Messages sent while deauthenticated are not resynced

[hseg]

Description:

Accidentally unlinked my nchat instance, so I relinked it using nchat --setup -d OLD_PROFILE_DIR. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have picked up the messages that were sent in the meantime, despite the whatsmeow logs showing sync attempts succeeding? Moreover, nchat didn't abort when it noticed it was deauthenticated, it just opened up and behaved as if the network was down (I only noticed the warning messages after I closed it). The lack of an option to force manual resync means my only solution was to nuke the old profile and restart.

How to reproduce it:

Unlink your nchat instance from whatsapp. Wait for a few more messages to arrive. Then nchat --setup, passing -d OLD_PROFILE_DIR if you were previously using it. The new messages don't show up.

Environment:

• Version: 5.2.11.r6 (dbfcc3d)
• OS / distro: Arch Linux (Linux 6.11.5-arch1-1)

[d99kris]

Thanks for reporting, I will look into this. There is not much "re-sync" functionality implemented at this point unfortunately. But a fresh setup should pick up at least messages from the past year..

[hseg]

Encountered again -- nchat was offline for ~a week, and messages I forwarded to a group containing only myself (used for todo notes) failed to sync. New messages do sync, though.
A resync functionality would be strongly welcome.

[d99kris]

For this last encounter of the bug, can I confirm whether you needed to re-authenticate after the offline period? (i.e. scan QR code and/or run --setup)

Do you know if it only affects outgoing messages (= you are the sender) or also incoming messages?

Are they regular text messages or with media (audio/video/photo/voice)?

[hseg]

For this last encounter of the bug, can I confirm whether you needed to re-authenticate after the offline period? (i.e. scan QR code and/or run *--setup*)

Yes, I needed to rescan.

Do you know if it only affects outgoing messages (= you are the sender) or also incoming messages?

I've only noticed this with self-to-self messages. Am afk, will check other chats when I'm back later today, but I might have a lot more noise there - not sure I'll be able to give good data.

Are they regular text messages or with media (audio/video/photo/voice)?

These are text messages, with URLs so with a URL preview. Will try to see if media messages are similarly impacted.

[d99kris]

Thanks - I think this is sufficient information for me to try reproduce it again.

Meanwhile, should it happen again please help obtain the log file ~/.config/nchat/log.txt and share it. You may redact own phone number and/or email it to d99kris at gmail dot com if you don't wish to share it here.

[hseg]

OK, attempting to use the old profile is showing very incomplete databases, even after giving it an hour to load. Not sure how to get more data from it - do you still want (anonymized) logs? Moving forward, I'll just wait for the new profile to finish syncing and use that.

[hseg]

Noticed my newly set-up profile hasn't synced all messages -- I have a ~1mo gap in one of my chats. I had put my computer to sleep and the terminal did crash during one of the syncing windows, but surely nchat should catch that it was mid-sync?
Alternatively, ATP it might be worth just writing a parser for the Whatsapp chat exports and giving a way to import the backlog from there.