[Monotone-devel] Re: Monotone server problems

[graydon hoare]

Jon Bright wrote:

> 1. Somebody's mentioned it before on the list, but: empty passphrases. 
> Monotone doesn't seem to like them, which makes unattended operation for 
> the server a little tricky...

yeah. I keep my passphrase in my lua hook file ~/.monotonerc. not 
exactly a paragon of security :(

we're considering either writing a monotone-agent or teaching monotone 
how to talk to ssh-agent and letting it do all the signing work. or 
something. it's not settled yet. I'll happily take suggestions.

> 2. Removing keys from the DB doesn't seem to be possible directly - I 
> resorted to running the appropriate SQL via the debug command, but this 
> doesn't seem optimal.  Additionally, when importing a key with an ID 
> that's already in the database, the old key is left alone (probably 
> correctly) but no warning is printed to the effect that there's already 
> a key by that name...

both valid bugs, filed (#8428 and #8429).

> * side note - the docs don't surround the addresses with quotes, but 
> this wouldn't work for me until I'd added quotes...

yeah, I saw this. fixed in my working copy docs.

> *** Error: std::logic_error: netio.hh:31: invariant 'I(pos < 
> str.size())' violated

ooh, that's not very good. at least it was trapped. could you save a 
copy of the database which caused that (on the server) for future 
reference? I want to nail down remaining bugs in netsync code.

> -----------------------------
> monotone: read from fd 5 (peer host.siliconcircus.com) closed OK after 
> goodbye
> -----------------------------

good, that's a "successful" sync. unfortunately it probably didn't move 
the files. see below:

> -----------------------------
> monotone: fetching heads of branch 'com.siliconcircus.project'
> monotone: misuse: no file version 
> faa94569b127838245641b4025add6ccb97c6cea found in database for .cvsignore
> -----------------------------
>
> After this, I was left with directory 'project-source', which contained 
> the MT directory, which in turn contained a manifest, which contained 
> hashes for all files in the project.

known, but annoying bug (#8114): if netsync dies during sync, it'll have 
transferred "some but not all" of the things it meant to. in your case 
it moved the certs and manifests, but not the files (yet). it should 
roll back the things it transferred, as they're incomplete, but 
currently it doesn't. this is actually slightly trickier than it sounds; 
we can't just isolate things in a transaction (because the server needs 
to be smart about this too and the server handles multiple interleaved 
database writers). I have a plan for it, it's just not fixed yet :(

> 4. The CVS import should import files within the Attic directories in an 
> already-deleted state.  But you probably know this already, and it's not 
> a big deal...

yup, bug #5814. working on it.

btw, I really appreciate your involvement in testing this. feel free to 
file any annoyance you discover as a bug at

http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=monotone

I like getting bug reports (well, as much as one can) and in the worst 
case will just close one if I don't agree. the more reports, the more 
I'm likely to fix.

-graydon