Questions Regarding Backup and Stopping Gnucash

[Robert Heller]

At Sun, 22 Sep 2013 15:58:55 -0700 Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:

> 
> I run gnucash on a Debian laptop. I set up a cron job to copy the gnucash
> folder to an external NAS and my google drive as backups. So far everything
> is working correctly.
> 
> My questions:
> 
> * I understand that gnucash reads the entire data file into memory. When is
> the data written out again? My concern is if I forget to close gnucash and
> the backup script runs, have I lost the updates for that day? I don't mean
> lost as in gone, just they will not be in the backup for that day, but will
> be in the backup for the next day.

The data is written when you select the 'Save' button on the toolbar or the 
'Save' entry on the 'File' menu.  *Presumably* you do this after every major 
set of transactions?  If you don't, you really should.  Save often.  Always 
save often.  Don't wait until the end of the day to dave your data.  Save it 
now. 

> 
> * What would be a good way to shut down gnucash from my backup script so it
> saves all the data before the backup is run? I usually shutdown gnucash
> before I go to bed (the cron job runs at 3 am), but sometimes I forget. I
> am a little worried that killing the gnucash process may not be the best
> way to shut it down.

I would guess doing a 'killall gnucash' (or killall -9 gnucash') would be 
illadvised.  I would not worry overmuch about closing down gnucash, so long as 
your are diligent about using the Save button on the toolbar.  So long as you 
*save* the data, leaving gnucash running during the backup would be harmless, 
other then possibly backing up the lock file (which would make gnucash think 
it was still running if you were to restore the backup).

> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mark
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-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933 / heller at deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software        -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
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