Noise in .log files, or activity tracking of some kind?

Tommy Trussell tommy.trussell at gmail.com
Fri Feb 23 14:15:01 EST 2018


I opened a GnuCash data file I keep in Dropbox, and I was surprised to see
Dropbox notify me of storage activity at unexpected moments. I have known
for years that just opening GnuCash (without entering any transactions)
creates a dated .log file. But I was surprised when I realized that
following a link from an Income Statement to open an account creates a new
entry in the log file.

I understand using the log file as redundant storage to recreate failed
transactions that didn't get properly saved to the main data file. But the
log file also seems to store some other information, presumably for
diagnostic or activity tracking purposes.

If the .log is solely intended to be used for redundant data storage, maybe
the diagnostic information can be redirected elsewhere to keep the log more
compact.

But it appears the log also tracks accounts the user or the SX system has
"touched" even when not changing any data.

-----

I searched Bugzilla and found several open bugs against the .log files,
none of which seem to cover a "what accounts have been touched" sort of
usage. Here are two (of several) open bugs, neither of which applies to
this scenario:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150514

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=621079

If the entries are intended to be diagnostic it seems they should just go
into the command-line log utility. Or is there another usage of the
existing .log files that I'm not understanding?

-----

More detail:

This is GnuCash 2.6.17 on an Ubuntu linux system.

My datafile is called Martha.gnucash. The log file it created today is
Martha.gnucash.20180223110102.log

I opened the file, and noted that the first portion of the log file begins
with a header followed by a "==== START" notation.

mod trans_guid split_guid time_now date_entered date_posted acc_guid
> acc_name num description notes memo action reconciled amount value
> date_reconciled
> -----------------
> ===== START


After the start the log contains eight entries for each split of each of
the scheduled transactions, in groups of fours framed in "==== START" and
"==== END" notations. (Some of my scheduled transactions create multi-split
transactions, and there seem to be eight logged lines for each split line
of each.) The "mod" column of each of these log entries contains either a
"B" or an "R." I'm not quoting any SX transaction examples here, but those
seem to be grouped and paired somehow.

Of all the SX entries, one comes up as a "Reminder" in the "Since Last
Run..." dialog, but no SX transactions got created today.

Then I scrolled down to the end of the log file. I had followed a couple of
links from an Income Statement report to open account registers. I did NOT
change any data items in GnuCash. Each of these log entries have a "mod"
column notation of "D."

What information can be gleaned from this?


===== START
> ===== END
> ===== START
> ===== END
> ===== START
> ===== END
> ===== START
> ===== END
> ===== START
> D ab6322d19a89b9e92348ebdb6658ad7b 5d0a1a18ff4dba13fce0fc6892f7f4f4 2018-02-23
> 11:04:55.000000 -0600 2018-02-23 11:04:55.000000 -0600 2018-02-23
> 04:59:00.000000 -0600 n 0/1 0/100 1969-12-31 18:00:00.000000 -0600
> ===== END
> ===== START
> ===== END
> ===== START
> D 33a84ff84584948387e955e12dbad094 1ba344e005f6193583316e05d4af1ffc 2018-02-23
> 11:08:35.000000 -0600 2018-02-23 11:08:35.000000 -0600 2018-02-23
> 04:59:00.000000 -0600 n 0/1 0/100 1969-12-31 18:00:00.000000 -0600
> ===== END
>


More information about the gnucash-user mailing list