Cannot reliably delete contacts

[Peter Hurley]

Binary package hint: evolution-couchdb

Contacts cannot reliably be deleted from a Ubuntu One address book.

I'm running the ubuntu one stable ppa (evolution-couchdb 0.0.0-0ubuntu1~lucid2) on Lucid (evolution 2.28.3). When I select a contact in the couchdb and delete it, I *often* receive a message dialog titled "Evolution Error", "Failed to delete contact", "Other error".

[Peter Hurley (phurley)]

After finally figuring out how to use gdb to redirect output to a file for a running process, here's what evolution-data-server-2.28 says when I attempt to delete a contact (which fails):

(process:2102): Json-CRITICAL **: json_object_get_string_member: assertion `node != NULL' failed

(process:2102): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_str_has_prefix: assertion `str != NULL' failed

(process:2102): Json-CRITICAL **: json_node_get_node_type: assertion `node != NULL' failed
** (process:2102): DEBUG: Error deleting document: Bad Request

Here's a typical record that's not deletable from within evolution:

{
   "_id": "e74168e654cc4efdb43c72b29b3745ea",
   "_rev": "2-b8a90fd952f4a1beaa37e233819f2172",
   "first_name": "",
   "last_name": "",
   "middle_name": "",
   "suffix": "",
   "application_annotations": {
       "Funambol Exchange": {
           "private_application_annotations": {
               "created_timestamp": 1273082614533,
               "exchange_hash": "6201cce539c008ac78a261de50f1bc02",
               "phoneBusiness": "d313ee40-3947-4a1b-a08d-aee88ecd9ef7"
           },
           "application_fields": {
               "sensitivity": 0,
               "folder": "DEFAULT_FOLDER",
               "state": "N",
               "key": "e74168e654cc4efdb43c72b29b3745ea"
           }
       }
   },
   "title": "",
   "nick_name": "",
   "manager_name": "",
   "spouse_name": "",
   "record_type": "http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktopcouch/contact",
   "notes": "",
   "department": "",
   "assistant_name": "",
   "phone_numbers": {
       "_order": [
           "d313ee40-3947-4a1b-a08d-aee88ecd9ef7"
       ],
       "d313ee40-3947-4a1b-a08d-aee88ecd9ef7": {
           "description": "work",
           "number": "0000000000"
       }
   },
   "office": "",
   "company": "Random Company",
   "job_title": ""
}

[Mattia Ghedin (mattia.ghedin)]

I'm not as skilled as Peter, but looks like this bug or something similar affects me (on more than one pc).
As a first configuration of evolution contacts, I imported a csv address book (about 200 entries). After trying (import/delete) some input formats, all contact details look fine. After some time I cannot delete any contact from evolution, always getting "Other error" (in Italian as expected). There are also a couple of empty contacts.

I tried to fix the issue following some indications on ubuntu forums (deleting couchdb entries from gnome-keyring, uninstalling evolution-couchdb, deleting config file and local address book from my home directory, installing evolution-couchdb again).

Now remote Ubuntu One contacts are no more downloaded. Creating two new contacts results in new undeletable entries.

[Franco Tampieri (dr.dran)]

Hi!

I have the same problem, on ubuntu amd64 Maverick fresh installation.

In addiction I can't add o remove contact from my address book and in the evolution contact interface I see three empty contact.

Best regards

[David Southwood (ds-mailbag)]

I'm also having this problem.

I opened CouchDB web interface; deleted the contacts database and re-added. Also set delayed_commit to FALSE.

xdg-open file:///home/david/.local/share/desktop-couch/couchdb.html

This seemed to cure the problem except that if I logged into UbuntuOne I could see that the contacts were not being updated.

When I rebooted the machine the contacts were restored from UbuntuOne and I regained the three empty contacts at the start of the list.

After this I was back to the same situation - attempts to delete or modify contacts results in "Other Error"

Best Regards

[Sergio Spinatelli (spinatelli)]

This problem affects me too.
I can't delete contacts using Evolution and I get some blank contacts shown in the application (but not using the UbuntuOne website,so i can't delete them from there).

