No access to accounts after a kernel upgrade

[Geert Janssens]

On Sunday 17 October 2010, Alan wrote:
> Greetings: I'm not a Linux pro, so please bear with me.
> 
> I am running Debian Lenny, and GNUCash 2.2.6. Recently a kernel update took
> place to 2.6.32-bpo.5-486. Don't know why I allowed it, bad move, made pc
> slow as a snail, so I replaced the kernel back to 2.6.26-2-486 (what I had
> originally). Then I come to find that GNUCash is 'broken', not allowing me
> access to my accounts (savings and checking registers).
> 
> The first error I ran across was a message telling me the program couldn't
> obtain a lock on an .xac file - I'm the only user.
This message is normal after a GnuCash crash. It keeps some file-is-open state 
information for your data file. If GnuCash ends abnormally, it didn't have the 
opportunity to update this information. Upon the next run, GnuCash then thinks 
the file is still open. It is safe to click "open anyway" in that case as you 
did.

> Clicking the "open
> anyway" option proceeds to a message informing me of Scheduled Transactions
> (which I do have), where I'm then presented a main accounts screen... minus
> the tabs for my savings and checking registers. Clicking on any of the
>  named accounts, such as Assets or Expenses causes the program to halt
>  without any notifications why.
> 
> Like I said, I'm not a Linux pro, but I've close to 3 years worth of data
> entered into GNUCash, and while I have backups of all the data and logs, I
> have no access and am quite upset about it.
> 
> Any suggestions to point me in the right direction would be greatly
> appreciated. Thanks.
> Alan
> 
To see if the problem starts with GnuCash, you can start gnucash from the 
command line And let it crash again.

See if there are any messages printed on the command line. Also check the 
contents of the gnucash trace file (/tmp/gnucash.trace) after the crash.

Geert