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

[John Ralls]

> On Sep 28, 2017, at 11:17 AM, Eric Beversluis <ebever at researchintegration.org> 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.

Double-clicking on a file doesn't work in GnuCash, it just opens GnuCash with the previously loaded file. You have to use File>Open to change files unless the file you want to switch to is in the most-recently-used list at the bottom of the File menu.

FileVault is an encrypted file system. Each partition on a physical disk and every disk image contains a file system, so that's what FileVault encrypts. Some people get confused because FileVault says that it's on or off for "disk Macintosh HD",
but Macintosh HD is a partition, not the whole disk. 

OK, so /Volumes/Private is a mounted disk image created with Disk Manager. I've been using those for years with no problems, though it was created with Disk Utility from a previous version of MacOS. If Finder has trouble with the disk image, everything else will too. Have you run Disk Manager's First Aid on it?

What Disk Manager settings did you use to create the /Volumes/Secure disk image?

Regards,
John Ralls