looping gcc/bugzilla <-> bugs.debian mail

looping gcc/bugzilla <-> bugs.debian mail

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

Hi -

We have a mail loop situation happening between bugs.debian.org
and sourceware.org (= gcc.gnu.org)'s bugzilla servers.  Can you
advise whether we should stop this somehow or whether you can
from your end?

https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3481
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=55298

Not sure what set off the two robots talking to each other,
but it wasn't entertaining the bystanders.

- FChE

Re: looping gcc/bugzilla <-> bugs.debian mail

[Don Armstrong]

On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> We have a mail loop situation happening between bugs.debian.org
> and sourceware.org (= gcc.gnu.org)'s bugzilla servers.  Can you
> advise whether we should stop this somehow or whether you can
> from your end?

Your bugzilla setup is stripping off all of the X-Loop and other
relevant headers when it forwards mail it receives, so it's made it very
difficult to automatically mitigate this kind of mail loop.

I'll drop in a rule to block your bugzilla setup to sending messages to
bugs.debian.org to mitigate this in the future.

-- 
Don Armstrong                      https://www.donarmstrong.com

There is no more concentrated form of evil
than apathy.

Re: looping gcc/bugzilla <-> bugs.debian mail

[Christopher Faylor]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2020 at 01:06:07PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote:
>On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
>> We have a mail loop situation happening between bugs.debian.org
>> and sourceware.org (= gcc.gnu.org)'s bugzilla servers.  Can you
>> advise whether we should stop this somehow or whether you can
>> from your end?
>
>Your bugzilla setup is stripping off all of the X-Loop and other
>relevant headers when it forwards mail it receives, so it's made it very
>difficult to automatically mitigate this kind of mail loop.

Please forgive my ignorance, but what should the X-Loop header look
like?  Would this be something that you added and we stripped or
something that we didn't add?

We recently changed hardware and updated to a newer linux distro for
sourceware.org and there are still some software issues to work out.
So, if we need to change something here we'll be glad to do so.

>I'll drop in a rule to block your bugzilla setup to sending messages to
>bugs.debian.org to mitigate this in the future.

We have a rule to prevent the loop too but if we're missing something
here we'd like to fix it.

Re: looping gcc/bugzilla <-> bugs.debian mail

[Joseph Myers]

On Wed, 18 Mar 2020, Don Armstrong via Overseers wrote:

> On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> > We have a mail loop situation happening between bugs.debian.org
> > and sourceware.org (= gcc.gnu.org)'s bugzilla servers.  Can you
> > advise whether we should stop this somehow or whether you can
> > from your end?
> 
> Your bugzilla setup is stripping off all of the X-Loop and other
> relevant headers when it forwards mail it receives, so it's made it very
> difficult to automatically mitigate this kind of mail loop.

I'm not sure if Bugzilla has any connection between the incoming and 
outgoing emails.  It may just generate a comment from an incoming email, 
and generate an outgoing email from a new comment independent of how that 
comment was added.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com

Re: looping gcc/bugzilla <-> bugs.debian mail

[Christopher Faylor]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2020 at 10:37:10PM +0000, Joseph Myers wrote:
>On Wed, 18 Mar 2020, Don Armstrong via Overseers wrote:
>>On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, Frank Ch.  Eigler wrote:
>>>We have a mail loop situation happening between bugs.debian.org and
>>>sourceware.org (= gcc.gnu.org)'s bugzilla servers.  Can you advise
>>>whether we should stop this somehow or whether you can from your end?
>>
>>Your bugzilla setup is stripping off all of the X-Loop and other
>>relevant headers when it forwards mail it receives, so it's made it
>>very difficult to automatically mitigate this kind of mail loop.
>
>I'm not sure if Bugzilla has any connection between the incoming and
>outgoing emails.  It may just generate a comment from an incoming
>email, and generate an outgoing email from a new comment independent of
>how that comment was added.

That was my understanding too but maybe we could just automatically add
an X-Loop for the email address from the comment if that helped.

cgf

Re: looping gcc/bugzilla <-> bugs.debian mail

[Don Armstrong]

On Wed, 18 Mar 2020, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2020 at 01:06:07PM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote:
> >On Tue, 17 Mar 2020, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> >> We have a mail loop situation happening between bugs.debian.org
> >> and sourceware.org (= gcc.gnu.org)'s bugzilla servers.  Can you
> >> advise whether we should stop this somehow or whether you can
> >> from your end?
> >
> >Your bugzilla setup is stripping off all of the X-Loop and other
> >relevant headers when it forwards mail it receives, so it's made it very
> >difficult to automatically mitigate this kind of mail loop.
> 
> Please forgive my ignorance, but what should the X-Loop header look
> like?

X-Loop: owner@bugs.debian.org is what we add to all of our outgoing
messages to try to track mail loops.

> Would this be something that you added and we stripped or something
> that we didn't add?

Something that we add, but Bugzilla strips out. The general problem is
that incoming messages are connected to outgoing messages without
maintaining the e-mail headers from the incoming message. [You really
should keep all of the References, X-Loop, and Received headers at a
minimum.]

We're probably partly to blame, because we haven't changed our setup to
account for RFC 3834, which I'll file a bug to add eventually.

-- 
Don Armstrong                      https://www.donarmstrong.com

You could say to the Universe this is not /fair/. And the Universe
would say: Oh it isn't? Sorry.
 -- Terry Pratchett _Soul Music_ p357

Re: looping gcc/bugzilla <-> bugs.debian mail

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

Hi -

> X-Loop: owner@bugs.debian.org is what we add to all of our outgoing
> messages to try to track mail loops.

OK.

> > Would this be something that you added and we stripped or something
> > that we didn't add?
> 
> Something that we add, but Bugzilla strips out. The general problem is
> that incoming messages are connected to outgoing messages without
> maintaining the e-mail headers from the incoming message. [You really
> should keep all of the References, X-Loop, and Received headers at a
> minimum.]

Thing is bugzilla is not forwarding emails.  Bugzilla appends as a
comment the body of the message.  Then it sends out a new notification
email to all the various subscribers of that bug, which includes the
originator.  And the originator was the pseudo-userid over
@bugs.debian.  So it wasn't a direct mail loop.


- FChE

Re: looping gcc/bugzilla <-> bugs.debian mail

[Don Armstrong]

On Sun, 22 Mar 2020, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> > Something that we add, but Bugzilla strips out. The general problem
> > is that incoming messages are connected to outgoing messages without
> > maintaining the e-mail headers from the incoming message. [You
> > really should keep all of the References, X-Loop, and Received
> > headers at a minimum.]
> 
> Thing is bugzilla is not forwarding emails. Bugzilla appends as a
> comment the body of the message. Then it sends out a new notification
> email to all the various subscribers of that bug, which includes the
> originator. And the originator was the pseudo-userid over
> @bugs.debian. So it wasn't a direct mail loop.

It may not be directly forwarding them, but the net effect is the same.
[In fact, if it was directly forwarding them, it might not have been so
bad...]

If you receive a mail message and send a mail message in response to
that mail message, you're vulnerable to mail loops, and should retain
message headers which are used to detect and avoid mail loops.

-- 
Don Armstrong                      https://www.donarmstrong.com

I have no use for "before and after" pictures.
I can't remember starting, and I'm never done.
 -- a softer world #221
    http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=221

Re: looping gcc/bugzilla <-> bugs.debian mail

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

Hi -

Another way to break the loop is to make clear which bug tracker
is the master, which is a replica.  If sourceware/gcc's bugzilla
is the master upstream, then the debian one can RECEIVE updates
from it, but need not SEND (and especially RESEND) updates to it.

- FChE