gnucash 2.0.5 fails silently to open gnucash file

[Hendrik Boom]

I have two gnucash files -- on for home finances, won for business. 
Yeasterday everything was fine.  Today, it will open the work file
properly, but not the home file.  When I say 
   gnucash /farhome/accounts/05/home
it puts up its welcome graphic, starts up normally, but with a minimal
window, and even if I enlarge it, there are no accounts to be seen.
It goes through the motions of reading the file, but shows no accounts.

The window has the bar saying file edit view actions business reports ...
and the line below it with only icons for save and close (close is greyed
out) and the rest of the window is a blank grey.  I get no error messages
or dialog that I can see.

The command
   gnucash /farhome/accounts/05/work
works fine.

  Advice would be welcome.

  Is this likely to be a known problem with a known workaround?

  I'm using gnucash 2.0.5 as distributed with Debian etch.  I've been using
various gnucash for many years now and hope to continue.

  Is the file likely to be corrupt?  Is there a way of testing it?  (It
looks like a proper  XML file when I zcat it through less)  lIs there a
secret debugging trace flag that could reveal the trouble?  Should I give
up and try a backup file and discard the work I did yesterday?  (Being
paranoid about computers, I still have backup gnucash files dating back
for months)

As I said, advice would be welcome.

-- hendrik