Vanishing transactions and log file

Ross Boylan RossBoylan at stanfordalumni.org
Fri Mar 28 23:58:57 EDT 2008


I believe I've located the .log file that deletes (or records the
deletion of) the transactions that disappeared.  I am not sure it had
anything to do with moving files between two systems, as the date
precedes my travels (though maybe not getting ready for travels).

I have some questions toward the bottom, but first some background:

The log show repeated pairs of transactions, first a bunch of splits on
a line starting with a B, then, in the next set (as marked by =====START
and ====END), the same splits (by eye) except that the line starts with
D.  I'm guessing D is delete--is that right?  Both sets have identical
time_now's.

The disappearances fall into 2 groups,  stock sales (original
transactions present for months), and "regular" transactions I was
trying to enter when the log was made.

I'm pretty sure I manually deleted and reentered the "regular"
transactions a few times while trying to get them to come out right.  I
did think there were in the register when I finished.

It's possible I fiddled with the stocks manually, though I don't recall
doing so.  I  certainly wouldn't have deleted the sales intentionally.

3 out of 5 pre-existing stock sale ransactions were deleted.  Every one
that was deleted had a split line that was blank except for an account
of "Imbalance-USD" or "Orphan-USD".  The 2 transactions that were
preserved did not have such a line.

Some of the stock transactions are messed up: a dollar amount, rather
than a share amount, affects the balance in the stock account.  However,
this doesn't distinguish the transactions that were deleted from those
that weren't.


Practical Questions:
1. Is there a guide to the format of the .log files somewhere?
2. Is there some way I could cut out pieces of them (e.g., the lines
starting with B), put them in a file, and replay them to get them back?

Less Practical Questions:
3. Can anyone think of any way the stock transactions would be deleted
without my manual intervention?

4. Why is gnucash constantly retitling my splits, moving them around
vertically, and creating new splits?  I'm sure I had this problem with
the stock sales, and it may have been the same issue with the regular
transactions that misbehaved.  I suspect two problems.  First, with
autosplit, if you enter 2 splits that use the same account as the
register window you are in, the interface moves these around so that
they appear visually as 2 separate transactions.  Second, the register
seems to insist that certain accounts appear as the first or last split.

I'm now on 2.2.4; I think it was 2.2.3 at the time of the
disappearances.

Thanks.
Ross


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