Can't update preferences and can't get rid of Welcome dialog in Gnucash 2.4.7 (OS X 2.6.8)

[David T.]

Peter--

I am not the maintainer, but just another OS X user like you. I see that you put Gnucash in /apps, rather than /Applications. First off, do you have the right permssions for /apps? Second, have you tried doing a simple default installation into /Applications?

Cheers,
David



----- Original Message -----
From: prl <prl at ozemail.com.au>
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Cc: 
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2011 8:38 PM
Subject: Can't update preferences and can't get rid of Welcome dialog in Gnucash 2.4.7 (OS X 2.6.8)

I'm having a problem that seems to be the same as that described by Leslie Radke (rlradke5 at att.net) on 25 Feb in gnucash-user, Subject: GNU Cash installation issue, except that he describes the problem in Gnucash 2.4.0 on Windows, while I'm seeing what looks to be the same thing in 2.4.7 on OS X 10.6.8.

The problem is that changes in Preferences don't "stick" across runs of Gnucash, and every time I start Gnucash I get the Welcome dialog, even though I've both imported a QIF from Quicken for Mac 2005, and set up an empty set of accounts from the Welcome dialog.

As was suggested in the replies to Ron (Ron in the signature, Leslie in the From line), it appears to be a problem with writing to the GConf settings database, and this appears to be confirmed from console messages from Gnucash when I run it:
> 31/07/11 13:01:52    [0x0-0x1b01b].org.gnucash.Gnucash[965]    Failed to save key /apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/current_tip: No database available to save your configuration: Unable to store a value at key '/apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/current_tip', as the configuration server has no writable databases. There are some common causes of this problem: 1) your configuration path file /Library/Gnucash-2.4/etc/gconf/2/path doesn't contain any databases or wasn't found 2) somehow we mistakenly created two gconfd processes 3) your operating system is misconfigured so NFS file locking doesn't work in your home directory or 4) your NFS client machine crashed and didn't properly notify the server on reboot that file locks should be dropped. If you have two gconfd processes (or had two at the time the second was launched), logging out, killing all copies of gconfd, and logging back in may help. If you have stale locks, remove ~/.gconf*/*lock.
 Perhaps the problem is that you attempted to use GConf from two machines at once, and ORBit still has its default configuration that prevents remote CORBA connections - put "ORBIIOPIPv4=1" in /etc/orbitrc. As always, check the user.* syslog for details on problems gconfd encountered. There can only be one gconfd per home directory, and it must own a lockfile in ~/.gconfd and also lockfiles in individual storage locations such as ~/.gconf
There were several similar error messages for different keys (the explanation part was always the same, so I've trimmed it):
> Failed to save key /apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/show_at_startup: No database available to save your configuration: Unable to store a value at key '/apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/show_at_startup', as the configuration server has no writable databases. ...
> Failed to save key /apps/gnucash/dialogs/new_user/first_startup: No database available to save your configuration: Unable to store a value at key '/apps/gnucash/dialogs/new_user/first_startup', as the configuration server has no writable databases. ...
> Failed to save key /apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/window_geometry: No database available to save your configuration:Unable to store a value at key '/apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/window_geometry', as the configuration server has no writable databases. ...
> Failed to save key /apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/window_position: No database available to save your configuration: Unable to store a value at key '/apps/gnucash/dialogs/tip_of_the_day/window_position', as the configuration server has no writable databases. ...
When I looked in /Applications/Gnucash/Contents/Resources/etc/gconf/2/path, the only writable config source was:
# Give users a default storage location, ~/.gconf
xml:readwrite:$(HOME)/.gconf

The installation/first startup process hadn't created ~/.gconf, though it had created several of the other directories named in one of the replies to Ron. I see .aqbanking (but not .banking), .gconfd, .gnome2, .gnome2_private, and I have ~/Library/Application\ Support/Gnucash (but not .gnucash, but I understand that that is a difference that is expected on OS X Gnucash).

Unfortunately, the obvious thing to try, creating a ~/.gconf directory (with permissions 700, the same as .gconfd) made no difference, and rebooting and logging in again after making the directory also made no difference.

The GConf daemon runs whenever Gnucash is running:
Cambyses:~ prl$ ps ajxww | egrep -i 'ppid|gc'
USER       PID  PPID  PGID   SESS JOBC STAT   TT       TIME COMMAND
prl       1087     1  1085 92b7888    0 S      ??    0:00.07 /Library/Gnucash-2.4/libexec/gconfd-2
prl       1201  1035  1200 92b7c30    2 R+   s000    0:00.00 egrep -i ppid|gc
Cambyses:~ prl$
The UID displayed is the effective UID, according to the man page.

Any ideas, anyone? What else should I try? Where else should I look for more information about why the gconf settings can't be written? Gnucash is pretty inconvenient to use like this!

Peter

-- 
Peter Lamb

Canberra, ACT

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