Known bugs in current and older versions
+ +Bugs that are listed in an older version section are + supposedly fixed in later versions. Bugs listed in the + topmost section may also exist in older versions.
+ +Latest (recoll 1.11.2 + xapian 1.0.x)
+-
+
+
- Performing a full index with release 1.11, over a version + created with a much older recoll release may sometimes end + with an error saying "backend doesn't implement metadata". + If this happens, you need to delete the index directory + (typically ~/.recoll/xapiandb/) and restart + indexing. For big indexes, removing the directory preventively + may be a smart move to avoid losing time. + +
- When Recoll is built with qt 4.4.0, the icons in the + result list are all displayed at the top of the page and + garbled. This appears to be a qt bug, fixed in 4.4.1. Use + either qt 4.3.x or 4.4.1 + +
- If the user-chosen result list entry format results in + several paragraphs (in the qt textedit sense), right clicks + will only work inside the first one for each entry. + +
- The "Copy file name" and "Copy URL" entries of the + right-click menus only copy the data to the X11 primary + selection (use middle-button click to paste). This is + probably a mistake, the data should be copied to the + clipboard too (permitting the use of the "Paste" edit menu + entry or Ctrl+V in the target). + +
- When a mime type has an external viewer defined, but the + actual file is compressed (ie: xxx.txt.gz), recoll will try + to start the external viewer on the compressed file, which + will not work in most cases. + +
- NEAR crashes: 1.6 has added NEAR searches. Unlike what
+ recoll did with PHRASES, stemming expansion is performed on
+ terms inside NEAR clauses (except if prevented by a
+ capitalized entry of course). There is a bug in Xapian (all
+ versions as far as I know), where NEAR does not support
+ multiple OR subclauses, as would result from a multiple
+ expansion. This manifests itself by a 'not implemented'
+ Xapian exception. Workarounds:
+
-
+
- Prevent expansion of NEAR terms (possibly except one) by + capitalizing them. + +
- Or apply the following patch to xapian, inside the + "api/" directory: + http://www.recoll.org/xapian/xapNearDistrib-1.0.patch + or fetch the already patched source: + http://www.recoll.org/xapian/xapian-core-1.0.7-recollNEARpatch.tar.gz + then recompile, and install. + +
+
+ - If you are seeing a delay of a few seconds before the + result list displays for the first query of a recoll + instance, try changing the result list font in the query + preferences. This is not a recoll problem, I don't know the + exact cause (I've seen it happen with "Sans Serif" and go + away with Helvetica or Arial). + +
- Under some versions of KDE (ie: Fedora FC5 KDE + 3.5.4-0.5.fc5), there is a problem with the window stacking + order. Opening the "browse" file selection dialog from the + advanced search dialog will stack the latter under the main + window, possibly making it invisible. This is quite probably + a Kwin bug, possibly related to + http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79183 or a correction + thereof. + +
- Under Solaris, it is necessary to perform initial indexing with the + recollindex program (the recoll index thread doesn't work for creating + the database). Don't know the reason. Only idea I have is problem with + exception handling (recoll catches an exception while trying the + yet inexistant db). +
1.11.1
+-
+
- Unicode space characters like + 0x3000, Ideographic space + where not detected inside user entries like the main + interface search entry. Badly parsed searches would retrieve no + results, when the same search entered with ascii space characters + would have succeeded. +
- Spaces were inserted inside CJK strings when building + abstracts for the result list. +
1.10.6
+-
+
- If the locale is not utf-8, non-ascii command line
+ arguments to recoll and recollq are not converted to utf-8,
+ which may prevent, for example, the kde applet from
+ working. The workaround is to apply the following one-line
+ fix to qtgui/main.cpp, recompile and install recoll:
+
+ 386c386 + < sSearch->setSearchString(QString::fromUtf8(qstring.c_str())); + --- + > sSearch->setSearchString(QString::fromLocal8Bit(qstring.c_str())); +
+
+
1.10.1
+ +-
+
- A relatively simple error case can cause the indexer to + stop processing an mbox file (forgetting all subsequent + messages). More specifically, this happens when encountering + more than than a few dozen errors while handling + attachments. This is relatively common: for exemple if an + external helper application is missing and multiple + attachments of the affected type are found (ie: multiple + images and no exiftool). Workaround: install the helper + application. +
- The decoding of base-64 data in emails fails in a relatively uncommon + but sometimes encountered case. +
- In a preview window, when walking the search term hits with the + Previous/Next buttons, 'Previous' actually acts as 'Next' (it does work + normally for the local search). +
- Problems in detecting message separators inside Thunderbird mailboxes + (quite probably mainly for messages imported from outlook?). Can lead to + unindexed messages, and even apparently indexer crashes in some cases. +
- File names indexed as terms can sometimes overflow the maximum term + size, halting the indexing. +
