GNUCash Crashing following editing of Account Summary

[foxylady337]

I was experimenting with the Account Summary, to produce a Chart of Accounts, and after saving the Report I closed it - at this point GNUCash closed down, and when I reopened it I was warned about the file lock.

I clicked "Open Anyway", but found myself back in the same situation, with the "Chart of Accounts" tab open. Any time I try to close this tab, I'm thrown out of GNUCash.

I think I could probably just carry on with this unwanted tab present, but I wouldn't want to key in any new data until this has been resolved.

I tried deleting the new report, and setting the report parameters back to default, and although the Report comes up as the Account Summary, I can't close it without crashing GNUCash again.

[foxylady337]

PS I'm using GnuCash 2.4.7. The FAQs include...

 2.6.9 Q: GnuCash crashes when I run a Custom Report saying something about a Stack Overflow. What does this mean?

...but this refers to a Stack Overflow, and the problem was apparently solved as from version 2.0. I tried deleting ~/.gnucash/saved-reports-2.4, but this didn't resolve the issue.

Having deleted the Custom Report I'd created, I find I can't use Reports=>Account Summary any more - when I close its window, GnuCash closes at once, without any error message, and leaving the lock files in place.

I've also noticed that if I open GnuCash and Reports=>Account Summary and then close GnuCash, it appears to close in the normal way, but when I start GnuCash again, the lock files are present, and when I opt to Open Anyway the Account Summary tab is present at start-up.

I'm not aware of having done anything unusual with my GnuCash installation recently, apart from the attempt to produce a customised version of the Account Summary.

[foxylady337]

I have installed GnuCash 2.4.7 on my laptop, and this copy causes no problem with the accounts file from Friday which immediately preceded the crashes.

I therefore uninstalled GnuCash from my desktop PC, removed all the accounts except the accounts file from Friday, and deleted ~/.gnucash before reinstalling, but the same problem arises.

My desktop has Ubuntu 10.04, and the version of GnuCash which was installed by the Ubuntu Software Centre is a little older (July 2011) than the laptop one (2nd Aug 2011), although the version number is the same.

Could it be that one of the routine system upgrades has introduced something incompatible with GnuCash?

[John Ralls-2]

On Feb 5, 2012, at 3:05 PM, foxylady337 wrote:

> I have installed GnuCash 2.4.7 on my laptop, and this copy causes no problem
> with the accounts file from Friday which immediately preceded the crashes.
>
> I therefore uninstalled GnuCash from my desktop PC, removed all the accounts
> except the accounts file from Friday, and deleted ~/.gnucash before
> reinstalling, but the same problem arises.
>
> My desktop has Ubuntu 10.04, and the version of GnuCash which was installed
> by the Ubuntu Software Centre is a little older (July 2011) than the laptop
> one (2nd Aug 2011), although the version number is the same.
>
> Could it be that one of the routine system upgrades has introduced something
> incompatible with GnuCash?

It is, and it's up to Canonical (the folks behind Ubuntu) to figure it out and fix it.

Regards,
John Ralls


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[foxylady337]

Thanks, John.

Can I take it that you have evidence stronger than my conjecture (above) that a routine update of Ubuntu 10.04 has broken GnuCash?

Has Canonical been informed?

How can I add my weight to pressure on Canonical to fix this? - Ubuntu 10.04 as an LTS version is guaranteed support until April 2013. which AFAIK also covers the software packages which are covered by the Ubuntu Software Centre.

[John Ralls-2]

On Feb 5, 2012, at 10:11 PM, foxylady337 wrote:

> Thanks, John.
>
> Can I take it that you have evidence stronger than my conjecture (above)
> that a routine update of Ubuntu 10.04 has broken GnuCash?

