Thunderbird Slayer ! URGENT

[Peter]

On Mon, 2 May 2005, Lennart Sorensen wrote:

> Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 10:52:18 -0400
> From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>
> Reply-To: tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org
> To: tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org
> Subject: Re: [TLUG]: Thunderbird Slayer ! URGENT
> 
> On Sun, May 01, 2005 at 08:02:55PM +0300, Peter wrote:
>> I have pinned it down tighter:
>>
>> The bug appears when there is a thread in which I posted and then
>> someone replied and I posted again. Then, the thread will have two
>> messages with the same id, and one of them (the latter one) will point
>> to the id of the previous one (in References:). But since it will have
>> the same id, it will point to itself. The threading mechanism probably
>> chokes on this entering an endless loop. I think that it may be possible
>> to avoid the bug by turning threading off for that folder. I do not use
>> Thunderbird. Is that possible ?
>
> It breaks all threading email clients in some ways.  The real solution
> is that you start using a mail system that works.
>
> What are you using that reuses message id's in such a broken way?

I changed something in the message id generation and I made a small 
mistake (printing from the wrong buffer). It is fixed now. RFC822 email 
is so broken you don't want to know about it. The Thunderbird 'slaying' 
was an accident, I do not use Thunderbird and it took two weeks for 
things to connect here. Missing threads on gmane, tlug email acting up, 
and mailman acting up on another list. Then W. O'Higgins mailed me and 
told me I have messages with dup ids and I said 'impossible' but I 
checked and he was right. It took between the 8th of April when I made 
the borked change and the 29th when he mailed me to clear the smoke. It 
is fixed now. The bug did not affect pine and other MUAs and mailing 
lists. mailman seems to have a problem with it, as does gmane, and in 
fact anything that relies on message ids to avoid duplicates. Of course 
threading by message id will break like this. If that is any 
consolation, most spam I receive on the same topic, has dup ids. On the 
other hand, the Thunderbird slaying bug only happens when the messages 
with the same id are answered (i.e. are in a thread). Then, there will 
be at least one message referring to itself (message-id appears in 
references). That's what slays the bird. It now has a bugtraq number and 
it should be fixed soon, it's probably trivial to fix (check 
own-message-id against references and prune if present - then thread by 
subject not by references).

Peter
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