GNU Cash installation issue

[Geert Janssens]

On woensdag 2 maart 2011, Leslie Radke wrote:
> Hi Geert,
> 
> See answers to output questions below.
> 
> Also today, strange thing was that GnuCash failed to open my account file
> on my laptop. My master accounting file is kept on our home desktop, but I
> have kept a copy on my laptop to refer to (or use at times if someone is
> busy working at the desktop when I want to do accounting). The GnuCash
> program has always worked without problem on my laptop. So I don't know
> what gives tonight. The last thing I did on that computer related to
> GnuCash was to run the test you asked me to run yesterday (gconftool-2.exe
> --all-dirs /apps) which gave the desired output. (I received your email at
> work and so just ran the test on my laptop to see what would happen.)
> Tonight the program opened with no file loaded. And when I navigated to
> it, it still wouldn't open. I'll reboot the computer in the morning and
> see if that solves the problem.
> 
Did it give an error message of some sort ? And what is the contents of the 
most recent trace file (which should be related to your most recent attempt to 
open the file).

<snip>
> > Try:
> > * start > run... > cmd.exe
> > * cd "C:\Program Files\GnuCash\bin"
> > * gconftool-2.exe --get-default-source
> > -> What does this output ?
> xml:merged:c:/Program Files (x86)/gnucash/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults
> > * gconftool-2.exe -a
> > /apps/gnucash/history
> > -> What does this output ?
> 
> file0 =
> file1 =
> file2 =
> file3 =
> file4 =
> file5 =
> file6 =
> file7 =
> file8 =
> file9 =
> maxfiles = 4
> 
> > * gconftool-2.exe --set --type string /apps/gnucash/history/file9
> > "Testvalue" * gconftool-2.exe --get /apps/gnucash/history/file9
> > -> What does this output ?
> 
I learned by now that the above output comes from the default values that 
gconf knows about. It's not actually reading your personal settings yet.

But the good thing is we can clearly say you don't have a network related 
issue. gconftool-2 can communicate with gconfd, so there's no reason to think 
gnucash can't.

> This one turned up a long error message. (Is there a way to cut and paste
> from DOS? Or write the output to a text file? I can't remember how to do
> that if there )is? But here's the message: Error setting value: No
> database available to save your configuration: Unable to store a value at
> key '/apps/gnucash/history/file9' as the configuration server has no
> writeable databases. There are some common causes of the problem: 1) Your
> configuration path file c:/Program Files (x86)/gnucash/etc/gconf/2/path
> doesn't contain any databases or wasn't found, 2) somehow we've mistaken
> created two ...
> 
You can use your right mouse button to pop up a context menu. In that context 
menu, select the "Mark" option. That will allow you to select a part of the 
console output you wish to save. Once you've selected that, you can use the 
context menu again to "Copy" the selection and paste it somewhere in a text 
file or e-mail. That's how it works on Windows XP at least.

> I'm going to assume we are on to something here, and that you know what the
> common causes to this are without me typing out the rest of the message.
> Let me know if you want to see the rest of the message.
> 
The error so far does suggest a write permission issue somehow. Could you 
attach this file to a reply:
c:/Program Files (x86)/gnucash/etc/gconf/2/path

Geert