gnucash records badly messed up

[Ross Boylan]

On Mon, 2008-03-24 at 13:07 +0900, Ian Lewis wrote:
> Ross,
> 
> 2008/3/24, Ross Boylan <RossBoylan at stanfordalumni.org>:
>         HELP
>         I would appreciate any help in restoring things to sanity, or
>         in
>         understanding what is going on.  In particular, I don't really
>         understand what role the xac, log, LCK and LNK files play.  I
>         have
>         backups, but I'm not sure what files I should restore and
>         which to
>         delete.
> 
> The xac files are the gnucash backup files. They are in the same
> format as your gnucash file.
> The log files are written out as your work and from what I gather are
> mainly used for recovering work after a crash (using File->Import).
> I'm not familiar with the lck or lnk files.
Thanks.

There's a good discussion of the files in the "Tutorial and Concepts
Guide" section 2.8 "Backing up and Recovering Data".  I should have
RTFM.  Or the web:
http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_What_are_all_these_.xac_and_.log_files_filling_up_my_directory.3F

It sounds as if the log files can be used to restore lost transactions,
so perhaps if I can find the write logs, or create them, that would be a
safe way to recover.

> 
> 
>         I have work that I did after the last point I know things were
>         good, so
>         simply turning back the clock is not a full solution.  Also,
>         my strategy
>         while I was traveling was to backup on my home computer after
>         mirroring
>         to it (in the funky way described above) from the laptop on
>         which I was
>         working.
> 
> The only thing I could suggest is that you take better care with your
> financial data and not put yourself in a situation where you have to
> merge files. Maybe put it on a flash drive and use portable gnucash?
> http://gnucashportable.sourceforge.net/
> 
> 
> Ian
I thought I was doing something fairly safe, since I wasn't trying to
use the program simultaneously in 2 places.  My laptop and home computer
even have the same file layout.  However, I didn't count on the copying
problems.  I think they mostly concerned the LCK and LNK files, which
are just locking flags according to the docs.  However, the problems
might have caused other operations to abort.

It's also odd that the missing transactions were entered significantly
before I traveled.

Finally, my laptop is still running v 2.2.3 and it also shows the same
problems.  So the 2.2.3->2.2.4 upgrade probably doesn't have anything to
do with the problems.