--add-price-quotes corrupted data file

[David Carlson]

On 4/21/2014 11:58 PM, KevinK wrote:
> GnuCash 2.4.10 on Ubuntu 12.04
> I've been using GnuCash since December 2004 and I have a tendency to keep
> all my data unless there is some pressing need to purge.
>
> When I tried to open GnuCash today, it told me there was a lock.  Being
> single user, I bypassed that and then GnuCash went into a 100% CPU loop on
> the loading data splash screen.  The splash screen did not update at all and
> even waiting 15 to 20 minutes did not change anything.  I killed the process
> and tried several things, all with the same result.  I finally recovered by
> deleting the gnudata file and renaming the immediate prior backup.
>
> I was able to determine the problem was caused by the --add-price-quotes
> function.  I use a cron job to run "gnucash --add-price-quotes" every
> weekday at a set time (many ticker symbols, all collecting from Yahoo).  The
> bad gnudata file along with the lock file were timestamped at the daily
> collection time on April 16th.  The backup file I recovered from was
> timestamped at the daily collection time on April 15th (my last interactive
> session was on April 14th).  When I looked in the price editor, the most
> recent price quote for any stock was April 8th - so, the quote collection
> ran on the 9th, 10th, 11th, 14th, and 15th without recording any stock
> prices and without corrupting the data file.  However, the quote run on the
> 16th left an unusable data file along with the lock file.
>
> After recovering from the backup, I deleted price history prior to 2013
> (data file size dropped from 4.5Mb to 3.3Mb).  After saving my work, I was
> able to retrieve quotes again with no apparent adverse effects.
>
> I no longer have a problem but wanted to post this in case someone else ran
> across the same issue and needed an explanation.  Solution: restore a backup
> and purge some price history.
>
> Developers may want to look at a more graceful way to tell users that they
> are hoarding too much data.
>
>
>
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It seems odd to me that the problem was caused by too much history, but
perhaps so.  I would consider that to be a bug if true.
Is it possible that there was another cause that happened to be fixed by
selecting a backup?  Could there be a subtle bug in your cron job, for
example?

David C