[GNC] GnuCash Backup

[Chris Good]

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:49:42 -0700
From: Mario Nigrovic <jagmarz at gmail.com>
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: [GNC] (no subject)
Message-ID:
	<CAFAtLggL1J+sY4C7kNNGeb0Xv-1PzwzctbJ6MBYWjnBi_YNPjw at mail.gmail.com>
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Many years ago, I had used gnucash, and was pretty happy with it. I was very
careful to make regular backups of my data, and so, when my disk inevitably
crashed, I was not too worried. However, I was mortified to discover that,
although all my transaction data had been saved, all my custom reports were
lost, as they had been stored separately in a secret undisclosed location, I
later discovered to be elsewhere in my home directory.

Recently, I have decided to try again to use gnucash, but I would like very
much to ensure ALL my data is backed up. So I hit upon the idea of running
the tool under a custom value of $HOME, but I was then shocked to discover
that even with this method, gnucash was able to remember previous locations
of my database file, which suggests that the tool is also using some kind of
other mechanism to save historical data, and that makes me very nervous
about actually being able to do proper backups of everything related to the
tool.
Doing some sleuthing using strace, I was able to find the previous database
location delivered through some socket connection, and that really scares
me, since it is now possible critical data is stored via some other Linux
service and I will have no way to trace out where this may be to avoid
future nasty surprises.
I have not seen any documentation about backup strategies other than the
aromatic saving of previous data files, yet I do see that there was data
being stored at least in ~/.local, so I'm hoping someone on this list may be
able to point me to some more thorough discussion of ALL the places user
data from gnucash may be stored.
Thanks for your help!

-- Mario

Hi Mario,

Backups are discussed in https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Backup

You may also like the tool I wrote for backing up (just about) all the
possible files that hold GnuCash configuration:

Linux:
https://github.com/goodvibes2/BackupGnuCashLinux
Windows:
https://github.com/goodvibes2/BackupGnuCashWin

I know this is not the simplest to understand but that's how it is.
If you cannot figure out what to do, just follow the instructions for
Version 2.x in java 11 and using the Precompiled Binaries.

Regards,
Chris Good