Hi Husky developers,

I've discovered a bug in HPT where packets with corrupted/empty message date fields are not properly rejected and renamed to .bad as they should be.

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION:
===================
When processing packets, HPT reads the 20-byte datetime field from each
message header (pktread.c:771) and calls parse_ftsc_date() to parse it
(line 777). However, the return value from parse_ftsc_date() is ignored.

The parse_ftsc_date() function returns flag_t values indicating:
- FTSC_BROKEN (2) - field cannot be parsed
- FTSC_FLAWY (1) - field has correctable errors
- FTSC_TS_BROKEN (128) - timestamp broken but date OK

Currently, even when parse_ftsc_date() returns FTSC_BROKEN, the badmsg
counter is not incremented, so the packet is not renamed to .bad and
continues to be processed.

REAL-WORLD IMPACT:
==================
I encountered a packet in the wild (from 2:341/66) that contains:
- Message 3: Empty date field (0 bytes)
- Message 4: Invalid date field (1 byte: '0')

The bad packet can be obtained at: https://vk3heg.net/badpkt.zip

HPT processed this packet instead of rejecting it.

PROPOSED FIX:
=============
After calling parse_ftsc_date(), check if the FTSC_BROKEN flag is set and increment badmsg accordingly. This ensures corrupted packets are properly renamed to .bad.

Patch attached below. Please review and consider applying to the codebase.

--- hpt/src/pktread.c.orig 2025-10-09 10:00:00.000000000 +1100
+++ hpt/src/pktread.c 2025-10-09 10:05:00.000000000 +1100
@@ -734,6 +734,7 @@
{
s_message * msg;
size_t len;
+ flag_t date_flags;
int badmsg = 0;
struct tm tm;
long unread;
@@ -774,7 +775,16 @@
}

msg->datetime[20] = 0; /* ensure it's null-terminated */
- parse_ftsc_date(&tm, (char *)msg->datetime);
+ date_flags = parse_ftsc_date(&tm, (char *)msg->datetime);
+
+ /* Check if the date field is broken and cannot be parsed */
+ if(date_flags & FTSC_BROKEN)
+ {
+ w_log(LL_ERR,
+ "wrong msg header: datetime field is broken ('%s')",
+ msg->datetime);
+ badmsg++;
+ }

/* val: make_ftsc_date((char*)msg->datetime, &tm); */
if(globalBuffer == NULL)

TESTING:
========
With this patch applied, packets with broken date fields will be properly rejected and renamed to .bad instead of being processed.

Be