No, but if it worked before and it doesn't now, they've screwed something up. They're between you and us, and it's their job to make sure that their packages work together.
>
> Has Canonical been informed?
That's your job.
>
> How can I add my weight to pressure on Canonical to fix this? - Ubuntu 10.04
> as an LTS version is guaranteed support until April 2013. which AFAIK also
> covers the software packages which are covered by the Ubuntu Software

Search their bug tracker for your problem to see if it has already been reported. If you find one, add a comment saying that you're experiencing the problem too. If there isn't one already, file your own report, including as much information about what happened as you can.

If you can't get them to fix it, switch to another distro. There are lots to choose from. (But don't pick SuSE, they broke Gnucash 2.4.9 too, by gratuitously setting the wrong Guile version as a dependency.)

Regards,
John Ralls


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[Dan Black]

On 02/06/2012 01:38 AM, John Ralls wrote:

> On Feb 5, 2012, at 10:11 PM, foxylady337 wrote:
>
>> Thanks, John.
>>
>> Can I take it that you have evidence stronger than my conjecture (above)
>> that a routine update of Ubuntu 10.04 has broken GnuCash?
> No, but if it worked before and it doesn't now, they've screwed something up. They're between you and us, and it's their job to make sure that their packages work together.
>> Has Canonical been informed?
> That's your job.
>> How can I add my weight to pressure on Canonical to fix this? - Ubuntu 10.04
>> as an LTS version is guaranteed support until April 2013. which AFAIK also
>> covers the software packages which are covered by the Ubuntu Software
> Search their bug tracker for your problem to see if it has already been reported. If you find one, add a comment saying that you're experiencing the problem too. If there isn't one already, file your own report, including as much information about what happened as you can.
>
> If you can't get them to fix it, switch to another distro. There are lots to choose from. (But don't pick SuSE, they broke Gnucash 2.4.9 too, by gratuitously setting the wrong Guile version as a dependency.)
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
>
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You could add the GetDeb Repository and update from there.  I have had
no problem running their updates on a few versions of Ubuntu.

Dan
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[foxylady337]

Thanks, Dan.

I fear that a new version of GnuCash won't solve my problem - given that it's probably a routine update of Ubuntu 10.04 which caused it in the first place, rather than a fault which has suddenly appeared in GnuCash 2.4.7 after 8 months of satisfactory performance. I re-installed the same (Ubuntu-supported) version of GnuCash in case I'd somehow corrupted some part of the product, but got exactly the same error.

My laptop has Ubuntu 11.10, which has a different UI from Ubuntu 10.04, and may not have broken GnuCash for this reason.

I'm not in a great hurry to upgrade my desktop from 10.04, as lots of other things might get broken in the process. I'm not a great fan of the Unity interface either.

I'll try to pursue it with Canonical in the first instance.

[Derek Atkins]

foxylady337 <[hidden email]> writes:

> Thanks, Dan.
>
> I fear that a new version of GnuCash won't solve my problem - given that
> it's probably a routine update of Ubuntu 10.04 which caused it in the first
> place, rather than a fault which has suddenly appeared in GnuCash 2.4.7
> after 8 months of satisfactory performance. I re-installed the same
> (Ubuntu-supported) version of GnuCash in case I'd somehow corrupted some
> part of the product, but got exactly the same error.
>
> My laptop has Ubuntu 11.10, which has a different UI from Ubuntu 10.04, and
> may not have broken GnuCash for this reason.
>
> I'm not in a great hurry to upgrade my desktop from 10.04, as lots of other
> things might get broken in the process. I'm not a great fan of the Unity
> interface either.
>
> I'll try to pursue it with Canonical in the first instance.

Another thing you can try is moving your ~/.gnucash file out of the
way.  This will cause GnuCash to lose its history of open windows and
saved reports, but it might get you back to something that works.

Note that this will not remove your data, just some set of saved state.

Also note that I said "move it out of the way", not "remove it" -- in
case you need to recover some data from the old state files.

