Mac upgrade, "There was an error parsing the file ..."

David Reiser dbreiser at earthlink.net
Thu Jun 17 09:25:23 EDT 2010


On Jun 17, 2010, at 12:53 AM, David Dannemiller wrote:

> On Jun 14, 2010, at 8:46 AM, Derrick Hudson wrote:
>> 
>> "David Dannemiller" <DPDannemiller at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> I downloaded Ubuntu 6.10 Desktop, and installed it under Fusion.  GNUCash is not part of the default installation.  I tried to install it using both "Add/Remove..." and "Synaptic Package Manager" but was unsuccessful - messages like "Could not download all repository indexes."  Canonical no longer supports 6.10, so maybe they removed the repositories.
>>> 
>> 
>> The repositories for EOL releases are no longer on the primary mirrors.  Instead, change your /etc/apt/sources.list to use "old-releases.ubuntu.com" as the server.
>> 
>> -Derrick
> 
> 
> To review:  I'm starting with an old Mac running GC 1.8.11 (obtained through Fink).  I bought a new Mac and downloaded 2.2.9, but it would not read the old file format ("There was an error parsing the file ...").  One suggestion from the list was to pass the file through GC 2.0.x.  Ubuntu 6.10 was suggested as a way to access GC 2.0.x.
> 
> Derrick's suggestion on changing sources.list worked.  Ubuntu 6.10 has GC 2.0.1.  GC 2.0.1 successfully read the old file format.  I browsed accounts, saved the file, exited, and re-opened.  Everything looked promising.  I transferred the file to the new Mac, and successfully opened it with GC 2.2.9.  I browsed, saved, and exited.  I tried to re-open the file, but received the error message "There was an error parsing the file ..."

You probably have a corrupt scheduled transaction and have "Run when data file opened" under Since Last Run under Scheduled transactions preferences. Turn that off, open the data file again, and examine your scheduled transactions for obvious errors. There might be something listed in the gnucash.trace file that could guide you, too. You shouldn't have to recreate all your SX's, but you'll have to look for the one or two that are choking the new version.

> 
> I thought I might have done something wrong, so went back to my old Mac to start again, Mac-1.8.11_to_Ubuntu-2.0.1_to_Mac-2.2.9.  Same result - everything worked until I opened the file for the second time under 2.2.9 on the Mac.  One other observation - The original GC data file size on my old Mac is 9.5 Mb.  After conversion on Ubuntu it is 885 Kb - an order of magnitude smaller.  Does this make sense?

At some point the default saving scheme switched to using a compressed data file, so your case does make sense

> 
> To see if the problem might be caused by the Mac version of 2.2.9, I targeted GC 2.2.9 on Ubuntu 10.04 as the final destination.  In other words, Mac-1.8.11_to_Ubuntu-2.0.1_to_Ubuntu-2.2.9.  Same problem - everything worked until I opened the file for the second time under 2.2.9 on Ubuntu.
> 
> I'm stumped.
> 
> David Dannemiller
> 
> 
Dave
--
David Reiser
dbreiser at earthlink.net






More information about the gnucash-user mailing list