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Re: 160004 - Malformed representation header

Author cmpilato
Full name C. Michael Pilato
Date 2012-03-01 06:38:29 PST
Message On 03/01/2012 09:24 AM, Mark Phippard wrote:
>> If the dump file had been corrupted, this problem would have manifested
>> in a different sort of error. A "malformed representation header" is
>> an error in the structure of the *repository*, not of the dump stream.
>> Because I don't know how SvnEdge performs its backups and restores, I
>> can't explain what went wrong in this user's scenario. But I'm fairly
>> confident that any dump stream handling was not to blame.
>
> I was under the impression that the dump file came from another
> installation, and it sounds like the same dump file loaded fine when done
> entirely from command line. It was only when uploading it via browser
> that it failed to load.
>
> SVN Edge makes backups by running svnadmin dump and then zipping up the
> dump file. It loads repositories by running svnadmin load. If it
> receives a zip file, it unzips it first, otherwise it loads what it
> gets.
>
> I am thinking we should look into adding some code to check the mime-type
> of what we receive from the browser and rejecting it if the mime-type
> starts with text/* as this would be a sign that the browser could have
> mangled the content. That aside, we just write the bytes we receive to a
> file and then run it through svnadmin load.

The improvements you mention could be a good thing, but I still doubt that a
corrupted dump file was to blame for the error seen.

If it *was* to blame, then Subversion has a pretty serious lack of API layer
integrity checks. But honestly, I can't even fathom a way that this could
be possible. All dumpstream data is parsed and fed piecemeal into the FS
API. There are no notions of "representations", no node revision IDs, etc.
in the dump format -- those are all deeper FS concepts. The FS API itself
does not carry the "representation" concept.

--
C. Michael Pilato <XXXX@XXXX>
CollabNet <> www.collab.net <> Distributed Development On Demand
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160004 - Malformed representation header marcodm Marco De March 2012-02-29 01:16:37 PST
     Re: 160004 - Malformed representation header jeyanthan Jeyanthan I 2012-02-29 02:04:54 PST
         RE: Re: 160004 - Malformed representation header marcodm Marco De March 2012-02-29 02:29:17 PST
             RE: Re: 160004 - Malformed representation header marcodm Marco De March 2012-02-29 03:38:36 PST
                 Re: 160004 - Malformed representation header markphip Mark Phippard 2012-02-29 05:27:13 PST
                     Re: 160004 - Malformed representation header cmpilato C. Michael Pilato 2012-03-01 06:20:07 PST
                         Re: 160004 - Malformed representation header markphip Mark Phippard 2012-03-01 06:24:08 PST
                             Re: 160004 - Malformed representation header cmpilato C. Michael Pilato 2012-03-01 06:38:29 PST
     RE: 160004 - Malformed representation header marcodm Marco De March 2012-05-11 07:52:10 PDT
         Re: 160004 - Malformed representation header markphip Mark Phippard 2012-05-11 07:57:30 PDT
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