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-derek

--
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       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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[Andrew Sullivan]

On Mon, Feb 06, 2012 at 05:37:26AM -0800, foxylady337 wrote:

> I fear that a new version of GnuCash won't solve my problem - given that
> it's probably a routine update of Ubuntu 10.04 which caused it in the first
> place, rather than a fault which has suddenly appeared in GnuCash 2.4.7
> after 8 months of satisfactory performance. I re-installed the same
> (Ubuntu-supported) version of GnuCash in case I'd somehow corrupted
> some
> part of the product, but got exactly the same error.

How did you get GnuCash 2.4.7 on your 10.04 LTS system?  I have the
same OS, and the version of GnuCash on it is 2.2.9.  Indeed, I had a
catastrophic system failure last fall, and found that I couldn't move
the 2.2.9 xml files I had onto a more recent (11.10) Ubuntu release
using 2.4.x .  I'm still closing up the financial year, so I haven't
followed up to see whether this is an Ubuntu problem or a GnuCash
problem.  I have a feeling it has something to do with Ubuntu and its
slightly strange ways, but it's hard to be sure.

Best,

A

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[foxylady337]

Thanks, Derek.

I've already tried that - I removed the ~/.gnucash directory when I uninstalled my original GnuCash version and reinstalled it, but the crash still occurred when I opened Account Report and then closed it.

[foxylady337]

I searched for it in the Ubuntu Software Centre.

But now I realise that it wasn't one of the standard packages supported by Ubuntu, and I had got it through GetDeb.

This would put it in the "at your own risk" category, so I can't expect to get very far with complaints to Canonical!

I'm sorry, I can't remember now what prompted me to do the upgrade, nor whether there was any difficulty in converting the xml data.

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Mon, Feb 06, 2012 at 07:44:43AM -0800, foxylady337 wrote:

> This would put it in the "at your own risk" category, so I can't expect to
> get very far with complaints to Canonical!
>

Right.  It would possibly explain the crashes, however, so you might
want to try getting the 2.4 version again.  I tried to compile 2.4
myself on 10.04 LTS, and I was able to (but it didn't help my problem).

> I'm sorry, I can't remember now what prompted me to do the upgrade, nor
> whether there was any difficulty in converting the xml data.

Probably it was the features.  The 2.4 series XML is supposed to be
completely backward compatible at the XML level, so you shouldn't have
needed any conversion.

Best,

A

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[foxylady337]

I've just built version 2.4.99 following the instructions here...

http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Building#Ubuntu_10.04_LTS_.28Lucid_Lynx.29

...and I no longer suffer the crash when I open the Account Summary Report and close it.

I may be wrong, but it seemed to me that an early stage of the build process removed guile 8.1 and replaced it with 6.1 (or something similar).

Is there a set of instructions for making this version the definitive version on my system?

[John Ralls-2]

On Feb 6, 2012, at 9:43 AM, foxylady337 wrote:

> I've just built version 2.4.99 following the instructions here...
>
> http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Building#Ubuntu_10.04_LTS_.28Lucid_Lynx.29
>
> ...and I no longer suffer the crash when I open the Account Summary Report
> and close it.
>
> I may be wrong, but it seemed to me that an early stage of the build process
> removed guile 8.1 and replaced it with 6.1 (or something similar).
>
> Is there a set of instructions for making this version the definitive
> version on my system?

No, that's the development trunk, and we strongly urge you NOT to use it on your "real" data. We make it available for testing only.

If you actually followed the instructions correctly, you installed guile-1.8. (Ubuntu probably had installed guile-1.6). It's entirely possible that that's the difference, because the reports are written in Guile; the note about not having guile-1.8.slib and the instruction to fix it might, if you followed them correctly, have fixed your 2.4.9 gnucash. Try it out.

One of the differences between trunk and 2.4 is that trunk doesn't use slib, so if you didn't follow the slib instructions correctly, trunk would still work.

Regards,
John Ralls


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[foxylady337]

I followed the instructions in the site mentioned exactly - by cutting-and-pasting the commands into the command line one by one.

I tried reinstalling version 2.4.7 from GetDeb using the Ubuntu Software Centre, but when I run this version I still have the same problem.

