error message 'no compatible backend was found for file...'

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Tue Jan 22 09:24:42 EST 2013


Hi,

prihans <prihans at me.com> writes:

> My notebook crashed when I was working on my Gnucash. I did save the last
> inputs just before the crash. After re-starting my notebook, it seems that
> the file somehow got damaged, as the program gives following error:  'no
> compatible back-end was fund for file .........'
>
> I tried to open this gnucash file in another computer that has Gnucash
> installed, which failed as well, giving the same error message.
>
> I tried to restore an earlier version of the same file, from the day before
> (via file properties - earlier versions) and no success.
>
> The program does open other (older) Gnucash files that were saved under
> another name.
>
> Is there a way to restore the damaged file? It contains a lot of important
> new information that will cost me weeks to recover...

I'm sorry you had a system crash.  One main thing you didn't say was
what OS/Distro you are running.

You should look at the file in question.  What's the size of the file?
If the system crashed at an inopportune time it's possible that the file
got zeroed out.  If you're using the XML backend (which is the default)
then GnuCash will generate backup files with every 'save', so you can
backup to your previous 'save' by looking for the latest file that's
named "foo.YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.gnucash" in the same location as your main
data file, "foo".  (I.e., replace "foo" with the name of your data
file).

If you find that your data file is of zero length then you can just copy
the latest backup .gnucash file over the main data file and restart
gnucash.  Then it should load the recovered backup data.

Hope this helps.

If you are not using the XML backend then please let us know because
then you might have bigger issues.

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-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available


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