editing recurrent calendar events is not working correctly

[David Clayton]

Binary package hint: evolution

When changing an existing or new repeating appointment, after selecting the change "All instances" Evolution freezes and has to be force closed. When restarted, going into the Calendar freezes Evolution again. Restoring previous ~.evolution/calendar/local/system/calendar.ics files restores normal operation.

Item was a repeating appointment created for midday Wednesday (duration 90 minutes) and repeating each week for 500 weeks, I then went to change the Alarm to 3 hours before with a single repeat 150 minutes before, changing the single instance worked ok, but when I went to change all instances the problem arose.

Here is a diff output of a working calendar.ics and then the one with a minor change (150 minutes to 149 minutes repeat occurrence) that subsequently freezes Evolution:

dc@dc-master:~/.evolution/calendar/local/system$ diff calendar.ics calendar-gnew.ics
31c31
< SEQUENCE:3
---
> SEQUENCE:2
35,39d34
< CREATED:20090506T004352Z
< LAST-MODIFIED:20090506T004459Z
< RECURRENCE-ID;
< TZID=/freeassociation.sourceforge.net/Tzfile/Australia/Melbourne:
< 20090506T120000
40a36,37
> CREATED:20090506T004352Z
> LAST-MODIFIED:20090506T004352Z
46c43
< DURATION:PT149M
---
> DURATION:PT150M
dc@dc-master:~/.evolution/calendar/local/system$

The difference between the good and bad files is that the following data is inserted into the bad file, and manually deleting it restores Evolution to a working state:

RECURRENCE-ID;

 TZID=/freeassociation.sourceforge.net/Tzfile/Australia/Melbourne:

 20090506T120000

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
NonfreeKernelModules: vmmon nvidia
Package: evolution 2.26.1-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evolution
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic x86_64

[Steve (stupendoussteve-deactivatedaccount)]

I can confirm this behavior. It appears to happen when doing any modification to all appointments, such as changing the time or name, I tested down to 2 recurrences of a weekly appointment.

[Steve (stupendoussteve-deactivatedaccount)]

I have attached a stack trace of evolution from start to creating a calendar item which repeats weekly for two weeks, to changing the time of the event and evolution locking up (I did a force quit relatively soon afterwards).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, is the upgrade in bug #368508 fixing the freeze issue?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the other issue is http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=580724

[Steve (stupendoussteve-deactivatedaccount)]

Using the proposed libical does not appear to fix the issue.

Updating to evolution-data-server_2.26.1-0ubuntu2 (from the proposed) allowed the appointment to be moved (and quite quickly). It may be possible that it was the both of them working together.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you get the issue solved with the eds update then or is that still buggy?

[JimB (jbarden1)]

Anytime I changed a recurring appointment, the calendar would freeze up causing me to force a shut down which was NOT corrected after rebooting. I tried removing evolution mail and calendar but could not remove it as a package via "Add/Remove". Was forced to remove it via synaptic package manager which would not allow its removal as a complete package, but only allow its removal a file at a time. Since I was not able correctly identify which files belong to the Evolution Mail package, I ended up reinstalling Ubuntu and losing all my data.

[Steve (stupendoussteve-deactivatedaccount)]

@Sebastien Bacher - Yes updating EDS appeared to fix the issue with moving reoccurring appointments. I was hoping David Clayton would see if it fixes the issue on his system as well.

[David Clayton (dcstar)]

Too hard to try and install one package which has a dependency on another package which then requires uninstallation of multiple packages.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

there is no need to uninstall anything, the libical update is a standard jaunty-updates one now

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the change on http://git.gnome.org/cgit/evolution/diff/?id=9896e4f7db7817087b7c18793682a4ab5f7c63e2 seems to fix most of the issue

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the change on http://git.gnome.org/cgit/evolution/diff/?id=9896e4f7db7817087b7c18793682a4ab5f7c63e2 seems to fix most of the issue

[JerryGosney (jerrygosney)]

I seem to be having the same problem with reoccurring events. I am running jaunty on amd64.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Accepted evolution into jaunty-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

[David Clayton (dcstar)]

Installed (all) Jaunty Proposed updates and tested "All instance" change to Calendar item after reboot, change was successful.

All seems fixed to me, thanks!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package evolution - 2.26.1-0ubuntu2

---------------
evolution (2.26.1-0ubuntu2) jaunty-proposed; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/90_git_change_fix_recurrent_event_edition.patch:
    - git change to make editing recurrent events work correctly
      (lp: #372503, #376110)

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Thu, 14 May 2009 16:18:51 +0200

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Copied to karmic