#2562 .fgtapes flooding/spamming

[Megaf]

Hi all, so, I noticed that a lot of .fgtape files are getting created in the directory FG was installed to.

I would suggest to have them in $FG_HOME/blackboxes/ or something like that instead.

/FlightGear-Next$ ls
707-320C-recovery.fgtape  Citation-II-recovery.fgtape         fghome                     lib
707-recovery.fgtape       Citation-II-Sierra-recovery.fgtape  Fighter-X-recovery.fgtape  logs
aircraft                  CitationX-recovery.fgtape           flightgear                 p39-recovery.fgtape
bin                       data                                include                    scenery
c172p-recovery.fgtape     dr400-dauphin-recovery.fgtape       jeep-recovery.fgtape       share
c182s-recovery.fgtape     fgfs-graph-001.osg                  jsbsim-1.1.5               Short_Empire-recovery.fgtape

[Julian Smith]

Recovery recordings are created in the directory specified by the /sim/replay/tape-directory property, which i think is "" by default. Suggest you set it to point to where you want tapes to be stored; it's marked as userarchive=y so you only have to set it once.

Note that recovery recordings can be enabled/disabled in File / Flight Recorder Control. They were changed to be disabled by default a couple of weeks ago on next.

[Julian Smith]

Please reply if you still have concerns here. Otherwise i'll mark this ticket as done.

[Megaf]

That still doesn't solve the issue of them not having a proper directory to be, but go ahead and close the ticket if you want.

[Julian Smith]

What do you mean by 'proper directory'? They go into the directory specified by /sim/replay/tape-directory.

[waldo kitty]

apparently the default output path for these files being blank is the problem... said path should default to somewhere that FG already writes files like these or perhaps, as suggested, a new "blackbox" directory in $FG_HOME is warranted for them?

[Julian Smith]

It's a little non-trivial to make recovery snapshots go in a different directory from normal recordings, because it might be difficult to load them - the loading code is rather complicated and fragile. So given that recovery snapshots are disabled by default, i'm not sure this would be a good use of time.

Apologies if this comes across as being negative, but here's my recommendation:

• If the user doesn't want recovery snapshots, leave them disabled.
• If the user does want them, enable them.
• If the user doesn't like where they are put, set /sim/replay/tape-directory.

If that's not enough, maybe post to the flightgear-devel mailing list and see whether we can come to a consensus about the best way to improve things?

Thanks,

• Jules

[waldo kitty]

On 6/8/21 8:17 AM, Julian Smith wrote:

It's a little non-trivial to make recovery snapshots go in a different directory from normal recordings,

ok... why not default them to the proper already existing directory where all
the other fgtapes are already written? that's all i'm asking...

then 1) no one has to deal with problems of them being written where the
binaries are installed which will cause problems on some OSes... 2) they will
easily be found in that existing directory for loading... and 3) they won't have
to hunt them down and maybe finally find them in the binary install directory...

[Julian Smith]

On the next branch, the behaviour is already what you're asking for. Recovery snapshots go to the same directory as other recordings, as determined by the /sim/replay/tape-directory property. If that property is not set, recovery snapshots and other recordings will go into the current directory (on Unix, i don't know what happens on Windows).

If that's not what you're seeing, could you give the exact command line you're using and exact Flightgear version number?

Thanks,

• Jules

[James Turner]

I think the problem is, for a Windows launch via the shortcut, the 'current directory' is the .exe directory, which is not a good place to write anything to. I.e when the property is empty, we really need to default to FG_HOME/Tapes or SGDir::desktop().

Current-working-dir is also meanginless for a bundle launch on macOS, and, I guess, a .desktop launch on Linux? Since CWD might be temp or $HOME or something else.

[legoboyvdlp]

I agree. I would rather that they not go to my Downloads folder. It is somewhat frustrating to have to delete them every time. they should go to somewhere like %FGHOME%.