#214 garbage filename created in HOME directory probably by autosave

[Dr.Beco]

Dear Xournal maintainers,

First of all, thanks a lot for this great software. I am using it a lot to record video-classes on linux (available free on my youtube channel).

Bug report:

From time to time, out of nowhere, I notice a very strange filename on my $HOME directory, with lots of garbage. Today I got one:

rw-r--r-- 1 beco beco 228K 2020-10-18 15:48 'R'$'\270\036\205\353\261''M@'$'\354''Q'$'\270\036\205\223''g@\'$'\217\302\365''('$'\274''M@'$'\232\231\231\231\231\241''g@7-resolv!'

It has no extension and the "file" command didn't say much, so the first time I encontered it I was a bit puzzled.
`file 'R'$'\270\036\205\353\261''M@'$'\354''Q'$'\270\036\205\223''g@\'$'\217\302\365''('$'\274''M@'$'\232\231\231\231\231\241''g@7-resolv!'

'R'$'\270\036\205\353\261''M@'$'\354''Q'$'\270\036\205\223''g@\'$'\217\302\365''('$'\274''M@'$'\232\231\231\231\231\241''g@7-resolv!': gzip compressed data, from Unix, original size 1000863`

But then I realized it could be a xournal file, and I renamed it accordinly:

$ mv R�^^���M@�Q�^^��g@\\���\(�M@������g@7-resolv\! autosave.xoj

and indeed it solved the mistery. The file can even be opened by xournal with no problems.

I am "guessing" it is the autosave problem, but I'm not sure.

Also, it is a bit tricky to rename the file, since the characters are binaries. Dolphin (file manager) can't rename, not even using F2. And the "mv" command sometimes don't "autocomplete" the name of the file, so it is somewhat annoying, sorry about that.

I hope we can find the problem.
My best. Thanks.

[Denis Auroux]

Yes, this has been a bug, which I believe should have been fixed by
commit [ee6960] on April 16 2018:
"Fix sporadic wrong detection of auto-save restores and creation of
randomly named files when opening files from recently opened list"

I apologize for what was a pretty bad bug. Try getting the latest source
code at https://sourceforge.net/p/xournal/code/ci/master/tree/
(download snapshot in the top-right corner above the list, then follow
instructions in the file called INSTALL).

If you got version 0.4.8.2016 on your own, sorry that I've been too lazy
to package an official release with this bugfix included in it. If you
got xournal from your linux distribution, please file a report with the
package maintainer for your distribution asking them to update to the
latest upstream version.

Denis

[Dr.Beco]

Thanks, Denis! I'll see what action to take.