Re: [coldsync-hackers] Lots of length 0 records

[Andrew Arensburger <arensb+CShackers@ooblick.com>]

On Sun, Jan 06, 2002 at 12:10:33AM +0100, Richard Körber wrote:
> Just another strange thing... When I am -mb'ing my palm,
> coldsync (2.2.0) tells me several times that some records
> have length 0, like e.g.
> 
> "AddressDB" record 0x0071206e has length 0.
> 
> What does it mean? Do I need to be concerned about this? :)

	Probably not. A record has two parts: a common "header" with
the record's ID number, category, and flags, and a data part that
contains everything else. The "has length 0" message is telling you
that it just wrote a recod where the data part has length 0.
	The most obvious way this can happen is if you have an
expunged record: one that you've deleted on the Palm, and you
_haven't_ checked the "keep archive on desktop" box. In this case, the
Palm deletes the data portion of the record, but it has to keep the
header so that it can tell the desktop that this record has been
deleted.
	Since you're doing a backup, ColdSync is backing everything up
exactly the way it is on the Palm, including the deleted records. The
number 0x0071206e is the record ID. You can run 'pdbdump' on your
backup to see which record this is, and see if it's really, really
deleted.

	At one point, I ran into a problem with zero-length records,
which is why I added this message. I haven't proven mathematically
that all of the zero-length-record bugs have been fixed, so please let
me know if you find anything odd.

-- 
Andrew Arensburger                      This message *does* represent the
arensb@ooblick.com                      views of ooblick.com
	     Macdonaldus Senex fundum habiut. E-I-E-I-O.
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