Clearing the cache creates spurious unread markers for empty rooms

[Biep]

My home server recently did a clean-up, with the result that some long unused rooms have zero events left. When I cleared my cache, all those rooms show up with an 'unread messages' marker - that I cannot get rid of. They also percolate to the top of the room list, pushing rooms with real unread messages down, and out of the letterbox.

[Biep]

The only way to get rid of the "unread messages" marker seems to be to post a message. Which is not always desirable, e.g. in emergency message rooms.

[germain-gg]

Could you maybe elaborate a bit more regarding that clean-up.
How was it performed? By whom?

[Biep]

The server admins did that - see this message and this message. Any technical questions are better asked to the poster of those messages, who is one of the two admins.
I hope that helps..

[Biep]

Red marks still percolate to the top:

But others stay below the spurious ones:

[bziemons]

Could you maybe elaborate a bit more regarding that clean-up. How was it performed? By whom?

Maybe I can answer this question, since I have the same Problem in Element Desktop (right now, Element version: 1.10.11, Olm version: 3.2.8) and I am my own server admin: I know the messages were deleted by Synapse through its retention policy.

[smoebody]

Is there a way to workaround this Problem? It is highly annoying and makes element unusable.

[bziemons]

Is there a way to workaround this Problem? It is highly annoying and makes element unusable.

I've been moving these conversations to low priority.. Works, but definitely not ideal.

[shoetten]

This also happens if the server has a message retention policy configured. If you clear the cache (or have to logout and login again for some reason) after the messages have been deleted on the server, you run into exactly this issue.
I know that message retention is still considered experimental, but many privacy focused homservers have it turned on already, resulting in this very annoying bug.

Feel free to ping me, if you need any more info than that, but it's fairly easy to reproduce.

[t3chguy]

@shoetten that's part of element-hq/element-meta#729 - given the client has no support for it, it won't be able to handle it's edge cases.

[smoebody]

I can report, that the markers have gone after upgrading to element 1.11.5 and synapse 1.67.0

[SimonBrandner]

I can report, that the markers have gone after upgrading to element 1.11.5 and synapse 1.67.0

Hmm, that sounds interesting - Synapse 1.67.0 removes support for unstable private read receipts, maybe that is related.

Can anyone still see this?

[bziemons]

just tested with Synapse 1.67.0 and Element version 1.11.5 - Sadly, I still see the issue.

[smoebody]

i also disabled the retention-feature. maybe thats why