Backup and Log File Retention Question

[Tommy Trussell]

On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Mike Overholt <mover at charter.net> wrote:

> According to the FAQ (paragraph 3.1.5) I see that I should be able to set
> the length of time that backup & log files are retained. It's my impression
> from the documentation that GnuCash should automatically delete files older
> than specified in [Preferences | General | Files | Retain log/backup
> files:]. I've verified that this is set to "For: 30 days" on my system, yet
> I see that there are over 2,000 files going back as far as 2014-04-25.
>
> Am I misunderstanding how this setting works? Are there other settings that
> might be causing this behavior? I have plenty of free disk space and can
> always delete older files manually, but it would be convenient if this were
> automatic.
>

I didn't see any replies to your query... so I will jump in. From my
observations, the FAQ is correct. I believe the files get cleaned out when
GnuCash exits (properly). Here are a couple of random thoughts to help you
track down the problem...

1) What operating system and what version GnuCash are you running? Has it
been a long time since you updated GnuCash? The current stable version is
2.6.10 (released December 20, 2015) though your operating system may not
show a more recent one.

--> In particular, if you are running an OS based upon Ubuntu 14.04
"Trusty" LTS, you may be running GnuCash 2.6.1, which has an unfortunate
packaging bug that causes GnuCash to crash on exit. Your OS may be set to
suppress the crash message, but you can see the crash clearly if you launch
gnucash from a terminal and then close it normally. (Looking back at the
circumstantial evidence, maybe you upgraded Ubuntu soon after its release
and haven't installed the latest GnuCash, which is most easily available
for Ubuntu via the getdeb.net web site.)

2) Failing the above, is it possible the permissions on the data directory
are strange, such that GnuCash doesn't have permission to delete? (The
permission options and places to look depend on your operating system and
desktop environment.)


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