[spambayes-bugs] [ spambayes-Bugs-853697 ] Devastating critical bug, destroys .pst file

Wed Dec 3 20:25:57 EST 2003

Bugs item #853697, was opened at 2003-12-04 12:47
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by anadelonbrin
You can respond by visiting: 
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=498103&aid=853697&group_id=61702

Category: Outlook
Group: Outlook 008
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Jed Fisher (jedbytegeist)
Assigned to: Mark Hammond (mhammond)
Summary: Devastating critical bug, destroys .pst file

Initial Comment:
Hi there
I'm using Outlook 2002 with Win2000, all the latest 
service packs, etc installed. I have a 990MB .pst 
Outlook file.
I installed Spambayes and followed the instructions 
only to find after i clicked "finish" on the Wizard 
Spambayes began to move all my messages into the 
suspect folder. THIS IS REALLY BAD! (and non obvious 
that it was going to do this). It is really bad because a 
990MB outlook file takes a long time to move all the 
messages, and secondly Outlook is very unstable and 
crashed midway though the process! This corrupted my 
Outlook file rendering it useless, luckily the Inbox 
Repair Tool *seemed* to fix it.

After my mail was working again, i tried Spambayes 
again, luckily because it was now installed it did not try 
to move the remaining messages although because of 
the crash Spambayes did not know which folder the 
messages came from (ARGGG).

Anyway things seemed to be working now for new 
messages until i ran Training on Spambayes, where i 
selected the bulk of my message folders as "good", 
again after training for 30 minutes it crashed Outlook 
and again corrupted the .pst file...

Basically the bugs are:
a) do not automatically move the messages from the 
inbox/selected folders (warn the user incase they have 
990MB .pst file!)
b) dont let training crash, perhaps limit the size of the 
training, or make sure when you look at messages it's 
read only.
c) remember which folder the files came from (even 
after a crash)

And finally one feature request:
1) assume that messages from people in my address 
book are not spam

Thank you for destroying my day and almost my life. My 
Inbox is important to me, BE CAREFUL WITH IT!

Jed

PS i have no log file that was generated

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>Comment By: Tony Meyer (anadelonbrin)
Date: 2003-12-04 14:25

Message:
Logged In: YES 
user_id=552329

The software is careful not careless - the point about alpha 
software is that the *users* need to be extremely careful 
about using it - and any alpha software should never be used 
on something you don't have a backup of.  This isn't 
spambayes specific, it's alpha software specific.

a) It's not just in the welcome document, it's in the wizard.  
You select "I haven't prepared for spambayes", then next, 
then "I want to continue without training and let spambayes 
learn as it goes".  Right under that option it says that the 
messages will be moved.  It's in a dialog box, right there 
where you chose that option.  We can't pop up a confirm 
dialog for everything that you just explicitly chose.  Users 
need to *read* the stuff that they are selecting if they care 
about what might happen.

b) You might consider having multiple smaller pst files if the 
larger ones are giving you trouble.  In terms of spambayes, 
the plug-in really does try hard to manage in the case of the 
crash - it has greatly improved from the older version, which 
were not nearly so good.  There are limits, though, when 
programs unexpectedly quit.

I realise that mail is important to people, but the there's no 
way that "destroying...my life" isn't melodrama.  Really if the 
mail is that important, and Outlook that unstable, then a good 
backup strategy is more important than the behaviour of any 
plug-in.

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Comment By: Jed Fisher (jedbytegeist)
Date: 2003-12-04 14:10

Message:
Logged In: YES 
user_id=922693

Hi there,

Thanks you kindly for your reply.

I understand the Spambayes is alpha software but that's 
more the reason to be overly careful rather than possibly 
careless.

Some additional comments below

a) yes i did, and i did find it said that it would move all files 
in the Welcome Readme towards the bottom (unfortunately i 
was reading this as it was moving messages). Basically a 
single confirm MessageBox would have saved me. Thus if 
there is anything to be gained from this, please think about 
adding something like
Messagebox "Confirm message move" "In order to train 
Spambayes your messages will be moved to the unsure 
folder, please see help file for more info" (or similar).

b) Actually i dont really blame Spambayes for the Outlook 
crash, i think Outlook is crashing Outlook :) i.e. it is a very 
unstable program with BIG .pst files, if i go into Outlook and 
try to move 500 emails i will likely get a crash.
All that i ask of Spambayes is to program assuming that a 
crash can occur at anytime and hence for information not to 
be lost so easily when there is an Outlook crash.

c) again see above. thanks for the note on the next version.

Re: whitelist - thanks

Thanks again for your reply, if you take anything by my 
melodrama please take that Inboxs are important to people 
and doing big changes to them should be done with care and 
user acknowledgement. Assume users are dumb :)

Otherwise in short Spambayes does look like a great 
program. Keep up the good work.

Jed

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Comment By: Tony Meyer (anadelonbrin)
Date: 2003-12-04 13:03

Message:
Logged In: YES 
user_id=552329

I'm sorry that you had such trouble, but:

1.  SpamBayes is *alpha* software, with everything that 
goes with that.

Bugs (a): Did you read the options that you selected?  I'm 
pretty sure that you selected the one that said you want to 
train as you go, which clearly says that it will begin by moving 
all your mail to an unsure folder so that you can sort it out.  
This doesn't have to happen, it's just the option that you 
chose (and also the default).

Bugs (b): we do everything we can to avoid crashes, fairly 
obviously.  If you believe that SpamBayes is crashing Outlook, 
then opening a bug report about that would be the correct 
behaviour, with *lots* of details (Outlook version, OS version, 
etc).

Bugs (c): The plug-in tries to save the original location of 
messages as much as it can.  It's certainly not designed to 
work with crashes, and a crash generally means that you're 
out of luck, with any program.  The next version (IIRC) has 
some improvement to the location-saving code, so that might 
help.

Feature request: please see the FAQ re: whitelisting.

Overall, I regret that you had this trouble, but melodrama 
doesn't really help solve anything.

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You can respond by visiting: 
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=498103&aid=853697&group_id=61702