GnuCash 2.3.1 fails silently to open gnucash database

Robert Fleming fleminra at gmail.com
Tue Apr 20 14:31:33 EDT 2010


Excellent, it's working again.  Thank you for the detailed explanation.  It
sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Robert

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 12:49 AM, Geert Janssens
<janssens-geert at telenet.be>wrote:

> On Tuesday 20 April 2010, Robert Fleming wrote:
> > > > I seem to be having the same problem as described here
> > > > <
> > > > http://web.archiveorange.com/archive/v/4bd7mgyyFWlNWzq5FwB0>
> > > > and <
> > > > http://svn.gnucash.org/logs/2007/01/2007-01-28.html>.
> > > >
> > > > When I tell GnuCash to open my PostgreSQL database, I can
> > > > see that it's
> > > > working to fetch the data, but then the main GnuCash window
> > > > comes up empty,
> > > > with only the "Save" and "Close" buttons on the toolbar, a
> > > > blank space below
> > > > it, BUT with the correct "URL" of my database appearing in
> > > > the title bar.
> > > >
> > > > This is what I see in my /tmp/gnucash.trace:
> > > > * 12:08:06  WARN <gnc.gui> error reading group
> > > > Window 1 key PageCount: Key
> > > > file does not have group 'Window 1'
> > > >
> > > > I've attached the full gnucash.trace form when I run
> > > > GnuCash with "--debug".
> > > >
> > > > Nothing gets printed on the console from which GnuCash was
> > > > started.
> > > >
> > > > I've tried renaming my "~/.gnucash" directory so that
> > > > GnuCash would create a
> > > > new one, but it didn't help.
> > > >
> This is a bug in GnuCash. It has been in the development tree for quite
> some
> time, but it only surfaced recently.
>
> The bug gets triggered for books stored in a true database, when updating
> GnuCash from pre-2.3.11 to 2.3.11.
>
> Here's why:
> - GnuCash saves a state file for each book in ~/.gnucash/books (or
> equivalent
> on other platforms). This file contains information on which windows/tabs
> were
> open and window sizes.
> - The name of each state file is based on the data storage. For file backed
> books, the state file simply uses the book's file name. For db backed books
> the state file uses the database parameters to create a file name.
> - As of 2.3.11, the algorithm for the state file's filename in case of db
> backed books changed for security reasons (remove the plain text password
> from
> the name)
> - Because of this, the first time an existing db is opened again with
> 2.3.11,
> no state file is found.
> - In such case, GnuCash should normally recreate the default state, which
> is
> one window with the accounts page in it.
> - And that last part is exactly what had a bug (see
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=613963)
>
> That bug has been fixed and the upcoming 2.3.12 release will properly show
> a
> default state again.
>
> As seen in the bug report, there is an easy workaround in 2.3.11: when it
> opens in an empty window, you can display the accounts page with
> View -> New Accounts Page
>
> Geert
>


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