Tomboy notes are blank after sync

Bug #524339 reported by Cédric M. Campos
92
This bug affects 15 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Ubuntu One Servers
Fix Released
Critical
Rodrigo Moya

Bug Description

ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION:
I've just synced Tomboy's notes on a new computer (Ubuntu One's client was already linked) and all the notes' names and notebooks have been correctly synced but the notes themselves are blank. The content still exists on my Ubuntu One account. New notes are correctly synced. I still have to check if these new notes are correctly synced on the other computer.

RECOVERING YOUR NOTES:
If you were affected by this bug, please try the following steps to recover your notes:

1. Download the following Python script to your home directory on your computer: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/%7Erye/%2Bjunk/ubuntuone-scripts/download/head%3A/tomboyrecovery.py-20100316200547-ojsmkpfvxxax5l7n-1/tomboy-recovery.py
2. Quit Tomboy
3. Open a terminal session (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) & run the following: python ~/tomboy-recovery.py
  3a. If you get conflict errors, it's ok, repeat step 4 until you don't get conflict errors
4. Wait 10 minutes for the synchronization to occur, checking ~/.cache/desktop-couch/log/desktop-couch-replication.log for the replication status

If the problem persists even after running this script there are two likely scenarios: 1) Your blank notes were synchronized from Tomboy and via the CouchDB database 2) Your CouchDB database was compacted (manually, since we do not currently compact CouchDB automatically). For 2, you can try recovering your notes by trying these steps:

1. Open your web browser and go to the following URL (replacing $user with your Ubuntu username): file:///home/$user/.local/share/desktop-couch/couchdb.html
 1a. If prompted to confirm your login, click "OK" & you will see a web interface for managing the CouchDB databases on your computer
2. Select "Temporary View" from the right hand side drop down labeled "View"
3. An editor will open, paste the following in the left hand text area labeled "Map Function:"
    function(doc) {
      emit("last-sync-revision", doc.application_annotations.Tomboy);
    }
4. Click the "Run" button & remember the maximum value of of "last-sync-revision"
5. Select "All documents" from the right hand side drop down labeled "View" to go back to the Notes database
6. Find all the notes that are empty in Tomboy and for each one do the following:
  6a. Click on the document link (in red)
  6b. Click on the "Previous Version" link at the bottom right side until you find the note with content (in the content section)
  6c. Double-click on the text in the "content" section
  6d. Select all and copy the text from the "content" section
  6e. Click on the "Next Version" link until you are at the latest version of the note (the "Next Version" link will no longer be a link)
  6f. Double-click on the text in the "content" section
  6g. Select all and paste
  6h. Click on the green check mark icon
  6i. Click on the "+" next to "Tomboy" in the "application_annotations"
  6j. Double click on "last-sync-revision"
  6k. Change "last-sync-revision" to the maximum value of "last-sync-revision" found in step 4 plus 1. For example: If "last-sync-revision" was 18, set it to 19
  6l. Click the "Save Document" link at the upper left of the page

Tags: blank tomboy
Revision history for this message
Cédric M. Campos (cedricmc) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Roman Yepishev (rye) wrote :

Confirming this on Karmic Tomboy install. The notes that are synced from the server are blank, only note titles are synced.

I have notified rodrigo about this issue.

Changed in ubuntuone-client:
status: New → Confirmed
importance: Undecided → Critical
Revision history for this message
Cédric M. Campos (cedricmc) wrote :

Double checked on my usual computer. The new notes that I've created on other computer this weekend are synced to blank notes on this, whereas the titles are correctly synced. Steps to reproduce the bug:

BUG: the content of Tomboy's notes is not synced FROM the Ubuntu One account

1.- Create new notes on a computer, let say 'A'.
2.- Sync them to your Ubuntu One account.
3.- On another computer, let say 'B', sync your notes from the previous Ubuntu One account.

* What happens?
While the content and the titles of the notes are correctly synced from computer A to the Ubuntu One account, only the titles are synced from the Ubuntu One account to computer B and the content of the notes is blank.

* What should happen?
Content and titles of the notes should be correctly synced between computer A, B and the Ubuntu One account.

Revision history for this message
Cédric M. Campos (cedricmc) wrote :

CAUTION: if you modify a note on the Ubunt One's page, the note will be synced to blank on your computers.

Roman Yepishev (rye)
summary: - Tomboy notes are blank
+ Tomboy notes are blank after sync
Changed in ubuntuone-client:
status: Confirmed → Fix Committed
dobey (dobey)
affects: ubuntuone-client → ubuntuone-servers
Revision history for this message
Rodrigo Moya (rodrigo-moya) wrote :

This is now deployed on one.ubuntu.com

Changed in ubuntuone-servers:
assignee: nobody → Rodrigo Moya (rodrigo-moya)
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
patspam (pat-patspam) wrote :

I see that the fix has been released, however the notes that were blank on my computer as a result of synchronization are still blank (whereas I can view their contents via one.ubuntu.com). Is the fix still being rolled out, or are affected users supposed to do something to undo the damage?

Revision history for this message
Rodrigo Moya (rodrigo-moya) wrote :

patspam, yeah, tomboy got an empty note, so the best thing would be to edit the blank notes in one.ubuntu.com, so that tomboy gets the content again and replaces the empty note with the one stored on the server. Sorry for the inconvenience

Revision history for this message
Cédric M. Campos (cedricmc) wrote :

That's what I just did and it worked fine. I add an empty line to each unsynced note on one.ubuntu.com. Then I successfully synced my Tomboy's notes.

Revision history for this message
patspam (pat-patspam) wrote :

Thanks Rodrigo.

If anyone else like me has 100+ notes that need to be re-synced, a less painful way to do it is to create a new notebook (called "temp"), drag the affected notes in (en masse) and then drag them back out to their original notebook. That has the same effect of marking them for synchronisation, and means you don't need to manually edit them one by one.

Revision history for this message
Rodrigo Moya (rodrigo-moya) wrote :

patspam, but that would sync the blank notes in Tomboy to the U1 server, right? Unless tomboy does not mark them as being changed?

Revision history for this message
Joshua Hoover (joshuahoover) wrote :

Roman's script to try to recover from the blank notes issue.

description: updated
Revision history for this message
Joshua Hoover (joshuahoover) wrote :

Updated the description with suggested steps to recover notes for those affected by this bug.

jbarzakov (jbarzakov)
Changed in ubuntuone-servers:
status: Fix Released → In Progress
status: In Progress → Confirmed
Changed in ubuntuone-servers:
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
Roman Yepishev (rye)
description: updated
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