Public bug reported:

I have had a couple of crashes with readpst, but the Makefile which runs
the job just happily continues as if there had been no problem.

Unfortunately, these issues seem timing / threading related, so it is
somewhat hard to repro. I am rerunning the failed jobs in a separate
window while the Makefile continues the main job and they are succeeding
when I rerun them.

I can understand if a parser for a murky file format does not always
remain robust.  I would grudgingly tolerate the crashes if they were
duly reported.  But the absence of an error condition when they happen
is completely unacceptable, and could lead to grave mistakes in my
processing results.

Steps to repro, as best I can describe them;

 1. Have a bunch of humongous PST files.  I am processing the EDRM Enron
corpus, http://www.edrm.net/resources/data-sets/edrm-enron-email-data-
set-v2

 2. Run readpst on all the files.  Pay attention to the menu bar.
Observe every once in a while (twice so far today) a "Crash report
detected" icon.

Expected outcome:

The Makefile should have stopped if there was a crash.  In other words,
readpst should have returned a non-zero result code in the event of a
failure.

Actual outcome:

Processing continues as if there hadn't been a problem.

Workaround (painful version):

>From the crash report "whoopsie" dialog, figure out which job failed,
and rerun it.  I have verified with diff that the results from one of
the crashes lacked a number of output files which were created correctly
when I ran the same command a second time from the command line, into a
different output directory.  As long as I am here to keep an eye on
things, this works ...

Workaround (speculative):

The manual page hints at a "-j 0" option to disable parallel jobs.  I
speculate that the handling of parallel tasks is where the bug lies, but
I do not yet have any proof that this actually helps.

$ lsb_release -rd
Description:    Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS
Release:        12.04

$ apt-cache policy readpst
readpst:
  Installed: 0.6.54-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.6.54-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.6.54-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://fi.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe amd64 Packages
        500 http://mirrors.nic.funet.fi/ubuntu/ precise/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

$ apt-cache policy libpst4
libpst4:
  Installed: 0.6.54-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.6.54-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.6.54-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://fi.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

** Affects: libpst (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1130751

Title:
  readpst reports success on crash

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libpst/+bug/1130751/+subscriptions

-- 
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs

Reply via email to