Package: gnucash Version: 1.8.9-4 Severity: grave I'm sitting here watching a (likely futile) attempt to restore two months' worth of lost information for a user. While it's likely that nothing can get the data back, I finally think I figured out what happened and how the data was lost. I think the sequence of events is quite likely to occur in the hands of a user. (in fact, I myself would probably only have avoided it by accident)
Here's the deal: when you save a gnucash file, it creates a backup file that's indexed by the date on which it was saved. This backup is very useful in the event that you have a program crash or make a serious blunder with the interface. In early November, the user in question did just this: she loaded a backup of her "Accounts" file due to some sort of problem with the program. However, this resulted in the *backup* file being used as the new default save file and as gnucash's default file to load on startup. "Accounts" remained frozen in a state from about November 3. All was well until she asked me for help with importing some old Quicken data, earlier today. After importing the data into a separate file, I (not knowing that she was using the backup file) innocently opened the file "Accounts". Apparently, either this or saving the file Accounts (not sure which) triggered GNUCash's "helpful" backup-purger, which immediately wiped out both her main accounts file and all of her recent backups. We were left only with Accounts (the November 3rd edition, remember); two months' worth of data entry went down the drain without my knowing. Now, I understand why this functionality might be useful, but it seems far too easy to destroy data with it at the moment. I suggest that, at the very least, several more sanity checks be incorporated. For instance, only delete a file if: (A) there are at least X newer backups *by mtime* of the main file, AND (B) the file in question is at least Y days old *by mtime*, AND (C) the current sanity checks (that it looks like a GNUcash backup file with timestamp >Y days ago) apply, where the timestamp takes the LAST date in the filename when multiple dates are available. (A) makes sure that some backups are always available if you screw up; (B) makes sure that GNUcash isn't mislead by confusing filenames (such as Accounts.200411060911.xac.200501201015.xac). At the very least, the modification of (C) should be made so that the ill effects of filenames like the one above are limited. Without some tightening of the criteria, I think the backup-purging should be disabled by default, as it's way too easy to unexpectedly lose data right now. Daniel -- System Information: Debian Release: 3.1 APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.9-2-686 Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US) Versions of packages gnucash depends on: ii bonobo 1.0.22-2.2 The GNOME Bonobo System. ii gdk-imlib1 1.9.14-16.2 imaging library for use with gtk ( ii gnucash-common 1.8.9-4 A personal finance tracking progra ii guile-1.6-libs 1.6.7-1 Main Guile libraries ii guile-1.6-slib 1.6.7-1 Guile SLIB support ii libart2 1.4.2-19 The GNOME canvas widget - runtime ii libaudiofile0 0.2.6-5 Open-source version of SGI's audio ii libbonobo2 1.0.22-2.2 The GNOME Bonobo library. ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-20 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an ii libdate-manip-perl 5.42a-2 a perl library for manipulating da ii libdb3 3.2.9-20 Berkeley v3 Database Libraries [ru ii libesd0 0.2.35-2 Enlightened Sound Daemon - Shared ii libfinance-quote-perl 1.08-1 Perl module for retrieving stock q ii libfreetype6 2.1.7-2.3 FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib ii libgal23 0.24-1.4 G App Libs (run time library) ii libgdk-pixbuf-gnome2 0.22.0-7 The GNOME1 Canvas pixbuf library ii libgdk-pixbuf2 0.22.0-7 The GdkPixBuf image library, gtk+ ii libghttp1 1.0.9-15 original GNOME HTTP client library ii libglade-gnome0 1:0.17-3 Library to load .glade files at ru ii libglade0 1:0.17-3 Library to load .glade files at ru ii libglib1.2 1.2.10-9 The GLib library of C routines ii libgnome32 1.4.2-19 The GNOME libraries ii libgnomeprint15 0.37-5 The GNOME Print architecture - run ii libgnomesupport0 1.4.2-19 The GNOME libraries (Support libra ii libgnomeui32 1.4.2-19 The GNOME libraries (User Interfac ii libgtk1.2 1.2.10-17 The GIMP Toolkit set of widgets fo ii libgtkhtml20 1.0.4-6.2 HTML rendering/editing library - r ii libguile-ltdl-1 1.6.7-1 Guile's patched version of libtool ii libguppi16 0.40.3-11 GNOME graph and plot component ii libgwrapguile1 1.3.4-12 g-wrap: Tool for exporting C libra ii libice6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-10 Inter-Client Exchange library ii libltdl3 1.5.6-3 A system independent dlopen wrappe ii liboaf0 0.6.10-3 The GNOME Object Activation Framew ii libofx0c102 1:0.6.6-3 library to support Open Financial ii liborbit0 0.5.17-9 Libraries for ORBit - a CORBA ORB ii libpopt0 1.7-5 lib for parsing cmdline parameters ii libqthreads-12 1.6.7-1 QuickThreads library for Guile ii libsm6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-10 X Window System Session Management ii libstdc++5 1:3.3.5-6 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3 ii libx11-6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-10 X Window System protocol client li ii libxext6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-10 X Window System miscellaneous exte ii libxi6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-10 X Window System Input extension li ii libxml1 1:1.8.17-10 GNOME XML library ii libzvt2 1.4.2-19 The GNOME zvt (zterm) widget ii oaf 0.6.10-3 The GNOME Object Activation Framew ii slib 3a1-4.2 Portable Scheme library ii xlibs 4.3.0.dfsg.1-10 X Keyboard Extension (XKB) configu ii zlib1g 1:1.2.2-4 compression library - runtime -- no debconf information -- /----------------- Daniel Burrows <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -----------------\ | I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not sure. | \--------------------- A duck! -- http://www.python.org --------------------/
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