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[Audacity-devel] Audacity using tmp folder in Ubuntu/Debian,
and recovering from crash/power outages
From: Luigino B. <lb...@gm...> - 2011-11-20 16:37:18
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Hi, By default, Audacity uses the /tmp folder in Ubuntu and Debian to store temporal files. But this have a small problem: if the computer crashes or there is a power outage, the /tmp folder will be deleted when Linux reboots, and the temporal files are lost forever. I know that there are some ways to prevent Debian/Ubuntu to erase the /tmp folder, but this generally is something most final users can't do by themselves. Can be Audacity modified to save their temp files in the user folder? Bye! |
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From: Alberto Z. <a.z...@gm...> - 2011-11-20 16:56:11
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Yes! It happened one time when I was recording on Ubuntu! 2011/11/20 Luigino Bracci <lb...@gm...> > Hi, > > By default, Audacity uses the /tmp folder in Ubuntu and Debian to store > temporal files. But this have a small problem: if the computer crashes or > there is a power outage, the /tmp folder will be deleted when Linux > reboots, and the temporal files are lost forever. > > I know that there are some ways to prevent Debian/Ubuntu to erase the /tmp > folder, but this generally is something most final users can't do by > themselves. Can be Audacity modified to save their temp files in the user > folder? > > Bye! > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure > contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, > security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this > data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d > _______________________________________________ > audacity-devel mailing list > aud...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/audacity-devel > > |
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From: Gale A. <ga...@au...> - 2011-11-20 18:16:16
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| From Alberto Zichittella <a.z...@gm...> | Sun, 20 Nov 2011 17:56:05 +0100 | Subject: [Audacity-devel] Audacity using tmp folder in Ubuntu/Debian, and recovering from crash/power outages > Yes! It happened one time when I was recording on Ubuntu! > > 2011/11/20 Luigino Bracci <lb...@gm...> > > > Hi, > > > > By default, Audacity uses the /tmp folder in Ubuntu and Debian to store > > temporal files. But this have a small problem: if the computer crashes or > > there is a power outage, the /tmp folder will be deleted when Linux > > reboots, and the temporal files are lost forever. > > > > I know that there are some ways to prevent Debian/Ubuntu to erase the /tmp > > folder, but this generally is something most final users can't do by > > themselves. Can be Audacity modified to save their temp files in the user > > folder? Here is the address for bug reports/feature requests: fee...@au... . You may not get any answer here to these sort of posts, and whatever issue you are raising may then not get tracked. Yes you can change the location of the temp folder in the Directories Preferences. You can't change the location of the AutoSave folder (~/.audacity-data/AutoSave) which contains the autosave (temporary .aup) file which enables Audacity's Automatic Crash Recovery. I just tested crashing out Ubuntu 10.10 with my Audacity temp folder set to /home/gale/audtemp and I got a perfect recovery. Don't set the folder name to anything Linux might like to delete or empty like _temp, wherever the location is. I found that using the default Audacity temp directory, the project folder with the .au files was gone on reboot after crash, and the autosave file although present was zero bytes, so useless anyway. With the Audacity temp folder set to /home/gale/audtemp/aud_temp, the .au files were in the project folder after reboot but 0 bytes, and the autosave file was again 0 bytes. Test it out in a deliberate crash to see if it works with a custom temp folder name like above. Perhaps we should consider a different temp folder on Linux if this is a general issue? Gale |
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From: Richard A. <ri...@au...> - 2011-11-20 23:08:55
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On Sun, 2011-11-20 at 12:06 -0430, Luigino Bracci wrote: > By default, Audacity uses the /tmp folder in Ubuntu and Debian to > store temporal files. But this have a small problem: if the computer > crashes or there is a power outage, the /tmp folder will be deleted > when Linux reboots, and the temporal files are lost forever. > > > I know that there are some ways to prevent Debian/Ubuntu to erase > the /tmp folder, but this generally is something most final users > can't do by themselves. Can be Audacity modified to save their temp > files in the user folder? Self-cleaning /tmp is a relatively new idea which was unheard on desktop systems of when the default was chosen (before 2004), but does now seem to be very common (almost back where Solaris 2 was, when /tmp was a ramdisk backed by the swap partition). A better idea might be to use /var/tmp/ which is unlikely to be auto-cleaned on reboot (the FHS suggests it should be cleaned less often than /tmp) but is still a location which is local to the machine (unlike anything in $HOME which might be a network mount). On most default Linux installs they are all the same file system so it makes no difference. Richard |
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From: Richard A. <ri...@au...> - 2011-11-26 17:24:14
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On Sun, 2011-11-20 at 12:06 -0430, Luigino Bracci wrote: > By default, Audacity uses the /tmp folder in Ubuntu and Debian to > store temporal files. But this have a small problem: if the computer > crashes or there is a power outage, the /tmp folder will be deleted > when Linux reboots, and the temporal files are lost forever. > > > I know that there are some ways to prevent Debian/Ubuntu to erase > the /tmp folder, but this generally is something most final users > can't do by themselves. Can be Audacity modified to save their temp > files in the user folder? As pointed out any user can change the default in the preferences, however I have now changed the default (only used on *nix systems anyway) to be a directory in /var/tmp/ which will not be erased on reboot (according to the FHS). Richard |
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From: Gale A. <ga...@au...> - 2011-11-26 20:33:18
