#6269 NORM Never A: usb index must not be read/written (was: usb index backward compatibility)

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#6269: usb index must not be read/written
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  Reporter:  erikos     |       Owner:  tomeu         
      Type:  defect     |      Status:  reopened      
  Priority:  normal     |   Milestone:  Never Assigned
 Component:  datastore  |     Version:                
Resolution:             |    Keywords:                
  Verified:  0          |    Blocking:                
 Blockedby:             |  
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Comment(by AlbertCahalan):

 It's not good enough to automatically delete crap files when Xapian fails
 to understand the version. The whole concept is broken:

 The crap files will not be maintained by normal computers. The crap files
 are thus unusable, and so you must delete them every time anyway. The
 moment you read a crap file, you have made a grave error.

 You can not write a crap file to media that is read-only or full.

 It is pure insanity to write crap files for a 1 TB device; there could be
 many millions of legit files on the device. Pardon me for guessing that
 the Journal will get hit by the OOM killer in this case.

 You must assume that people will try to create a virus by maliciously
 corrupting the crap files; the less data you parse the better.

 BTW, for similar reasons it is also dangerous to use MIME types.

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Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6269#comment:5>
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