[GNC] Sub-accounts disappeared during upgrade 3.5 > 3.7

[David H]

No need for 7-Zip or any such decompression program, just go to Preferences
>> General and uncheck the compress files option and save the file to save
it as uncompressed....

Cheers Dave H.


On Tue, 17 Dec 2019 at 02:14, Paul Kroitor <paul at kroitor.ca> wrote:

> Thanks David,
>
> I'm on Win 10, fully patched. I did try to look at the XML data files.
> Unfortunately I had turned on compression and thus they're not human
> readable unless someone knows a simple Windows decompression command line
> (ideally with 7zip, which is already on the box).
>
> There are several other place in the CoA that go three levels deep, and
> none of those have disappeared. The Hydro account, as far as I remember,
> *was* a placeholder account when it was set up (I wouldn't have wanted
> entries into it), but it no longer is.
>
> I do have all the relevant backup and log files, and am very comfortable
> working with them. I'm considering restoring the old data file, rolling
> back to 3.5, and then trying to reproduce the issue. However, it's a fair
> bit of work at a very busy time of year, and, as I've mentioned elsewhere,
> it isn't all that hard to repair manually.
>
> At your suggestion I've looked at the logfile from the first 3.7 open,
> which is interesting but not entirely clear to me. Here are my observations:
>
>   1.  There are indeed entries for the three missing sub-accounts: for
> each sub-account, there are four pairs of two entries each. All eight
> entries for a sub-account are identical except for the mod field. Thus
> ===== START
> B ......(seven guids and dates)..... Auto   Main Hydro .....
> B ......(seven guids and dates)..... Auto   Main Hydro .....
> ===== END
> ===== START
> R ......( seven guids and dates)..... Auto   Main Hydro .....
> R ......( seven guids and dates)..... Auto   Main Hydro .....
> ===== END
> ===== START
> B ......(seven guids and dates)..... Auto   Main Hydro .....
> B ......(seven guids and dates)..... Auto   Main Hydro .....
> ===== END
> ===== START
> R ......(seven guids and dates)..... Auto   Main Hydro .....
> R ......(seven guids and dates)..... Auto   Main Hydro .....
> ===== END
>
> Then we get
>
>   *   Eight apparently unrelated entries about a different account
>   *   A group just like the above but for "Retreat" rather than Main Hydro
>   *   Eight apparently unrelated entries about a different account
>   *   A group just like the above for "A-Frame"
> (Main Hydro, Retreat, and A-Frame being the three missing sub-accounts)
>
>
>   1.  These all seem to be about pending automatic entries: there were
> entries due for creation for all three missing accounts as well as the
> other accounts interspersed above (but the sub-accounts in the interspersed
> entries have not disappeared).
>
>
>
>   1.  The titles don't seem to accurately correspond to the data (or maybe
> they correspond to different record types than are in this log). The
> titles, after acc_guid, are: "acc_name num description notes memo action
> reconciled amount value date_reconciled", but the data lines end in "Auto
> Main Hydro n 0/1 0/100 1970-01-01 00:00:00". Only the first and last of
> these fields actually correspond.
> All-in-all I don't see any smoking gun in the log - it seems to me the log
> file entries I'm seeing might just be normal entries for the scheduled
> transactions - EXCEPT that there are no dollar amounts anywhere.
>
> Paul
>
> ----------------------
>
>
> AFAIK there were no data format changes between 3.5 and 3.7. and no
> previously reported problems of this sort with this upgrade.  I moved my
> data files from 3.5 to 3.7 (on Linux Mint 19.2) with expense subaccount
> nesting > 4 deep with no problems a few months ago. Are you using the xml
> datafile or a database backend and what is your OS? I assume the Expenses
> top level account is a placeholder and similarly with the Hydro subaccount.
> This is an option in the edit account dialog. If it is a placeholder
> account then it can't be the target for splits in a transaction. This
> shouldn't matter anyway as Gnucash can cope with subaccounts summing into a
> non-placeholder parent account in my experience but I don't know whether
> that affects it at upgrade. It shouldn't in theory. It has on occasions
> caused problems with reports though, but not the CoA AFAIK.
>
> You should find a series of backup and log files in the same directory as
> your main data file. If you locate the backup file with a timestamp
> immediately before you opened the file with 3.7 you could make a copy of it.
> The logfile for the session in which you first opened it in 3.7 may give
> some indication of what happened. If there is nothing obvious you could try
> opening the copy of the backup with 3.7 to check whether the behavior is
> consistent. To be safe I would make a copy of the whole directory including
> the backup and log files and keep it pristine and work on a secondary copy
> until you have isolated how this happened.
>
> David Cousens
>
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