If someone tells me what outputs or anything else (and how to retrieve them) can be useful, I'll post them.

Hope this gets fixed soon, I'm really interested in UbuntuOne services..

Best regards

[jsribeiro (jsribeiro)]

Please look at bug #666303. Comment #9 from David S
In particular, you might be interested in deleting your contacts (if not the bookmarks and notes) database from the Ubuntu servers, as well as from desktop-couchdb.
For that, follow:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/ResetCouch
including, if you need, the backup part.

Good luck,
Jorge Ribeiro

[Sergio Spinatelli (spinatelli)]

thank you but unfortunately this didn't work for me..
3 blank contacts are still shown and deleting them or even other contacts shows an error dialog as before..

Regards

[jsribeiro (jsribeiro)]

As it turns out, for me neither...
Three blanks and no chance to modify/delete any contact
Also, syncdaemon-fails with "lost connection" although Ubuntu One Preferences stays put indefinitely (hours) with "Synchronization in progress".

Meanwhile, I'm also following bug #473616 and just received an update from Rodrigo Moya.
Who knows, the situation may be related. I'm waiting for the updates, I guess...

Jr

[Sergio Spinatelli (spinatelli)]

Gave a quick look at the bug you linked but didn't find it much related. I gave only a quick look,though..I don't know much about evolution and it's syncronization methods,so i'm very likely to be wrong. =)

Regards

[Mattia Ghedin (mattia.ghedin)]

The wiki solution (jsribeiro wrote on 2010-11-03) worked for me (in deleting remote db and empty contacts), with some extra ugly-work.

* Beware - you may not want to do that. That seemed to be necessary for me and I didn't care about data that would be lost. *

The page to be opened in the browser didn't redirect to a valid page (the destination page/service was unavailable, no server response). So I reinstalled all couchdb related packets and evolution-couchdb, and libsync[xxx] ones etc etc. Than I deleted the entire directories ubuntu one and .local/share/desktop-couch and anything I could find related to couchdb in my home folder. Than I rebooted the system (I also has a Ubuntu One waring for no space left), opened the page that the wiki indicates, and now redirect was correct (and there were no more contacts, notes and bookmarks db, of course). So I ran the python script to delete the remote contact db. Opening my browser to ubuntuone resulted in 0 contacts: done! At this point I opened Ubuntu One preferences, and logged on my old Ubuntu One account as if it was the first time on that machine.
Now Evolution-Ubuntu One address book is empty.
Now let's try to get sync working (service is not unavailable).

[zasq (zasq)]

Hello! I'm also affected by this bug, like described by jsribeiro: three blanks at the beginning, error when trying to delete, complete crash of evolution after a few tries to delete. It is not only a problem doing multiple deletions - it happens with single deletions too... (I am using maverick upgraded from lucid, on amd64). If there is any information I can provide to help solve this, please let me know. Thanks.

[gorcsev71 (gorcsev71)]

Hi. I have the same config as zasq: maverick upgraded from lucid, on amd64. I am also affected by this bug.

[Mattia Ghedin (mattia.ghedin)]

After deleting all messy cotacts, I experience exactly the same problemas described by zasq.
The only differecnce is that I am using this kernel.

Linux desktop 2.6.35-22-generic #35-Ubuntu SMP Sat Oct 16 20:36:48 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

[David Duffin (davidduffin21645)]

I too have this bug. Running Maverick (clean install). Same issues. Can't copy contacts to Ubuntu One address book. Ubuntu one address book has three blank entries which cannot either be edited or deleted.

[Duane Hinnen (duanedesign)]

Marking this as a duplicate of LP:673568 since the reason why contacts cannot be edited or deleted is the corrupted internal structures of the document that is being JSON-encoded via couchdb-glib and then sent to CouchDB. CouchDB does not like invalid keys in the document and returns Bad Request.

thank you,
duanedesign