Crashes and Incorrect Reconciliation Dates

[John Ralls]

> On Nov 16, 2016, at 12:18 PM, Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:
> 
> I am using GnuCash 2.6.1 on Ubuntu 14.04 with 16 MB of RAM, core i7, dual
> SSD drives. I have a file that I have been using for almost 4 years. I just
> noticed two odd behaviors.
> 
> 1. I was trying to load all the transactions for one checking account for
> Jan - Dec 2013. In particular, I am looking at the reconciliation date.
> However, if I try to select more than the data for Jan - Jul, the program
> crashes. The program does not crash when I select Jan - Jul, or Aug - Dec,
> or Feb - Aug, or each month individually. If I pick another account with
> fewer transactions, I can load the entire year of transactions, Jan - Dec.
> 
> Could I be running into a memory problem - ie not enough memory to load the
> entire year of transactions for this one account? The whole program
> crashing seems a rather inelegant way to tell the user there isn't enough
> RAM to complete a command.
> 
> 2. I noticed all the reconciliation dates are the last date of the month,
> regardless of when I reconciled the accounts. I also write the date on the
> bank statements when I reconciled the account, and my notes do not match
> what GnuCash is telling me. Also, the bank statements always end on the
> last day of the month, so there is no way I can reconcile the account until
> after the third or fourth day of the next month - it takes a couple of days
> for the bank to create the monthly report.
> 
> What am I missing in the reconciliation process that the date shown in
> GNuCash is incorrect?

Memory isn't limited to physical RAM, there's also virtual memory embodied in your swap drive. That said, the normal response to an allocation failure (the primary cause of which is out-of-memory) is to crash because the program state can no longer be predicted in that situation. That would usually be followed in short order by an operating system crash for the same reason. Since you're not reporting that, out-of-memory is unlikely.

A memory problem doesn't seem likely in this case. It's more likely that you have something wrong with your data in that account. A stack trace [1] would nail down exactly where it crashed and might point to the reason, especially if reviewed along with the tracefile [2].

Regards,
John Ralls

[1] http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Stack_Trace <http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Stack_Trace>
[2] http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Tracefile <http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Tracefile>