No suitable backend was found for /Volumes/Secure/GnuCash2016/Personal2016.gnucash

[Geert Janssens]

On donderdag 28 september 2017 20:17:31 CEST Eric Beversluis wrote:
> Eric Beversluis
> Short fiction at www.ericbeversluis.com
> 
> On September 28, 2017 at 12:56:30, Eric Beversluis 
(ebever at researchintegration.org) wrote:
> > Eric Beversluis
> > Short fiction at www.ericbeversluis.com
> > 
> > On September 28, 2017 at 12:17:20, John Ralls (jralls at ceridwen.us) wrote:
> > > > On Sep 28, 2017, at 8:58 AM, Eric Beversluis wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > I’ve recently moved to Mac Sierra. Have been using GnuCash
> > > > successfully there. This> > 
> > > morning when I opened gnucash I got this message:
> > > > No suitable backend was found for
> > > > /Volumes/Secure/GnuCash2016/Personal2016.gnucash
> > > > 
> > > > ??
> > > > 
> > > > Only thing I can think is that I moved some older versions of my
> > > > GnuCash files to trash.> > 
> > > Had several sitting in other places as a result of the move and of
> > > setting up the encrypted image /Volumes/Secure.
> > > 
> > > > I seem to be able to open one of the backups,
> > > > Personal2016.gnucash.20170927131325.gnucash.> > 
> > > But when I try to save it as Personal2016.gnucash, after having moved
> > > the original Personal2016.gnucash to trash, I get the same “No suitable
> > > backend” error.
> > > 
> > > > Also strange: Mac or GnuCash or something is creating these two zero
> > > > byte files:
> > > > 
> > > > Personal2016.gnucash.20170927131325.gnucash.0.1139.LNK
> > > > Personal2016.gnucash.20170927131325.gnucash.LCK
> > > > ??
> > > 
> > > Those files are created by the xml backend. The LCK file is the lock
> > > file that the backend uses to ensure that only one user is connected to
> > > the file at a time. The LNK file is part of a hack to ensure that
> > > locking works on an old remote file protocol called NFS, for "network
> > > file system".
> > > 
> > > If you save Personal2016.gnucash to a non-encrypted volume is GnuCash
> > > able to open> 
> > it?
> > 
> > > Does enabling or disabling compression in Preferences (General tab,
> > > middle of the> 
> > page,
> > 
> > > "Compress Files") make a difference?
> > > 
> > > Is /Volumes/Secure encrypted with File Vault or a third-party program?
> > > 
> > > Regards,
> > > John Ralls
> > 
> > If I save the backup to Desktop as Personal2016.gnucash, it opens.
> > 
> > If I ‘save as’ the open version to /Volumes/Secure/GnuCash2016/, it get
> > the error. Even after disabling compression before the save as.
> > 
> > I tried saving to /Volumes/Secure/Gnucash2016/ as Gnucash2016_New.gnucash,
> > but that generated the same error on opening.
> > 
> > If I try to copy the GnuCash2016_New.gnucash version to Desktop I get this
> > error:
> > 
> > "The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in
> > “GnuCash2016_New.gnucash” can’t be read or written.
> > (Error code -36)”
> > 
> > But despite this warning, it copies something there with a size of 3.3MB,
> > whereas the other files are all aboutl 254KB.
> > 
> > The wierd thing is that it seemed to be working OK until I moved the
> > non-secure copies to Trash.
> > 
> > The secure partition (image?—not fully up on Mac jargon yet) was created
> > with Disk Utility> 
> > > New Image > Blank Image. Whether that uses File Vault I don’t know. I
> > > somehow thought> 
> > File Vault encrypted the whole disk.
> 
> Thought maybe it was a permissions thing. Changed to 755 and used terminal
> to copy to /Volumes/Secure. Looked like that solved it.
> 
> But no. What’s happening: even if I click on the file in the secure
> directory, GnuCash is opening the one on the desktop. 
> 
> If I rename the one on the Desktop and try to open the one from the secure
> directory I get the old “No suitable backend” error. I think this has been
> happening all along and moving the non-secure versions to trash made that
> no longer possible.
> 
> That’s weird: click on one file and gnucash chooses to open a different one.

That's a known issue on the OS X version of gnucash. The way OS X passes the 
file to be opened to gnucash is not compatible with the code gnucash is built 
on. The application originates from the linux world so not all OS X specific 
details are handled the Mac way.

The way to solve it is to open the right file from within gnucash using File-
>Open...

After that gnucash will remember that file to be the one you last opened and 
will reopen it the next time you start gnucash (regardless of which file you 
click in the Finder).

Geert