[John Ralls]

On Feb 6, 2012, at 11:08 AM, foxylady337 wrote:

> I followed the instructions in the site mentioned exactly - by
> cutting-and-pasting the commands into the command line one by one.
>
> I tried reinstalling version 2.4.7 from GetDeb using the Ubuntu Software
> Centre, but when I run this version I still have the same problem.

Well, since you've successfully built trunk from source, how about re-doing the procedure (to make sure that GetDeb didn't mess something up) and then build Gnucash-2.4.10 from source.

To change the path on a menu item, right-click on the "Applications" menu on the menubar and select edit_menu. Navigate to the Gnucash and double-click on it. Change the path to wherever you installed your self-built gnucash. If you encounter permissions problems (unable to edit or unable to save changes), see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1476034 .

Regards,
John Ralls


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[John Ralls-2]

On Feb 6, 2012, at 11:08 AM, foxylady337 wrote:

> I followed the instructions in the site mentioned exactly - by
> cutting-and-pasting the commands into the command line one by one.
>
> I tried reinstalling version 2.4.7 from GetDeb using the Ubuntu Software
> Centre, but when I run this version I still have the same problem.

Well, since you've successfully built trunk from source, how about re-doing the procedure (to make sure that GetDeb didn't mess something up) and then build Gnucash-2.4.10 from source.

To change the path on a menu item, right-click on the "Applications" menu on the menubar and select edit_menu. Navigate to the Gnucash and double-click on it. Change the path to wherever you installed your self-built gnucash. If you encounter permissions problems (unable to edit or unable to save changes), see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1476034 .

Regards,
John Ralls


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[foxylady337]

First of all, here's the output from the first command I used to build the trunk:

michael@Linley6:~/development/gnucash$ sudo aptitude build-dep gnucash
[sudo] password for michael:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information      
Initialising package states... Done
Writing extended state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  guile-1.6-dev
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  guile-1.8 guile-1.8-dev libgmp3-dev{u} libgmpxx4ldbl{u}
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 4 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/504kB of archives. After unpacking 2,372kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] y
Writing extended state information... Done
(Reading database ... 477691 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing guile-1.8-dev ...
Removing guile-1.8 ...
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/guile-1.6 to provide /usr/bin/guile (guile) in auto mode.
Removing libgmp3-dev ...
Removing libgmpxx4ldbl ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Selecting previously deselected package guile-1.6-dev.
(Reading database ... 477472 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking guile-1.6-dev (from .../guile-1.6-dev_1.6.8-10_i386.deb) ...
Setting up guile-1.6-dev (1.6.8-10) ...
Reading package lists... Done            
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information      
Initialising package states... Done
Writing extended state information... Done

michael@Linley6:~/development/gnucash$

I think you'll see why I thought that guile-1.8 was being removed, and guile-1.6 substituted for it.

Next, I'll work on the assumption that I go through the same procedure as I did for building the trunk, except that the command which goes...

svn co http://svn.gnucash.org/repo/gnucash/trunk gnucash

...should be replaced with...

svn co http://svn.gnucash.org/repo/gnucash/branches/2.4/ gnucash

...to get the most recent stable version of 2.4.

[foxylady337]

Although version 2.4.99 is OK, 2.4.10 crashes in the same way as earlier versions, reporting a segmentation fault. Here's what happens when I run it, open the Account Summary Report and then close it:

michael@Linley6:~/development/gnucash$ ~/unstable/gnucash/bin/gnucash


This is a development version. It may or may not work.
Report bugs and other problems to [e-mail].
You can also lookup and file bug reports at http://bugzilla.gnome.org
The last stable version was GnuCash 2.4.10
The next stable version will be GnuCash 2.6

Found Finance::Quote version 1.17
Segmentation fault
michael@Linley6:~/development/gnucash$


Where do we go from here? I'm happy to cooperate with some further investigation if that would help.