- For Phrase/Near searches, only the first term group is highlighted in + preview. +
1.10.0
+-
+
+
- If a filter fails while trying to extract the data from a file, the file + will not be indexed at all (not even the file name). The file + name should be indexed in this case. This happens in particular in the + very common case where the helper application is not installed (ie: + missing Exiftool -> no *.jpg names in the index). + +
- If several query language "ext:" qualifiers are specified, they will be + joined by an AND instead of OR, resulting in no results. Using an + explicit OR doesn't work (actually OR + field names is generally + broken). In some cases, you can use a "type:" qualifier as a workaround. -- If the user-chosen result list entry format results in several paragraphs - (in the qt textedit sense), right clicks will only work inside the first - one for each entry. +
1.9.x
+-
+
- Problems have been reported indexing big mailstores (several hundreds of + thousands of messages): resulting in a very big database and even + crashes. -- When a mime type has an external viewer defined, but the actual file is - compressed (ie: xxx.txt.gz), recoll will try to start the external viewer - on the compressed file, which will not work in most cases. +
1.8.2
+-
+
- Under ubuntu (at least, maybe debian too), the default awk interpreter + (mawk) is ancient, and the recoll pdf input filter does not + work (removes all space characters). This can be solved by installing the + gawk package. + $ apt-get install gawk + $ update-alternatives --set awk /usr/bin/gawk -- NEAR crashes: 1.6 has added NEAR searches. Unlike what recoll did - with PHRASES, stemming expansion is performed on terms inside NEAR - clauses (except if prevented by a capitalized entry of course). There is - a bug in Xapian (all versions as far as I know), where NEAR does not support - multiple OR subclauses, as would result from a multiple expansion. This - manifests itself by a 'not implemented' Xapian exception. Workarounds: +
- There are sometimes problems with document deletions: the index can + get in a state where deleted or moved documents are not purged from the + index (the log file says that the doc are deleted, but they aren't + actually). When this happens, the only solution currently is to reindex + from scratch (recollindex -z). This is due to a xapian bug, which is + fixed in xapian 1.0.2, or you can apply the following patch to xapian + 1.0.1 to fix it: + http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/xapian/xapian-delete-document.patch - - Prevent expansion of NEAR terms (possibly except one) by - capitalizing them. +
- The dates shown for email attachments in a result list are the email + folder modification date. This should be inherited from the parent + message instead. - - Or apply the following patch to xapian, inside the - "api/" directory: - http://www.recoll.org/xapian/xapNearDistrib-1.0.patch - or fetch the already patched source: - http://www.recoll.org/xapian/xapian-core-1.0.7-recollNEARpatch.tar.gz +
- There are a few problems in the qt4 version of recoll: +
- Some accelerators (esc-spc, ctl-arrow) do not work, neither do + copy/paste between the result list and preview windows and x11 + applications. +
- The qt4 q3textedit::find() method is extremely slow, so that + positionning to first search term in Recoll preview has been disabled, + and the application will sometimes appear to be looping when using the + find feature in the preview window (it's not looping, it's searching...) - then recompile, and install. - - I hope that an equivalent fix will make it into xapian at some point (the - current fix is not completely correct but still handles most useful cases). - -- If you are seeing a delay of a few seconds before the result list - displays for the first query of a recoll instance, try changing the - result list font in the query preferences. This is not a recoll problem, - I don't know the exact cause (I've seen it happen with "Sans Serif" and - go away with Helvetica or Arial). - -- Under some versions of KDE (ie: Fedora FC5 KDE 3.5.4-0.5.fc5), there is a - problem with the window stacking order. Opening the "browse" file - selection dialog from the advanced search dialog will stack the latter - under the main window, possibly making it invisible. This is quite - probably a Kwin bug, possibly related to - http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79183 or a correction thereof. - -- Under Solaris, it is necessary to perform initial indexing with the - recollindex program (the recoll index thread doesn't work for creating - the database). Don't know the reason. Only idea I have is problem with - exception handling (recoll catches an exception while trying the - yet inexistant db). - -1.10.1 + xapian 1.0.x -- A relatively simple error case can cause the indexer to stop processing - an mbox file (forgetting all subsequent messages). More specifically, - this happens when encountering more than than a few dozen errors while - handling attachments. This is relatively common: for exemple if an - external helper application is missing and multiple attachments of the - affected type are found (ie: multiple images and no - exiftool). Workaround: install the helper application. -- The decoding of base-64 data in emails fails in a relatively uncommon - but sometimes encountered case. -- In a preview window, when walking the search term hits with the - Previous/Next buttons, 'Previous' actually acts as 'Next' (it does work - normally for the local search). -- Problems in detecting message separators inside Thunderbird mailboxes - (quite probably mainly for messages imported from outlook?). Can lead to - unindexed messages, and even apparently indexer crashes in some cases. -- File names indexed as terms can sometimes overflow the maximum term - size, halting the indexing. -- For Phrase/Near searches, only the first term group is highlighted in - preview. +
