98836 - NNTP should support searching without XPAT

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Networking: NNTP, enhancement)

Description

[Thommie Rother]

With a nntp online connection to a leafnode proxy news-server, the search msg 
dialogue spits an "NNTP error" msg when doing a global search on the news 
server (by marking the server name). On the other hand, all is fine when 
switching the app to offline mode.
a) The error msg should be more informative, it should tell the user what kind 
og nntp error occured
b) If an online NNTP error occurs, the dialogue should bring up a decision 
option to perform the same search on the local profile by going offline

(Tested on rv:0.9.3+) Gecko/20010831)

Comment 1

[Tuukka Tolvanen (sp3000)]

perhaps related: bug 94161, bug 92746

Comment 2

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

What version of Leafnode?  What do Communicator 4.7x or other NNTP client do in
this case?  Thanks.

Comment 3

[Thommie Rother]

Leafnode 1.9.18. NS 4.77 shows same unspecified nntp error when online.I would
blame Leafnode for this. When offline, all is fine with NS 4. The enhancement
would be that Mozilla could switch to "offline search" when an error occurs or
when there is no result. Although it may be even better if users get some
message about doing an online or offline search before starting. ??

Comment 4

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

Mozilla switching to Offline mode arbitrarily when an error occurs sounds a bit
strange to me.  Can you post the error message (either as text or a GIF
attachment) here?  Thanks.

Comment 5

[Thommie Rother]

Attachment: Search errors in nntp

Comment 6

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

Thommie, can you look at bug 83971 and see if that's what you're asking for?  
Thanks.

Comment 7

[Thommie Rother]

Stephen, 83971 is similar, yes. I feel that a lot of normal users don't
understand the reason why nntp body search is NOT availiable in online search.
Maybe some note or "online/offline indicator" (additional to the own in the main
status window) below the "search subfolders" would do. But I assume, I don't
have the perfect idea either ... question: is it really (technically) impossible
to do full  text search via nntp?

Comment 8

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

Jennifer, Seth, does this sound plausible?  When an error occurs during a search
of news server, we throw up a dialog asking the user if they want to go offline
to search?  Or, should this bug just be DUP'd against the pure "search news body
while online" bug?

Comment 9

[jglick]

Ideally, if we don't have the available functionality, we shouldn't allow users 
to select things which are not available. Is it possible to prevent them from 
selecting actions that will fail?

Comment 10

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

Confirming.  

Comment 11

[Wout.Mertens]

I think there is some confusion here.

This bug reports the fact that some news servers don't support the "XPAT
SUBJECT" NNTP command that mozilla uses to let the server search news headers.

The body search is something else, I don't think NNTP has a provision for body
searching, but I don't know.

And then it was suggested that Mozilla automatically change to offline mode
after such a failure. I think what the poster actually meant was that in offline
mode, Mozilla searches the headers that it has, not depending on the news server
to do so. (Another news reader, "tin", searches this way)

So in conclusion, I think this should be the request:

Please let Mozilla search its own stored headers if the NNTP server doesn't
implement the XPAT command.

Comment 12

[Thommie Rother]

I agree to comment #11 from Wout.Mertens. Leafnode has only reduced nntp
functionality, compared to "real" NNTP servers like INN. Mozilla should be aware
of this, check XPAT and switch to offline search. But, as it is not clear if
there is searchable offline data present for the same data sets as used in the
online query, there should be some user interaction like this 
"This nntp server does not support queries. Shall I switch to offline mode and
query locally stored news instead? YES. NO."

Comment 13

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 14

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"

Comment 16

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

I am the original reporter of 147884.

It is nice to know that someone does care * 7 (SEVEN) * years after
I repored the bug.

For anyone who wants to test the bug, simply try the following.

Subscribe to newsfeed at news.mozilla.org  to read a newsgroup, say, mozilla.devs.apps.thunderbird.
(Actually, the choice of newsgroup doesn't matter. Any newsgroup at
news.mozilla.org will do.)

Try searching "solaris" in the header. EDIT->SEARCH->search message ->
search for articles with a header that includes "solaris".

After hitting search button,
an error dialog pops up and says something to the effect of
"syntax error or unknown command." (Presumably, the error message
in the dialog is copied from the server response.)

That we have a known newsgroup server which doesn't support XPAT command
should facilitate the debugging.

Not being able to search the headers surely diminishes the utility of
TB as a newsreader. Maybe that is why we see post from posters who could have
gotten valuable information from related earlier posts.
And that poster includes myself...



TIA

Comment 17

[Nikolay Shopik]

This is WFM on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2pre) Gecko/20090725 Shredder/3.0b4pre, from what I see TB is searching locally when I pressing searh button because there no traffic to NNTP server.

Comment 18

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

I think comment 17 referred to the case when it was operating in offline mode.
I would like to see the reminder suggested as in the comments
comment 1, comment 7, comment 8 et al.

After posting the following, I realized the duped bugzilla posters
mention similar feedback to the users, and I concur with the idea wholeheartedly.

(I am posting this to mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird now.)


Currently, if I try to search the headers of newsgroup against news.mozilla.org,
I got "chaining not allowed message".

This "chaning not allowed" obviously comes from the server.

Using wireshark packet sniffer, I figured out the following
interaction when I try to search for "javascript" in the header of articles.:

200 news.mozilla.org
MODE READER
200 reading enabled
GROUP mozilla.support.thunderbird
211 96002 2 96003 mozilla.support.thunderbird
XPAT SUBJECT  1- *[Jj][Aa][Vv][Aa][Ss][Cc][Rr][Ii][Pp][Tt]*
440 chaining not allowed
503 time out

Then it hit upon me that I filed a bug entry long time ago concerning newsgroup
failure.

Bug 147884
Searching in newsgroups fails (XPAT not supported by some news servers)

It is marked resolved although the bug is still there.

Anyway, in the comments, this stands out:
> >It is possible to search locally downloaded headers by switching to "offline"
> >mode.

So maybe the error pane that is shown when the search fails during online
operation may mention that "You can search string in downloaded headers in
off-line mode, at least" or something to that effect.

I wonder what is the proper manner to alert a resolved bug is not quite resolved
and resurrect it after three years. It seems that it is not well documented,
sometimes I can simply add a post to the bugzilla entry, and sometimes am
advised to open a new entry.

Comment 19

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

With my Thunderbird 2 builds, searching on servers that don't support XPAT (specifically, news.mozilla.org) clearly fail.

In Thunderbird 3 and later, it appears that the search architecture was changed to enable the search to do an offline search if online searches failed, so it works on such servers even in online mode.