[GNC] Recovering deleted transaction from log files

[John Ralls]

There's two sorts of logging. GnuCash emits varying levels of messages (error, warning, info, or debug) into the trace file (https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Tracefile) depending on command-line arguments. The default is to emit only errors.

The other logging, the one that Roland is talking about, is transaction logging. This writes to a log file that GnuCash knows how to import with File>Import>Replay Gnucash .log file, writing an entry every time a transaction object is locked or unlocked for editing. It's not configurable. Scheduled Transaction templates aren't locked so they're not logged, but when the SX creates a transaction that will be logged. The only way to not log an edit would be code that doesn't call xaccTransBeginEdit/xaccTransCommitEdit and any code that doesn't do that risks also that its changes won't be saved, particularly in the SQL backends.

Regards,
John Ralls



> On Feb 24, 2020, at 3:23 AM, Greg Feneis <mfeneis at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I imagine logging is minimal by default to help keep GnuCash speedy.
> Unless the user increases verbosity via CLI when launching GnuCash.  Just a
> guess.
> 
> I'm also curious about controlling logging. I bet it's documented somewhere
> 
> Kind regards, Greg Feneis
> (Pixel 3)
> 
> 
> On Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 15:00 Roland Roberts <roland at astrofoto.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 2/21/2020 11:54 PM, Roland Roberts wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> So... I figured the log file(s) between those two should have the
>>> missing transactions. But that file is nothing but a sequence of
>>> 
>>> ===== START
>>> ===== END
>>> 
>>> after the header.  Why wouldn't the log have my deleted transactions
>>> in it?
>> 
>> So I was able to track down the missing transaction. What had actually
>> happened was that I had apparently edited it (obviously in error) and
>> change the account on a payment to a credit card. That removed it's
>> reconciled state in the bank account from which the payment had been
>> made (naturally, it was no longer against that account). I did that the
>> painful way by unpacking the two gnucash files and doing diff, that
>> tracking through the diffs.
>> 
>> I'm still puzzled by the log file. I read through some of the gnucash
>> docs and realize that scheduled transactions are special beasts and that
>> those don't show up in the logs, but an edit like this I thought would.
>> My immediate problem is solved, but...I'd like to know what sort of
>> things the logs can help me with since it wasn't as useful as I expected
>> for this case.
>> 
>> roland
>> 
>> 
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