[horde] Kolab-stored preferenced went missing after recent update

[Jens-U. Mozdzen]

Hi *,

I'm making some progress on this issue:

Zitat von "Jens-U. Mozdzen" <jmozdzen at nde.ag>:
> Hi *,
>
> on Feb 2, I pear-updated to latest Horde. Unfortunately, for more  
> than one user, all preference settings were lost after the next login.
>
> We're using the Kolab back-end to store settings in an Cyrus IMAP.  
> Setting new preferences works, it's just that all old preferences  
> seem to be lost.

after a few iterations, loops and tearing my hair out, here's the  
updated information on the problem and how I got to work around parts  
of the problem:

- we're talking about an extremely old Horde installation, going  
through many updates (and up-to-date now)
- per-user configuration is stored in Kolab format in the IMAP store
- some, but not all configuration settings got lost across  
logoff/login cycles of the users

For my user (with the oldest settings etc, being the first Horde user  
in this installation) I got to work around this by deleting all  
configuration "messages" in the user's IMAP folder (and, for good  
measure, expunging that folder before back in).

Since then, configuration settings seem to persist.

Findings (from various debugging sessions) that lead to these steps were:

- in the configuration folder, we found several "messages" for the  
same program, with various "last-modification-date" elements
- some "messages" stored the configuration object in XML
- some "messages" stored the configuration object in base64-encoded XML
- when configuring user preferences via Horde, the configs were  
updated accordingly, even for items that later were lost after re-logon
- no error messages could be found anywhere

So I guessed that somewhere along the way, the storage format has  
changed... and "old" messages caused problems during load. Maybe the  
(XML?) parser aborted, maybe older messages (per application) caused  
newer messages not to be read anymore... I cannot tell.

But: There's one section that still is a problem - and to me it looks  
like a programming error:

I try to update the identity settings for webmail, i.e. by setting  
some addresses in the "tie_to" field. Storing that change is reported  
as "successful" by Horde, but I see absolutely no change in the  
corresponding IMAP message (while the configuration is done via the  
"imp" configuration dialog, identity settings need to be persisted to  
the configuration object for "horde").

Interestingly, I cannot persist updated "horde" settings (that "common  
settings" area) at all - when I go to "common settings" and add a new  
identity and store it, Horde reports success - but does not change the  
IMAP message at all. Same for other sub-sections.
Probably a coincidence, but that "horde" config IMAP "message" is the  
only one that is still stored as base64-encoded XML... could it be  
that this one can (due to a bug) only be created once and will no get  
updated anymore?

Regards,
Jens

PS: Once I had reconfigured all Horde user settings to my liking, I  
noticed that I again have duplicates: I see two config "messages" each  
for turba and nag, of course with different UUIDs in their subject.  
I'll pay attention to the further progress in the user's configuration  
folder, maybe something is still broken...