Restoring config.xml File from Backups

Hi there,
Things have been going pretty well with Deskzilla. I just had something really weird happen though that is again impairing my use of the product and can't find It the discussion groups.

The other day I launched Deskzilla and all of my custom info was gone - I had to recreate the connection to the database. This is the first time its ever done this.

Before, there was a large set of predefined queries that were present. I used them all the time. They're suddenly gone and the only queries are the ones living Bugzilla.

I can't figure out how to get all of the original queries back. They were really useful.

Thanks for the assistance!
-grace

_______________

Hello Grace,

Thanks for your kind words!

I'm sorry about this problem that you describe, this is the first time something like that is reported. While what happened is yet to be investigated, we can try to restore your queries from backups.

First of all, please locate your Deskzilla's workspace directory. (See how: http://wiki.almworks.com/display/kb/Workspace)

The workspace directory contains file "config.xml", which stores all configuration, including your connection and your queries. This file is being automatically backed up into "backup" sub-directory in the workspace. Do you remember when was the last time you had your queries? Please see if there's a file in "backup" sub-directory that is dated before that day. If there is one, you can try to restore the old configuration. To do that:
1. Close Deskzilla if it is running;
2. Make full backup of your workspace (http://wiki.almworks.com/display/kb/How+to+Backup+Your+Workspace)
3. Copy the backup version of config.xml over the working version of config.xml.
4. Start Deskzilla.

If you don't have local modifications in Deskzilla, it is also advisable to clear local database and reload bugs from server (http://wiki.almworks.com/display/kb/How+to+Clear+Local+Database)

One of the reasons why all your queries were lost could be that somehow the workspace directory has been deleted. In that case you won't find old enough backups of config.xml. If you have any other backups, probably system backups of your hard drive, you can try to restore from there.

Please let me know if that helped and whether you were able to restore queries.

As for investigation of why that problem happened, could you please send me a ZIP archive of all the log files, that are located in "log" subdirectory of the workspace?

Thank you!

________________

Hello Grace,

I'm sorry for delayed reply. I've checked log files, nothing especially suspicious there. After you make change to a bug, upload may not happen due to the following reasons:
1. You selected not to upload changes: on New Bug / Edit Bug you do that with "Save Draft" (vs. "Save and Upload") button, when adding comments you may have cleared "Upload to server immediately" check box;
2. The upload resulted in conflict that Deskzilla couldn't automatically solve. Bugs that have conflicts are marked with the "broken" icon (), and you need to call Merge action via menu Edit | Merge or a corresponding toolbar button to merge conflicting server-side changes and your changes;
3. You made changes that did not involve any dialogs (like drag and dropping bugs over queries, or marking bugs as being watched) - such changes are not automatically uploaded;
4. The upload could not start because the bug was still being edited: for example, if you created a bug, hit "Save and Upload", then immediately opened Edit Bug, the upload won't happen until you hit "Save and Upload" in the Edit Bug dialog again. This is current limitation of Deskzilla, it can't upload or download changes for a bug when it is being edited;

Anyways, you always can see the number of locally modified bugs in the status bar (the number beside "modified" icon ), and if you click on that number, you get a list of locally modified bugs.

Thanks for feedback, please let me know if that doesn't solve the problem or if you have further questions.

Kind regards,
Igor

From: Grace Stahre grace@versantmedia.com
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 4:47 AM
To: 'Igor Sereda'
Subject: RE: deszilla clearing fields

It's weird -
So the issues about clearing fields spontaneously has disappeared. They weren't new fields, by far. But its gone.

The issue that I'm having now is that bugs often don't update with the main server unless I click on the individual bug in the interface and select the Upload icon from the top navigation. This has caused a number of problems, because it used to happen automatically. I went a couple of days recently without noticing that its not updating. It's randomly work and not working...

Attaching my log for today. Any ideas?

