[Zope] Re: WARNING: Packing is dangerous!!! (zope <= 2.6.1)

[Jim Fulton]

Paul Winkler wrote:
> Sorry for the caps in the subject, but it seems this bug is not nearly
> well publicized enough.*  People keep stumbling onto this bug 
> on their own and writing to the list about it.
> 
> In Zope 2.6.1, 2.6.0, and probably 2.5.x at least:
> Packing a FileStorage (Data.fs) can lead to some loss of data.
> http://collector.zope.org/Zope/875
> 
> In addition, the "fsrecover.py" script that ships with Zope 2.6.1 is
> broken - it (often? always?) produces a nearly-empty Data.fs.
> If you need it, use fsrecover.py from CVS or from Zope 2.6.0.
> 
> Considering how much of the existing documentation recommends 
> frequent packing to maintain a healthy Data.fs, I think it would
> be advisable for Zope corp. to take steps to alert users to this
> very serious problem. Irrecoverable data loss is the kind of thing
> that ruins software reputation. Maybe a news item on zope.org?
> 
> In addition, I think it's a critical enough problem that when
> a solution is found, there should be published hotfixes for 
> 2.6.1 and 2.6.0 at least.

Jeremy is out today. I'm sure he'll responde when he gets back tomorrow.
He's recently rewritten the packing algorithms and solved some problems
that were introduced with transactional undo.  It would be a good
idea to test the new packing code against the cases described in the
collector entry.

Jim