cvs repository corruption

cvs repository corruption

[Per Abrahamsen]

The operation 

cvs -d :pserver:gnus@cvs.gnus.org:/usr/local/cvsroot checkout -D'1997/03/04
01:26:40Z' gnus

fails with the message

cvs [server aborted]: unexpected EOF reading RCS file
/usr/local/cvsroot/gnus/lisp/gnus-uu.el,v

...

I'm trying to get Gnus listed as ohloh, see

http://www.ohloh.net/forums/8/topics/1436

It requires the entire history to be readable.

Re: cvs repository corruption

[Reiner Steib]

On Sat, Mar 15 2008, Per Abrahamsen wrote:

> cvs -d :pserver:gnus@cvs.gnus.org:/usr/local/cvsroot checkout -D'1997/03/04
> 01:26:40Z' gnus
>
> fails with the message
>
> cvs [server aborted]: unexpected EOF reading RCS file
> /usr/local/cvsroot/gnus/lisp/gnus-uu.el,v
>
> ...
>
> I'm trying to get Gnus listed as ohloh, see
>
> http://www.ohloh.net/forums/8/topics/1436
>
> It requires the entire history to be readable.

Bastien Guerry reported the same a few days ago.  Lars has sent us the
file `gnus-uu.el,v', but I don't have sufficient knowledge about the
CVS/RCS format to fix it myself.  If anyone wants to give it a try, I
can send you the file.

BTW, the same problem happens with `cvs annotate gnus-uu.el', so it
would be very welcome if someone could fix it.

,----
| lisp$ cvs annotate gnus-uu.el 
| Annotations for gnus-uu.el
| ***************
| cvs [server aborted]: unexpected EOF reading RCS file /usr/local/cvsroot/gnus/lisp/gnus-uu.el,v
`----

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
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      (o o)
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Re: cvs repository corruption

[Per Abrahamsen]

I found this message searching for the Bastien's report:

  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/60810

Not sure if the patch was applied or not.

I don't know much about cvs.  Would it work simply to remove the file
from the repository, and add a fresh copy?
History would be lost, but at least the file would be syntactically valid.

Re: cvs repository corruption

[Reiner Steib]

On Sun, Mar 16 2008, Per Abrahamsen wrote:

> I found this message searching for the Bastien's report:
>   http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/60810
> Not sure if the patch was applied or not.

Lars thinks that it was applied.  A spot tests seem to confirm this,
e.g. "; Collect all subjects matching reg-subject." is present in the
current ,v file.

> I don't know much about cvs.  Would it work simply to remove the file
> from the repository, and add a fresh copy?
> History would be lost, but at least the file would be syntactically valid.

I don't think that is a good idea.  Commands requesting older tags or
dates on the whole tree or on gnus-uu.el would fail or give wrong
results (including commands for quite recent versions), e.g.

  cvs co -r v5-0-2

  cvs diff -r p0-4 -r p0-50 [gnus-uu.el]

Currently revisions back to revision 5.1 (pgnus) of gnus-uu.el work
correctly, AFAICS.  (I tried some `d's in a cvs log buffer) Failure
happen for revision 4.20 (1998/08/27) and earlier revisions.

As the mapping of releases to revisions (cvs log) is intact and the
ftp (mirror) sites still have dgnus-0.*-0.*.diff.gz etc, it could even
be possible to reconstruct the information approximately (with
sufficient knowledge about the RCS format).

Maybe Lars has older backups of the repository?

Bye, Reiner.
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      (o o)
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Re: cvs repository corruption

[Andreas Schwab]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> writes:

> Bastien Guerry reported the same a few days ago.  Lars has sent us the
> file `gnus-uu.el,v', but I don't have sufficient knowledge about the
> CVS/RCS format to fix it myself.  If anyone wants to give it a try, I
> can send you the file.

The RCS file format is documented in rcsfile(5).  My first guess would
be a missing or misquoted @ sign.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: cvs repository corruption

[Reiner Steib]

On Mon, Mar 17 2008, Andreas Schwab wrote:

> Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> writes:
>> Lars has sent us the file `gnus-uu.el,v', but I don't have
>> sufficient knowledge about the CVS/RCS format to fix it myself.  If
>> anyone wants to give it a try, I can send you the file.
>
> The RCS file format is documented in rcsfile(5).  My first guess would
> be a missing or misquoted @ sign.

May I send you the file (344995 B, ~86 kB gzipped)?  Maybe it's simple
to fix.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: cvs repository corruption

[Andreas Schwab]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> writes:

> On Mon, Mar 17 2008, Andreas Schwab wrote:
>
>> Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> writes:
>>> Lars has sent us the file `gnus-uu.el,v', but I don't have
>>> sufficient knowledge about the CVS/RCS format to fix it myself.  If
>>> anyone wants to give it a try, I can send you the file.
>>
>> The RCS file format is documented in rcsfile(5).  My first guess would
>> be a missing or misquoted @ sign.
>
> May I send you the file (344995 B, ~86 kB gzipped)?

Yes, go ahead.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

cvs repository corruption (gnus-uu.el,v)

[Reiner Steib]

Hi,

here's Andreas' analysis (translated from German; Andreas, please
correct me if necessary):

| Several revisions are missing:
| 
| $ grep -E '^[0-9.]+$' gnus-uu.el,v | sort | uniq -u | wc -l
| 44
| 
| These delta sections are listed, but the delta text sections, i.e. the
| log messages and the actual diffs, are missing.
| 
| The first missing revision is 2.30 dated 1997-03-04 08:21:10, the
| newest 4.19 dated 1998-08-28 07:30:21.  In between, some revisions are
| present: 3.5 - 3.21.

Then, I asked if it is possible to replace the missing revisions by
dummy entries.  Andreas wrote that its possible, but it won't work out
since the actual diffs are missing so that it's not possible to check
out any revision before the missing ones.

-> gnus-uu-AS-1-dummy-log-entries.el,v.gz in [1].

Later Andreas wrote (again translated from German):

| Here's an alternative where all revisions before 5.2 are deleted
| (5.1. is already corrupted).  I.e. with this change, the file won't
| exist before this revision.

-> gnus-uu-AS-2-deleted-everthing-before-5-2.el,v in [1].

I'm not sure how to proceed.

Bye, Reiner.

[1] <http://theotp1.physik.uni-ulm.de/~ste/comp/emacs/gnus/gnus-uu/>
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      (o o)
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