32871 - Lost DUP resolution for Mozilla bugs 32805, 32820, 20020...

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 7873

(Bugzilla :: Bugzilla-General, defect, P3)

Description

[Sean Richardson]

After making bug 32805 a DUP of bug 29085, I discovered that a notation
that it was a duplicate had been added to 29085 more than three hours 
previously -- but the View Bug Activity page for bug 32805 shows no sign that
anyone had made any changes earlier. Given the time delay, the presumed
earlier resolution should have been propagated to the shadow database long
since; my change showed up immediately. No Mid-Air collision intercept
occurred; since I first viewed 32805 less than five minutes before marking
it as a DUP, none would be expected - the update of that bug should have
been processed long since.

This looks like data loss.

I've seen a similar problem in the past when a Mid-Air collision has occured;
the DUP notification seems to go through to the "other" bug before any change
is made to the bug being changed, and, it appears, before the Mid-Air collision 
detection. This can lead to an orphaned notification, but unlike what happened
with bug 32805, it is likely to be noticed at the time.

Cc-ing [e-mail] who apparently touched 32805 before I did.

Comment 1

[Sean Richardson]

Hmm. What happened here could be explainable if [e-mail] does not
have the "Can edit all aspects of any bug" permission, and the check for 
permissions happens after the notification has been made in the other bug.
If so, the solution to both this problem and the similar problem with
Mid-Air collisions would be to add the comment containing the notification
to the other bug after, not before, all checks made before modifying the
bug whose modification generates the notification.

The draft "guide to screening duplicate bugs" at bug 30978 asks that a comment
be added by anyone who notices a potential DUP, but only those with the
appropriate permissions attempt to resolve it ... but I'd hardly expect everyone
to read it once it is posted.

Comment 2

[Sean Richardson]

The same problem seems to have occurred in an attempt to mark bug 32820 as a 
DUP of bug 32819.

This might be a symptom of a larger problem -- see bug 31898, "Resolution 
changes don't stick with multiple updates", filed by [e-mail], who
presumably should not have permissions problems.

Comment 3

[Sean Richardson]

Again with the hmm. The same thing appears to have happened in bug 20020
yesterday, and in that case it was the owner of the bug who made the DUP
resolution! See the 2000-03-21 16:40 comment by [e-mail] in bug 30878.

Comment 4

[Sean Richardson]

The following was sent by e-mail by [e-mail]:
> This is what happened -- I tried to add a note to this effect but yet
> ANOTHER bugzilla bug prevented me from doing so :(

> 1. I tried to resolve #30978 as a DUP of #29085, because it practically
>    has DUP written all over it.
> 2. I was told I couldn't (at this point I guess #29085 was wrongly
>    updated, which is the issue here)
> 3. I tried to add comment "This is a dup of #29085" or similar to
>    #30978
> 4. Bugzilla tells me I don't have permission to change milestone
>    (which I haven't touched) from "" to "---", which looks like
>    Yet Another Bugzilla Bug (TM)
> 5. I give up and mail the bug's owner
>
> I hope this was an isolated incident, and doesn't represent the tip
> of an iceburg of permission-related Bugzilla screw-ups.

> Nick.

The problem noted in (4) appears to be bug 32748, "cant add comments in bugzilla 
if old [Milestone] value is empty". Thanks for replying.

Comment 5

[Terry Weissman]

[e-mail] is the new owner of Bugzilla and Bonsai.  (For details,
see my posting in netscape.public.mozilla.webtools,
news://news.mozilla.org/38F5D90D.F40E8C1A%40geocast.com .)

Comment 6

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 7873 ***

Comment 7

[Sean Richardson]

Verifying; the specific issues mentioned here are now part of bug 7873,
resummarized as "duplicate isn't always resolved DUP when marking as such".

Comment 8

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

moving all closed Bugzilla bugs to the new Bugzilla product.
This batch is DUPLICATE/INVALID/WORKSFORME/WONTFIX
reassigning to default owner and QA in case of the bug being reopened.
Clearing milestones, since we really shouldn't have them on these types of
resolutions.  Sorry for the spam everyone...

Comment 9

[Markus Gerstel]

Verification got lost