GNUcash crashes on save - losing all changes

[John Zoetebier]

On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 10:29:55 +0100, Vincent V <vincentv at dsl.pipex.com> 
wrote:

> Excuse the dramatic title (although it is true) but someone else had a 
> similar problem recently so I thought it would attract their attention.
>
> The good news is that the problem is easily reproducible so tracking down 
> the bug should be possible. I discovered it by accident when moving my 
> company accounts files from my home PC to my new office PC, I did this by 
> burning them onto CD and copying them from that. Unfortunately I did it 
> as root and forgot to select 'Preserve permissions' in K3B so the copied 
> files were all owned by root but had global read permissions. I am 
> running Mandrake 9.1, but I don't think this has anything to do with the 
> bug.
>
> To reproduce the bug:
> Make the directory which contains the accounts file and the files within 
> it read-only
> Start GNUcash from the menu and open the file (if it automatically opens 
> the file at start up the result is the same)
>
> You get the message:
> GNUcash could not obtain the lock
> Select 'Open Anyway

This happens if:
- the folder is not writable
- there is already a lock open, because someone else has the lock

This is a message you should take seriously.
Ignoring error messages can have serious consequences.

> Made some changes - actually you don't need to make any changes to get 
> the bug
> Save the file, you get the message:
> Error: An error occurred while processing  /path/filename
> Select OK then Cancel on the File Save dialogue that appears
> Save again (originally I did Save As), you get the message:
> Application "/usr/bin/guile-1.41" (process 16239) has crashed due to a 
> fatal error. (Segmentation fault)
> Select Close
>
> And that's it, GNUcash terminates without saving your changes

Of course, your changes are not saves due to folder and file permissions.
This has nothing to do with GnuCash issue.
You could argue that GnuCash should check permissions on the folder first.
But in that case I can think of an other dozen things that can be checked 
upon startup.
I feel, the first mistake was to ignore a valid error message, that you 
should have checked in the first place.
Maybe someone was hacking your system and entering transactions on your new 
PC :)

-- 
John Zoetebier
Web site: http://www.transparent.co.nz