______________________
Grace Stahre
(O) 206.524.5194
(C) 206.330.1410
www.VersantMedia.com

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From: Igor Sereda sereda@almworks.com
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 6:19 AM
To: 'Grace Stahre'
Subject: deszilla clearing fields

Hello Grace,

If you have created new Bugzilla fields recently, please run File | Synchronize menu item so Deskzilla reloads full metadata from the server.

If the problem persists, please restart Deskzilla.

If the problem is still there, please describe with a bit more detail, what exactly are steps that lead to this problem? Does it happen in Edit Bug dialog?

Also, if the problem persists, I can advise you to have issues that you are about to edit downloaded in full details from server. You can do that by right-clicking on an issue and selecting "Download" from pop-up menu. You can also select a number of issues (or all of them with Ctrl+A) and download details for all of them. While download is in progress, you will see "Synchronizing..." message in the status bar. After every detail is downloaded, the issues won't have "partially downloaded" marker in the table 1st column. This may be a workaround.

Please let me know of the results.

Kind regards,
Igor

From: Grace Stahre grace@versantmedia.com
Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2009 3:48 AM
To: 'Igor Sereda'
Subject: RE: Deskilla having constant problems

I'm having a new issue.

I have two fields that I've created in Bugzilla.

They are both date fields.
I've been noticing that a few seconds after I fill them out, Deskzilla clears them. I have to refill them several times before Deskzilla will leave them alone.

Any clues to this one?

______________________
Grace Stahre
(O) 206.524.5194
(C) 206.330.1410
www.VersantMedia.com

Documentary-Style Promotional, Educational, and Event Videos

From: Igor Sereda sereda@almworks.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 4:25 AM
To: 'Grace Stahre'
Subject: RE: Deskilla having constant problems

Hello Grace,

Thank you very much for the logs.

Our current hypothesis is that problem appears when you try to modify "QA Contact" field. This field seems to be turned off in your Bugzilla, and when Deskzilla tries to upload changes to QA Contact, Bugzilla fails. But we couldn't reproduce it here yet.

Could you please try to verify this? Next time you change anything, try to set QA Contact - the upload should fail. Unset QA Contact back - the upload should succeed.

This is a bug both in Deskzilla and Bugzilla, occurring in such configuration as yours. I will file and have it fixed in Deskzilla and also contact Bugzilla guys about it.

Thank you for your patience and help. Please let me know if you have any additional information, especially if our guess is wrong.

Kind regards,
Igor

From: Grace Stahre grace@versantmedia.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 4:24 AM
To: 'Igor Sereda'
Subject: RE: Deskilla having constant problems

I have the accompanying Bugzilla log (attached)

Strangely, it's only misbehaved a couple of times today, vs. 90%...

______________________
Grace Stahre
(O) 206.524.5194
(C) 206.330.1410
www.VersantMedia.com

Documentary-Style Promotional, Educational, and Event Videos

From: Igor Sereda sereda@almworks.com
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 9:42 AM
To: 'Grace Stahre'
Subject: RE: Deskilla having constant problems

Hello Grace,

Thanks for the detailed logs. The preliminary investigation shows that there's an error detected on server (see below). While this not necessarily means that the server is to blame, I'd check with server admin for error logs and Bugzilla configuration. Since this problem does not happen with every upload, and, as I understand, it did not happen when you use web browser, it might be related to server resources or concurrency (since Deskzilla can send requests to server very fast). Maybe when the server is more busy, the problem happens more often. It's probably that this problem may arise when you use web interface, though less likely.

We will take a look into Bugzilla code to see what could lead to this error reply from Bugzilla. I'll let you know if we find anything. Please update me if you have more information on this.

Kind regards,
Igor

Details of the problem:
When Deskzilla tried to upload changes, this is what it received from Bugzilla server (see file log\bugzilla\bugzilla.customtollfree.com\2009-04-08\098-100719-086.process_bug, for example):
<h1>Software error:</h1>
<pre>Can't call method "login" on an undefined value at Bugzilla/Bug.pm line 519.
</pre>
<p>
For help, please send mail to the webmaster (<a href="mailto:adminsupport@the800source.com">adminsupport@the800source.com</a>), giving this error message
and the time and date of the error.

