Contacts dissapereance on RC v146 (2022-09-29)

jezek

@lduboeuf I've followed your advice and deleted the file and directory you suggested in previous post and installed the rc v146.

After installation I checked contacts and no contacts were found (the automatic migration didn't kick in). Then I said to myself, this is good, blank slate, just tap the synchronize button to sync with google account and everything will be fine. But the sync button was nowhere to find. I checked the Accounts in Settings. The google account is there, but only Calendar is ticked to use the account there (in stable there was Contacts and Calendar ticked).

Then I checked the ~/.local/share/evolution/addressbook/system/contacts.db with sqlite3 command and really. There are only 5 contacts there in the database file. After running the migrate_from_eds script, the 5 contacts were migrated successfully.

My previous assumption, that the migration script failed was wrong. The script worked. But the Contacts app somehow lost the ability to fetch contacts from System Accounts (for me it's google account configured there). Anyone else experienced this?

messayisto

@jezek Somewhere someone mentioned that contacts-sync is disabled in current RC due to various issues. I think it was @Flohack who said this, i have forgotten where.?

lduboeuf

@messayisto yes you're right, Contact sync will be disabled temporarily in next OTA.

jezek

@lduboeuf said in Contacts dissapereance on RC v146 (2022-09-29):

@messayisto yes you're right, Contact sync will be disabled temporarily in next OTA.

In the next stable OTA? If yes, than I think it's a big drawback/regression and the OTA should be postponed until it is figured out.

lduboeuf

@jezek said in Contacts dissapereance on RC v146 (2022-09-29):

@lduboeuf said in Contacts dissapereance on RC v146 (2022-09-29):

@messayisto yes you're right, Contact sync will be disabled temporarily in next OTA.

In the next stable OTA? If yes, than I think it's a big drawback/regression and the OTA should be postponed until it is figured out.

Yes this is what i've heard unfortunately. The contact migration is already a huge task . There is already known regressions ( most minors ) ( thread here https://github.com/ubports/ubuntu-touch/issues/997 ). and i'm afraid they will not be fixed with that OTA, Or we would have to wait another few months.
I agree all known regressions should be fixed before release. Maybe there should be a warning or discussion about that.

jezek

@lduboeuf said in Contacts dissapereance on RC v146 (2022-09-29):

Maybe there should be a warning or discussion about that.

There should definitely be a discussion. And if there is a vote, I would definitely vote for postponing the OTA until this is fixed (there is no regular OTA schedule anyway). Even if it is for 2 another months. You can't do this with some warning on a page. Some people don't read forums. They update and then no contacts. Everybody will ask how to downgrade. As for me I won't update until this is resolved.

domubpkm

Personally, I'm still on RC 54 (OTA-23) but very customized: I just installed the PRs I needed and everything works fine. As it is, I can wait. I have always done this by skipping several RCs. It's just my way of doing it.

lduboeuf

@jezek at least the contact migration issue will be fixed, but not sync yet

arubislander

@jezek said in Contacts dissapereance on RC v146 (2022-09-29):

There should definitely be a discussion. And if there is a vote, I would definitely vote for postponing the OTA until this is fixed (there is no regular OTA schedule anyway). Even if it is for 2 another months. You can't do this with some warning on a page. Some people don't read forums. They update and then no contacts. Everybody will ask how to downgrade. As for me I won't update until this is resolved.

My understanding is that the issue of the disappearing contacts is being looked to be fixed before the OTA is released. Only the contact sync issue will pushed back to a future OTA.
So updating to OTA-24 should not cause the user loss of contacts once this issue is fixed.

domubpkm

@arubislander said in Contacts dissapereance on RC v146 (2022-09-29):

is being looked to be fixed before the OTA is released

Yes. An OTA without contacts is IMPOSSIBLE, or else I'm in the 'Twilight Zone'.

Lakotaubp

I believe what @arubislander says is correct, but I have asked in the Q&A group to try and find out for sure to clear this up.

flohack

Just for clarification what happens on the next OTA re contacts:

Software has been exchanged to replace the old contacts backend with a newer one
The old user data remains in your device
A new Db is created, and a migrator runs one time to move all contacts into the new Db (thats the current blocker, the migrator wont start on all devices due to a very difficult datetime issue in the recovery mode)
A flag file is created to not migrate more than once
Google contacts sync is disabled for now

Thats all. No contacts can be lost. In case anything goes really wrong the old database is there, and with another small emergency OTA we can help all users to re-migrate it for example. So we got most of scenarios covered.

I disagree to keep this pending until everything with sync is fixed. This means we cannot release another OTA, or any update to users. This means 16.04 is dead in the water (which it is already kinda) and we come closer to a cutoff date where everything must first work in 20.04 - imagine all of what we have queued now, approx 35 items, if one of them breaks in 20.04 which is very likely, we can again not release.

Also there is no point of saying that this is ok, simply put all hands on 20.04: It still does not have a release date, and most of all a lot of devices might not get upgraded if we cannot motivate the porters to do the necessary changes.

We need to be able to push 1, 2 or even 3 more OTAs before 20.04