1.8.1
+-
+
- This is not really a bug but .beagle really should be included in + "skippedNames", or you end up indexing the beagle text cache, which is + not really desirable. +
- Doc bug: the manual states that the query language supports a "mime:" + switch to filter mime types. There is currently no such thing. -1.10.0 +
1.7.5
+-
+
- Debian and Ubuntu: the rclsoff Openoffice filter doesn't work, + because of an incorrect shell syntax (understood by bash but not sh). To + fix, you edit /usr[/local]/share/recoll/filters/rclsoff and can change + the line: + trap cleanup EXIT SIGHUP SIGQUIT SIGINT SIGTERM + into: + trap cleanup EXIT HUP QUIT INT TERM + or download the updated filter from the filters page: + http://www.recoll.org/filters/filters.html -- If a filter fails while trying to extract the data from a file, the file - will not be indexed at all (not even the file name). The file - name should be indexed in this case. This happens in particular in the - very common case where the helper application is not installed (ie: - missing Exiftool -> no *.jpg names in the index). +
1.7.3
+-
+
- Processing will stop on first error while indexing an mbox file. This + could happen just because an attachment could not be decoded, and can + cause non-indexing of many messages. The most probable cause of error is + a missing filter (ie for ms-word files), so the temporary workaround + would be to install the missing filters. This bug is specific to 1.7 and + 1.6 users need not worry. A correction will be issued very soon. +
- Messages of type multipart/signed are not indexed. -- If several query language "ext:" qualifiers are specified, they will be - joined by an AND instead of OR, resulting in no results. Using an - explicit OR doesn't work (actually OR + field names is generally - broken). In some cases, you can use a "type:" qualifier as a workaround. +
1.6.2
+-
+
- Relatively unfrequent issue with message boundary detection in mbox + files, could cause miscellaneous problems. +
- Executing an external viewer for a file with single-quotes in the name + would not work. +
1.5.10
+-
+
- If a defaultcharset was set in the configuration file for a subdirectory, + it would stay in effect for all subsequent files/directories (except if + explicitely overridden), potentially causing many transcoding errors. -1.9.x -- Problems have been reported indexing big mailstores (several hundreds of - thousands of messages): resulting in a very big database and even - crashes. +
1.5.[1-7]
+-
+
- Dates in result list come from the file's ctimes, which may be confusing +
- Some rare MIME messages with null boundaries can crash the indexer. +
1.5.0
+-
+
- Under some conditions, recoll startup and exit could be very slow: the + simple search history list had serious problems with non-ascii strings, + whose size sometimes doubled at each program startup/stop. -1.8.2 -- Under ubuntu (at least, maybe debian too), the default awk interpreter - (mawk) is ancient, and the recoll pdf input filter does not - work (removes all space characters). This can be solved by installing the - gawk package. - $ apt-get install gawk - $ update-alternatives --set awk /usr/bin/gawk +
1.3.3
+-
-- There are sometimes problems with document deletions: the index can
- get in a state where deleted or moved documents are not purged from the
- index (the log file says that the doc are deleted, but they aren't
- actually). When this happens, the only solution currently is to reindex
- from scratch (recollindex -z). This is due to a xapian bug, which is
- fixed in xapian 1.0.2, or you can apply the following patch to xapian
- 1.0.1 to fix it:
- http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/xapian/xapian-delete-document.patch
+
- Several of the external filters did not handle path names with embedded + spaces (rcluncomp rclsoff rclps rclmedia rcldjvu). This is fixed in 1.4. -- The dates shown for email attachments in a result list are the email - folder modification date. This should be inherited from the parent - message instead. +
- If your QT installation is built with the QT_NO_STL flag, Recoll will not + compile. I have a patch for this (will be fixed in the next release), + contact me if you get the problem. Typical error message: + main.cpp:160: error: no match for 'operator+=' in 'msg += reason' -- There are a few problems in the qt4 version of recoll: - - Some accelerators (esc-spc, ctl-arrow) do not work, neither do - copy/paste between the result list and preview windows and x11 - applications. - - The qt4 q3textedit::find() method is extremely slow, so that - positionning to first search term in Recoll preview has been disabled, - and the application will sometimes appear to be looping when using the - find feature in the preview window (it's not looping, it's searching...) +