</p>

From: Grace Stahre grace@versantmedia.com
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 10:35 PM
To: 'Igor Sereda'
Subject: RE: Deskilla having constant problems

So, I have a number of bugs update correctly today, but have 2 errors currently. Whenever I have gotten these errors, I have tried to synchronize, and they don't go away. I am not logged in to the web interface of Bugzilla at the same time - in fact, I'm the only one using it this morning. What's strange is that some bugs updated just fine. Here's the info with logs attached.

Bug 32 - I changed the title of the bug, reassigned it, and added a comment - these are visible in deskzilla, but none of this uploaded to Bugzilla.
Error in Deskzilla:
Bug upload failed for bug #32
Failed to upload SUMMARY, COMMENT

This means that we've attempted to upload the bug to the Bugzilla server, and Bugzilla didn't give any error (or we were unable to detect it), but (partly) our update request was ignored.

Please check that your Bugzilla supports this attribute and that you have permissions to update problematic attribute. The problem has occurred today at 10:21 AM, used login 'grace@versantmedia.com'.

Bug 65 - I changed the title. Didn't upload.
Error in Deskzilla:
Bug upload failed for bug #65
Failed to upload SUMMARY

This means that we've attempted to upload the bug to the Bugzilla server, and Bugzilla didn't give any error (or we were unable to detect it), but (partly) our update request was ignored.

Please check that your Bugzilla supports this attribute and that you have permissions to update problematic attribute. The problem has occurred today at 10:16 AM, used login 'grace@versantmedia.com'.

______________________
Grace Stahre
(O) 206.524.5194
(C) 206.330.1410
www.VersantMedia.com

Documentary-Style Promotional, Educational, and Event Videos

From: Igor Sereda sereda@almworks.com
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 3:47 AM
To: 'Grace Stahre'
Subject: RE: Deskilla having constant problems

Hello Grace,

Thank you very much for your feedback. I'm sorry to hear about these problems, and we'd like to improve Deskzilla if you are willing to bear with it for some time and give us additional information.

To collect the necessary information, please run Deskzilla in verbose mode as described here: http://forum.almworks.com/index.php?showtopic=488 . Deskzilla will log everything it does in the log files. When any problem happens, you can ZIP all the log files from log directory (by default, C:\Documents and Settings\username\.Deskzilla\log - see the instruction for details), and send to me with some words about what was actual vs. expected behavior.

Sorry once again for the inconvenience. I'll perfectly understand if you decide not to go with Deskzilla at this time - in that case I'd suggest you to subscribe to our release announcement mailing list or RSS feed on http://almworks.com ; we're working on 2.0 version right now, which would have lots of improvements. It would be great if you're willing to help though, in the way described above, and if we finally resolve the problems I'll be glad to offer a 15% discount on licenses for you or your company.

Kind regards,
Igor

–
Igor Sereda
ALM Works

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From: Grace Stahre grace@versantmedia.com
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 12:59 AM
To: support@almworks.com
Subject: Deskilla having constant problems

Hello,
I installed the evaluation version a couple of weeks ago. I love the interface and flexibility. I want to use this tool and have my office purchase it... however...

I'm having constant problems with bugs not uploading and synchronizing properly. Sometimes things work fine, sometimes they don't, and I cannot identify the reason for the failure.

Sometimes it will fail if I add a Comment, sometimes changing the deadline will cause a fail. Just about any minor change CAN cause a fail. And then it NEVER corrects. I have to go into the Bugzilla interface directly and copy over my changes and Discard Changes in Deskzilla.

I've checked the forums but have seen no resolutions that pertain to my situation. We are using 3.2.2 Release of Bugzilla.

This has been reducing my efficiency by about 30% and causing bugs to not be assigned correctly. Would love for this product to work for us.

I can send screen grabs if that will help.

-grace

______________________
Grace Stahre
(O) 206.524.5194
(C) 206.330.1410
www.VersantMedia.com

Documentary-Style Promotional, Educational, and Event Videos

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