Update: after looking at a number of older log files, in which the same entries 
are present, I've concluded this is just GnuCash's processing of scheduled 
transactions. I therefore don't see anything in the logs that raises my 
suspicions.

I'm beginning to think this is something that I did myself, either accidentally 
or as some misguided simplification attempt I've now totally forgotten about. 
As someone who's developed software for 45-plus years, either of these would be 
so improbable in the past that they could be dispensed with. But as I get older 
I find these sources of errors occurring once in a while.

Unless others are encountering similar issues I think we might ascribe this one 
to approaching senility.

P

From: Paul Kroitor
Sent: December 16, 2019 11:12 AM
To: 'davidcous...@bigpond.com' <davidcous...@bigpond.com>
Cc: 'gnucash-user@gnucash.org' <gnucash-user@gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] Sub-accounts disappeared during upgrade 3.5 > 3.7

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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