Re: [Monotone-devel] Database gone wild...

[William Uther]

On 09/03/2007, at 5:11 PM, Nathaniel Smith wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 01:15:25PM +1100, William Uther wrote:
> > Can someone please explain to me why a DB can pass a db check, then
> > you sync with someone, then you don't pass a db check.  Surely
> > monotone should refuse to accept stuff it knows is broken.
> >
> > I know how it happens.  I just want to see if anyone thinks this is
> > actually a good idea.  I am rapidly coming to believe that is it a
> > REALLY bad idea.  Users, who need to be using this system so just
> > turning off write access isn't a reasonable solution, keep pushing
> > the same broken crap back into my cleaned up db.
>
> Mostly it is because 'db check' is really hair-trigger.  Put one cert
> in a slightly non-canonical arrangement, and it starts screaming, 'the
> sky is falling!  the sky is falling!'... Being exhaustive and paranoid
> is good, but it doesn't really explain itself very well to users, and
> that scares them a lot.

Well, it isn't just 'db check' that complains.  It seems to be quite  
easy to get these slightly strange certs, etc.  Then every command  
that comes across them complains.  Admittedly, everything that has  
been a problem has had its root cause in "user error", but it just  
doesn't seem that the system is very robust to user error at the  
moment.  And one small user error can be a lot of work to clean up  
after.

The system doesn't lose information, but it becomes quite hard to  
separate the 'good' information from the 'bad' information.

> > It is somewhat frustrating...
>
> Sorry about that :-/

I'll live :).  A cleanup and a new epoch has fixed things for the  
moment.  I may be adding to the epoch docs soon though.

Be well,

Will         :-}