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| From Richard Ash <ri...@au...> | Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:23:42 +0000 | Subject: [Audacity-devel] Audacity using tmp folder in Ubuntu/Debian, and recovering from crash/power outages > On Sun, 2011-11-20 at 12:06 -0430, Luigino Bracci wrote: > > By default, Audacity uses the /tmp folder in Ubuntu and Debian to > > store temporal files. But this have a small problem: if the computer > > crashes or there is a power outage, the /tmp folder will be deleted > > when Linux reboots, and the temporal files are lost forever. > > > > > > I know that there are some ways to prevent Debian/Ubuntu to erase > > the /tmp folder, but this generally is something most final users > > can't do by themselves. Can be Audacity modified to save their temp > > files in the user folder? > > As pointed out any user can change the default in the preferences, > however I have now changed the default (only used on *nix systems > anyway) to be a directory in /var/tmp/ which will not be erased on > reboot (according to the FHS). Thanks, Richard. I can see what you mean about /var/tmp/ on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard#Directory_structure however on testing this on Ubuntu 10.10 in latest HEAD by creating a tone, editing it then force quit the computer, /var/tmp/audacity-gale and /home/gale/.audacity-data/AutoSave are empty on reboot. So, no recovery is offered when restarting Audacity. I've tried it twice. Avoiding temp deletion or setting the timeout isn't that difficult: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1654497#5 . Despite what FHS/Ubuntu say, setting the TMPTIME in /etc/default/rcS does control deletion on reboot in /var/tmp/ on my machine. When I set TMPTIME to -1 (for never delete) or 6 (for 6 days) the default Audacity temp folder and AutoSave folder are left alone and I can recover. So if you want to edit the rcS file which will also help with other programs that lose data when the computer crashes, just open a terminal and type: sudo gedit /etc/default/rcS then give your password. Substitute "gedit" for some other editor if you prefer. Gale |
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From: Luigino B. <lb...@gm...> - 2011-11-27 00:51:56
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Hi Richard, Gale. With my normal user account, I created a text file "hi.txt" in /var/tmp/, then rebooted the PC and the file wasn't erased. Also, I created a directory inside /var/tmp, I've created another text file with some garbage inside that directory. Then I rebooted the PC, and the file wasn't erased. I'm using Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit. I know that isn't very difficult to make some changes in the config files to avoid deletions in the /tmp folder on reboots, but many final users that aren't tech guys will blame Audacity -or Linux- for the lost of their files. Fixing this will help improve the reputation of Audacity as a great audio editing software. Bye! 2011/11/26 Gale Andrews <ga...@au...> > > | From Richard Ash <ri...@au...> > | Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:23:42 +0000 > | Subject: [Audacity-devel] Audacity using tmp folder in Ubuntu/Debian, > and recovering from crash/power outages > > On Sun, 2011-11-20 at 12:06 -0430, Luigino Bracci wrote: > > > By default, Audacity uses the /tmp folder in Ubuntu and Debian to > > > store temporal files. But this have a small problem: if the computer > > > crashes or there is a power outage, the /tmp folder will be deleted > > > when Linux reboots, and the temporal files are lost forever. > > > > > > > > > I know that there are some ways to prevent Debian/Ubuntu to erase > > > the /tmp folder, but this generally is something most final users > > > can't do by themselves. Can be Audacity modified to save their temp > > > files in the user folder? > > > > As pointed out any user can change the default in the preferences, > > however I have now changed the default (only used on *nix systems > > anyway) to be a directory in /var/tmp/ which will not be erased on > > reboot (according to the FHS). > > Thanks, Richard. I can see what you mean about /var/tmp/ on: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard#Directory_structure > > however on testing this on Ubuntu 10.10 in latest HEAD by creating a > tone, editing it then force quit the computer, /var/tmp/audacity-gale > and /home/gale/.audacity-data/AutoSave are empty on reboot. So, no > recovery is offered when restarting Audacity. I've tried it twice. > > Avoiding temp deletion or setting the timeout isn't that difficult: > http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1654497#5 . > > Despite what FHS/Ubuntu say, setting the TMPTIME in > /etc/default/rcS does control deletion on reboot in /var/tmp/ on > my machine. When I set TMPTIME to -1 (for never delete) or 6 (for > 6 days) the default Audacity temp folder and AutoSave folder are > left alone and I can recover. > > So if you want to edit the rcS file which will also help with other > programs that lose data when the computer crashes, just open a > terminal and type: > > sudo gedit /etc/default/rcS > > then give your password. Substitute "gedit" for some other editor > if you prefer. > > > > > > Gale > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure > contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, > security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this > data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d > _______________________________________________ > audacity-devel mailing list > aud...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/audacity-devel > |
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From: Richard A. <ri...@au...> - 2011-11-27 14:42:08
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On Sat, 2011-11-26 at 20:33 +0000, Gale Andrews wrote: > Thanks, Richard. I can see what you mean about /var/tmp/ on: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard#Directory_structure > > however on testing this on Ubuntu 10.10 in latest HEAD by creating a > tone, editing it then force quit the computer, /var/tmp/audacity-gale > and /home/gale/.audacity-data/AutoSave are empty on reboot. So, no > recovery is offered when restarting Audacity. I've tried it twice. You are encountering a different bug (or bugs), which is a failure to write the recovery file out sufficiently forcefully that it survives the reboot. I suspect this depends on whether you are using a journalling file system and what other disk activity is going on at the same time in the system. I'm also not clear that the files ever made it to disk in your test. The results Luigino gets match my Gentoo system, where /tmp/ is wiped out on boot (I could configure that, but I haven't) and /var/tmp/ is left alone. Richard |
