Need to recover from system crash

[Michael J. O'Donnell]

This description is regrettably long and tangled, but I think the
complexity is essential and irreducible. There appears to be a problem
installing gnucash with the latest Ubuntu Karmic Koala package, which
may be connected to the particular construction of that package (i.e., a
Gnucash issue) or may be a very general apt-get/dpkg problem. I think
that it needs to be documented for whomever eventually is able to deal
with it.

Excerpt from Geert Janssens advice:

> This warning message is not about problems with ~/.gconf, but with 
> /etc/gconf/.
>
> /etc/gconf contains xml schema files that are put there during the GnuCash 
> installation. They are required for GnuCash to run properly.
>
> I suspect that your hd crash corrupted /etc/gconf or some files therein.
>
> If I were you, I'd uninstall gnucash and reinstall it. That's probably the 
> easiest way to get the required schema files back.
Thanks for the tip. Alas, I did a complete purge of gnucash  and
gnucash-common with synaptic with no effect. I had already done a
"reinstall", but I thought that the complete purge might help.

Package/update management has complained about gnucash for many weeks
now, but I understood that to be a problem connected to the treatment of
~/gnucash.path, which will eventually be corrected in the package
archive, and which leads only to an annoyance in the startup, but does
not prevent gnucash from running.

Things have gotten sufficiently complicated that I'm not totally sure of
describing the sequence exactly correctly. But, I think I can capture
the major symptoms.

Here's the message that I got repeatedly over many weeks with every
automated update:
> E: gnucash: subprocess installed post-installation script returned
> error exit status 1
Since gnucash was working fine all the time (giving me a bogus warning
about ~/.gnucash.path, which I ignored), I supposed that this was some
transient packaging problem that would work out after a while (I've had
similar experience with other packages in the past).

Since synaptic never showed any sign of downloading a new copy of the
gnucash package, and I was pretty sure I had cleared the cache, I
started issuing apt-get comma nds to see the error output. Sure enough,
the purge was failing:

> odonnell at Tumbleweed:~$  sudo apt-get purge gnucash gnucash-common
... [stuff left out that appears to have nothing to do with gnucash in
particular] ...
> Removing gnucash ...
> /usr/share/gconf/schemas/apps_gnucash_general.schemas:2416: parser
> error : Input is not proper UTF-8, indicate encoding !
> Bytes: 0xE1 0xBB 0x6E 0x67
> � cái có màu sắc theo sắc thái hệ thống. Cũng có thể ghi đè đ
>                                                                               
> ^
> dpkg: error processing gnucash (--purge):
>  subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  gnucash
I found that I could remove apps_gnucash_general.schemas manually, then
the purge appeared to succeed (and cleared
/usr/share/gconf/schemas/*gnucash*). But, the postinstall script is
failing with the same message as the attempt to start up gnucash after
installation (although it restores the files in
/usr/share/gconf/schemas, and the executable):
> odonnell at Tumbleweed:~$ sudo apt-get install gnucash gnucash-common
... [stuff left out that appears to have nothing to do with gnucash] ...
> Setting up gnucash-common (2.2.9-0ubuntu4) ...
> Setting up gnucash (2.2.9-0ubuntu4) ...
> ERROR: In procedure append:
> ERROR: Wrong type argument in position 1 (expecting NULLP):
I have iterated purge/install several times. The error in purging does
not recur, but the error in install does. When I start up gnucash from a
terminal window, I get the same error messages on error out, but I now
see some window pop up and disappear before I can read it, and no clear
complaint about ~/.gnucash.path. When I list my home directory,
~/.gnucash.path has disappeared.

When I restore ~/.gnucash.path, there is no change in behavior. It does
not disappear again.

Cheers,

Mike O'Donnell

Geert Janssens wrote:
> On Wednesday 7 April 2010, Michael J. O'Donnell wrote:
>   
>> My Lenovo ThinkPad T61, running Ubuntu Karmic Koala
>>
>>     
>>> odonnell at Tumbleweed:~$ cat /proc/version
>>> Linux version 2.6.31-9-rt (buildd at yellow) (gcc version 4.4.1 (Ubuntu
>>> 4.4.1-4ubuntu8) ) #152-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT RT Thu Oct 15 13:22:24 UTC 2009
>>>       
>> crashed, probably due to overheating. There was some file system damage,
>> which I repaired with a manual fsck. It did not appear to be serious. I
>> don't understand the details of repair with fsck, and I accept proposals
>> thoughtlessly, but I have recovered from larger looking problems in the
>> past (lots more proposed changes) with no permanent loss of data, and
>> this one appeared quite slight.
>>
>> Now, when I attempt to run gnucash, it fails:
>>     
>>> odonnell at Tumbleweed:~$ gnucash --debug --extra --nofile
>>> gnc.bin-Message: main: binreloc relocation support was disabled at
>>> configure time.
>>>
>>> ERROR: In procedure append:
>>> ERROR: Wrong type argument in position 1 (expecting NULLP):
>>>       
>> Before the first line ("gnc.bin-Message: ..."), I get the popup window
>> complaining that Gnucash "Cannot find default values", which I have been
>> seeing for some time, and I have made sure that ~/.gconf.path is
>> correct, so I just select "Skip":
>>     
>
> This warning message is not about problems with ~/.gconf, but with 
> /etc/gconf/.
>
> /etc/gconf contains xml schema files that are put there during the GnuCash 
> installation. They are required for GnuCash to run properly.
>
> I suspect that your hd crash corrupted /etc/gconf or some files therein.
>
> If I were you, I'd uninstall gnucash and reinstall it. That's probably the 
> easiest way to get the required schema files back.
>
> Geert
>
>