269861 - Address Book file (abook.mab) is modified at each startup for no reason

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Address Book & Contacts, defect)

Description

[Jeremy Hurst]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; INTRANETUSER)
Build Identifier: 

When you start Mozilla Mail, your abook.mab file is opened and re-written even 
though you may not actually touch your Address Book via the interface. I can't 
figure out why this is the case. The following gets appended to abook.mab each 
time you load Mozilla Mail:

@$${2{@
@$$}2}@

@$${4{@
@$$}4}@

...

Then, after it gets to @$${A{@ it removes all these, rewrites the existing 
entries and then starts off again at @$${3{@, then @$${5{@ - so far I haven't 
seen it stop.

I can't figure this out. All I'm doing is loading Mozilla Mail. I'm not even 
opening my Address Book, nor am I composing a new message, nor am I viewing any 
mail, nor am I entering my password to download more mail.

This is causing a problem for me because I want to back up the last N copies of 
my address book and the way my code works is based on whether the file is 
different to the saved copies. If it is, it rotates the saved copies up to a 
maximum of ten times, then copies the new file over. This works fine, but if 
the address book gets corrupted, very soon it will have overwritten all the 
backed up copies.

Can anyone explain why Mozilla Mail is rewriting abook.mab every time?

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a new profile
2. Enter an entry into the address book
3. Close Mozilla Mail
4. Copy the abook.mab from this profile to a temporary location
5. Start Mozilla Mail
6. Close Mozilla Mail
7. Using a 'diff' tool, compare the two abook.mab files.
8. Keep repeating steps 5 onwards to see ongoing effects.

Actual Results:  
You see extra lines added to the live copy of abook.mab for no apparent reason.

Expected Results:  
If the address book is not changed by way of new entries, deleted or updated 
entries then the abook.mab file should at most be accessed by Mozilla Mail, but 
not be modified by it.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

OK, mork writes out a little bit of data on an ab commit even if the ab is not
dirty...and we're committing the collected address book even though it's not
dirty. I didn't think Mork wrote out any data on a commit with a clean db, and I
think I could preflight this in mork w/o too much trouble. It would help
performance, I think, because I've been assuming that commits were free on clean
db's, instead of  having a nominal cost.

Comment 2

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: proposed fix

this makes mork see if a store is dirty before writing out any data...

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: use mork bools

Comment 4

[David :Bienvenu]

it would be cheaper to check morkStore::IsStoreDirty() as long as that's
reliable. I'll test that out...

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: simpler fix

Comment 6

[Scott MacGregor]

Comment on attachment 165957 [details] [diff] [review]
simpler fix

are you sure you want to add yourself as a contributor for morkWrite.h? :)

Comment 7

[David :Bienvenu]

fixed on trunk - if all goes well, I'll check this into the branch as well.

Comment 8

[Jeremy Hurst]

Thanks everyone for your help!