I then switched to my ISP's news server,
and both messages were there. I went back to 127.0.0.1, and still only the first
message. I then hunted for my two messages in my local spool, found their local
message ID numbers, and peeked into 127.0.0.1.rc In that file, the ID of the new
message was indicated as read, while the ID of the reply message was indicated
as unread. I closed Moz, edited the status of the new message, restarted
mailnews, and finally Moz showed me both messages in the headers pane.

Comment 8

[David :Bienvenu]

are you only viewing unread messages?

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

problem gone?

Comment 10

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

Felix appears to not be seeing this anymore. If no one still sees this on Trunk or recent Branch builds, resolving INCO in 3 weeks.

Comment 11

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

RESO INCO per previous comment.