Error while compacting: inflate failed

Error while compacting: inflate failed

[Peter P.]

Hi list,

I am not subscribed to this list, please add me as CC in your replies,
thanks!

I am getting 
	Error while compacting: inflate failed (invalid stored block lengths) 
with notmuch 0.37-1+b1 on Debian stable. What can I do about this?

Thanks!
Peter

Re: Error while compacting: inflate failed

[David Bremner]

"Peter P." <peterparker@fastmail.com> writes:

> I am getting 
> 	Error while compacting: inflate failed (invalid stored block lengths) 
> with notmuch 0.37-1+b1 on Debian stable. What can I do about this?

Can you successfully make a backup using "notmuch dump" (or do you have
a recent backup?). In that case I would rebuild the database and restore
the metadata (tags, etc...) from the backup. 

Re: Error while compacting: inflate failed

[Peter P.]

* David Bremner <david@tethera.net> [2023-07-18 12:33]:
> "Peter P." <peterparker@fastmail.com> writes:
> 
> > I am getting 
> > 	Error while compacting: inflate failed (invalid stored block lengths) 
> > with notmuch 0.37-1+b1 on Debian stable. What can I do about this?
> 
> Can you successfully make a backup using "notmuch dump" (or do you have
> a recent backup?). In that case I would rebuild the database and restore
> the metadata (tags, etc...) from the backup. 

Thanks David,
	$ notmuch dump --output=/tmp/dump
runs without errors, albeit the dumped file is only 6.9MB while the
xapian folder has 851MB. Is this correct?
I can easily rebuild the database even without the dump as I am not
using tags at all by simply deleting the xapian folder, right?

much appreciated!
Peter

Re: Error while compacting: inflate failed

[David Bremner]

"Peter P." <peterparker@fastmail.com> writes:
>
> Thanks David,
> 	$ notmuch dump --output=/tmp/dump
> runs without errors, albeit the dumped file is only 6.9MB while the
> xapian folder has 851MB. Is this correct?

Yes, that sounds about right. The dump only includes the tags (it should
more or less make sense if you inspect the first few lines) rather then
the index structures needed for fast lookup, and in particular the dump
does not include the original text of the messages, while the database
effectively does.

> I can easily rebuild the database even without the dump as I am not
> using tags at all by simply deleting the xapian folder, right?

Yes, that should work.

You may also want to check the usual OS facilities for hardware
monitoring (e.g. SMART) in case your disk is unwell (rather than some
fluke filesystem corruption).

Re: Error while compacting: inflate failed

[Peter P.]

* David Bremner <david@tethera.net> [2023-07-19 12:26]:
> "Peter P." <peterparker@fastmail.com> writes:
> >
> > Thanks David,
> > 	$ notmuch dump --output=/tmp/dump
> > runs without errors, albeit the dumped file is only 6.9MB while the
> > xapian folder has 851MB. Is this correct?
> 
> Yes, that sounds about right. The dump only includes the tags (it should
> more or less make sense if you inspect the first few lines) rather then
> the index structures needed for fast lookup, and in particular the dump
> does not include the original text of the messages, while the database
> effectively does.
> 
> > I can easily rebuild the database even without the dump as I am not
> > using tags at all by simply deleting the xapian folder, right?
> 
> Yes, that should work.

Thanks again, this fixed the error!
best, P