- The 'None of these words' field in the complex search does not work if + there are no other filled fields (it transforms into an ordinary + search). Workaround: enter very common term(s) in the 'any of these + words' field. -1.8.1 -- This is not really a bug but .beagle really should be included in - "skippedNames", or you end up indexing the beagle text cache, which is - not really desirable. -- Doc bug: the manual states that the query language supports a "mime:" - switch to filter mime types. There is currently no such thing. +
- Indexing cannot currently be conveniently and cleanly + stopped when it's started. You can kill the process, and + keyboard interrupt might work, but this may leave the + database in a bad state. This is fixed in the upcoming + release, there is no current workaround. +
1.2.2
+-
+
- The preview window is supposed to scroll after loading the document so + that the first search term is visible. This does not work in many cases. +
- The result list title is not shown for sorted lists -1.7.3 -- Processing will stop on first error while indexing an mbox file. This - could happen just because an attachment could not be decoded, and can - cause non-indexing of many messages. The most probable cause of error is - a missing filter (ie for ms-word files), so the temporary workaround - would be to install the missing filters. This bug is specific to 1.7 and - 1.6 users need not worry. A correction will be issued very soon. -- Messages of type multipart/signed are not indexed. + Notes on older versions: +
- Trouble compiling on some linux systems (Gentoo and Slackware?). There + existed a quite common issue where the Recoll link will fail trying to + use a libstdc++.la file. This was due to a problem with the xapian-config + program. A workaround has been included in the configure script for + recoll 1.2.2, and the problem should not occur any more. -1.6.2 - - Relatively unfrequent issue with message boundary detection in mbox - files, could cause miscellaneous problems. - - Executing an external viewer for a file with single-quotes in the name - would not work. - -1.5.10 -- If a defaultcharset was set in the configuration file for a subdirectory, - it would stay in effect for all subsequent files/directories (except if - explicitely overridden), potentially causing many transcoding errors. - -1.5.[1-7] -- Dates in result list come from the file's ctimes, which may be confusing -- Some rare MIME messages with null boundaries can crash the indexer. - -1.5.0 -- Under some conditions, recoll startup and exit could be very slow: the - simple search history list had serious problems with non-ascii strings, - whose size sometimes doubled at each program startup/stop. - -1.3.3 - -- Several of the external filters did not handle path names with embedded - spaces (rcluncomp rclsoff rclps rclmedia rcldjvu). This is fixed in 1.4. - -- If your QT installation is built with the QT_NO_STL flag, Recoll will not - compile. I have a patch for this (will be fixed in the next release), - contact me if you get the problem. Typical error message: - main.cpp:160: error: no match for 'operator+=' in 'msg += reason' - -- The 'None of these words' field in the complex search does not work if - there are no other filled fields (it transforms into an ordinary - search). Workaround: enter very common term(s) in the 'any of these - words' field. - -- Indexing cannot currently be conveniently and cleanly stopped when it's - started. You can kill the process, and keyboard interrupt might work, but - this may leave the database in a bad state. This is fixed in the upcoming - release, there is no current workaround. - -1.2.2 -- The preview window is supposed to scroll after loading the document so - that the first search term is visible. This does not work in many cases. -- The result list title is not shown for sorted lists - -Notes on older versions: -- Trouble compiling on some linux systems (Gentoo and Slackware?). There - existed a quite common issue where the Recoll link will fail trying to - use a libstdc++.la file. This was due to a problem with the xapian-config - program. A workaround has been included in the configure script for - recoll 1.2.2, and the problem should not occur any more. - -- Case-insensitive search should now work in most cases (used to not work - except for accented ascii). - -- All directories and files with names beginning with a dot were ignored - by the skippedNames directive in the default recoll.conf file from - older versions (no indexation of mozilla or thunderbird email !). An - upgrade will not fix this (it will not modify an existing - configuration). You need to edit recoll.conf by hand and remove the .* - from skippedNames. +
- Case-insensitive search should now work in most cases + (used to not work except for accented ascii). +
- All directories and files with names beginning with a dot were ignored + by the skippedNames directive in the default recoll.conf file from + older versions (no indexation of mozilla or thunderbird email !). An + upgrade will not fix this (it will not modify an existing + configuration). You need to edit recoll.conf by hand and remove the .* + from skippedNames. +
