Gnucash crashing on startup

[John Ralls]

> On Jun 8, 2017, at 7:56 AM, Okkie <gnucash at okkie.nu> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I just subscribed to this list, after finding the solution to my crashing
> gnucash in this thread. I think my additional information may be of value,
> so excuse my barging in without proper introduction etc.
> 
> Okay. I shut down gnucash. Rebooted my Ubuntu 16.04 for a kernel upgrade and
> started gnucash again. A side note: It may be important to know that gnucash
> got upgraded automatically since the previous start. It is now at
> 1:2.6.16-1~getdeb1. 
> 
> So, gnucash dumped core and googling on the error lead me to this thread.
> And of course the cause was quickly found:
> 
> mysql> select * from transactions where guid='84<masked>f8'\G
> *************************** 1. row ***************************
>         guid: 84<masked>f8
> currency_guid: 83<masked>a4
>          num: 
>    post_date: 0000-00-00 00:00:00
>   enter_date: 2005-09-09 14:21:36
>  description: <private>
> 1 row in set (0.00 sec)
> 
> I fixed this by issuing this SQL command instead of deleting the
> transaction:
> mysql> update transactions set post_date = '2005-09-09 00:00:00' where
> guid='84<masked>f8';
> 
> .. and gnucash started up very well after this.
> 
> The difference / extra info here is:
> 
> * gnucash did not crash. I shut down the previous version gracefully.
> * This particulair transaction has been there for almost 12 years now.
> * It is the very first transaction in this particular account.
> * A quick look in a backup from 6 month's ago also shows: post_date:
> 0000-00-00 00:00:00
> * This never caused trouble while starting up before.
> 
> So.. maybe it is a regression issue that may bite others too?

Not exactly a regression. GnuCash should never have accepted a transaction with a post date from the reign of Octavian, though crashing isn’t an acceptable response either. 

How long ago did you switch to the SQL backend? That wasn’t available in 2005. I don’t suppose you have any of the old XML files around to see if the transaction was actually created with no post date.

Regards,
John Ralls