Version: 1.4.3 (using KDE 3.0.3) Installed from: Mandrake Linux Cooker i586 - Cooker Compiler: gcc version 3.2 (Mandrake Linux 9.0 3.2-1mdk) OS: Linux (i686) release 2.4.19-16mdk My PC crashes every day or two due to issues unrelated to kmail. A few times when it has crashed with kmail open, I come back in to find that all my kmail settings and filters are gone! Given that I have quite complicated figures this is frustrating. knode's settings are also wiped by this so I assume they are shared? My mail folders and subscribed newsgroups remain. Thanx.
I'm sorry, but this isn't related to KDE at all. We do our best to write our programs so that they don't crash, but we can't expect them to survive a crash they didn't cause. Or deal with corrupted configuration files due to crashes. The files are probably getting corrupted because they were open at the time of crash. And they have to be open so that the running programs read their configurations. You could, however, back up your KMail configuration and other important data and restore in case they get corrupted.
Other programs weather crashes okay, and users certainly can and should expect them to do so. When Linux crashes, Galeon recognises that there has been a crash and it restores the pages that were open at the time. I presume this is done via an approach something like: When you want to make a change to the config file: 1. Make a copy of the config file. 2. Apply changes to the copy. 3. Copy the copy over the original. If it crashes at (1), the copy will be corrupted, use the original upon reboot. If it crashes at (2), the copy will be corrupted, use the original upon reboot. If it crashes at (3), the original will be corrupted, copy the copy over the original upon reboot. That way, the only time you are ever editing the original config file, you have a backup. I think it's very shortsighted to consider this not related to KDE. Certainly KDE didn't cause the crash, but just like every other program it needs to do its best to recover from the crash's effects.
Subject: Re: New: config lost on crash If you are using ReiserFS then you should consider switching to another file system. I made some very bad experiences with lost/corrupt files when I was using ReiserFS. Now I'm using XFS.
I should also mention that what you're asking us to do is a major rehaul of the config system shared by all KDE applications. Besides, I'm not sure non-critical operation applications like the KDE ones are supposed to guard against corruption of the files they are writing. If that were so, the level of complexity in the simplest of applications would be enourmous. It's the OS's job to make sure what the application writes gets written correctly -- actually, that's the premise for journalling filesystems: either it's written correctly, or not at all. Now, I'm not saying it will never be implemented. I'm just saying that, if I understood what you want correctly, it won't be done soon... [maybe this bug should be reassigned to kdelibs/kdecore, no?]
Subject: Re: config lost on crash On Sunday 06 April 2003 02:23, revenant@bigpond.net.au wrote: > I presume this is done via an approach something like: > > When you want to make a change to the config file: > > 1. Make a copy of the config file. > > 2. Apply changes to the copy. > > 3. Copy the copy over the original. > > If it crashes at (1), the copy will be corrupted, use the original > upon reboot. If it crashes at (2), the copy will be corrupted, use > the original upon reboot. If it crashes at (3), the original will be > corrupted, copy the copy over the original upon reboot. > > That way, the only time you are ever editing the original config > file, you have a backup. > > I think it's very shortsighted to consider this not related to KDE. > Certainly KDE didn't cause the crash, but just like every other > program it needs to do its best to recover from the crash's effects. Guess what. KDE already uses the standard technic to prevent file corruption (via KSaveFile). The configuration is first written to a temporary file and only if everything has been written successfully then the temporary file is moved over the original file. As you can see KDE does everything what is possible to prevent the corruption of its config files. As I said before I suggest to switch to a better file system. Obviously the one you are using sucks.
Subject: Re: config lost on crash On Sun, 2003-04-06 at 23:24, Ingo Kl