I need backups

I configured my system per the instructions in Chapter 2 of the Contributor's Guide, reluctantly including the part about disabling the Autorecovery and backup features. I just lost most of today's work on the Base Guide because LO crashed on me. How hard and fast is the reason for disabling these valuable features?
In my own work, I have them enabled and I have never had a problem with images that the guide states. Is this "bug" still valid in 3.6 and if so, what are the odds of it doing damage?
What I am thinking at this moment is that the odds of the bug are far less than the odds of LO crashing and losing a day's work, and I am about to re-enable them!
Girvin Herr

That is probably outdated info and should be removed from the guide. I save manually quite often, so I don't run into the lost work problem even if LO does crash, so I tend to forget that it affects others. Sorry. (Hangs head in shame.) --Jean

Hi :slight_smile:
I thought most people disabled things such as the autorecovery and did their own saves at a time of their own choosing.  It's so annoying so finally be in mid-flow and then have to wait for the save to finish before continuing and then losing inspiration by the time it's done.

A long time ago people started trying to save all the screen-shots in a separate folder.  Even easier to unzip the odt and extract the "images" folder and keep that safely separate as insurance against the day of image loss.

I would rather see someone add a further comment to the instructions to tell people to save their own work every half hour or so rather than risk all the problems we had before.

The bug was not "a" bug.  There seemed to be many different combinations of events that would lead to losing images.  I vaguely remember people here spending ages tracking down 1 specific case but it was difficult to disentangle different combinations of circumstances.  I vaguely remember that 1 combination leading to 1 bug getting fixed but people still finding occasional problems.

One hope is that as the code is de-spaghettied, as comments are removed or translated, as streamlining continues, as chunks written in odd languages are translated into C++ or whatever instead of Java and a mix of other things, that as these sorts of things are being done a lot of the problems drop out or get found&fixed as part of the process or just identified more easily.  The allegation in the docs team a couple of years ago was that this problem had been around since OOo 2.x and that despite a lot of time being put into pinpointing it since then the problem had never been fully solved.

At least 1 case of the problem seemed to be that if someone else had been working with auto-saves on then the problem would happen later on, perhaps to someone that was taking elaborate precautions.

Given that those screen-shots would be really useful in other forms of documentation, such as the in-built help, perhaps the wiki, perhaps as stills in videos, perhaps in HowTo guides, blogs and elsewhere i think it would be really great if people could reach into the zip of the odt and create a copy of the images folder.  I think best to not worry about the messed-up name of the images in there.  Leave that to someone else to sort out.

Murphy's Law suggests that the only time you wont experience a particular difficulty is when you take elaborate precautions against it.

On the other hand we used to get a lot of questions about the issue on the Users List and now we get hardly any but i get the feeling that might partly be due to people using AskLO or the forums or other places instead of always going to the Users List nowadays.

It is gutting to lose so much work but i thought most computer users were used to the idea of saving and creating a spare copy (backup copy) as part of their "going to get a cuppa tea/coffee" routine.  Also i tend to find that however long it took first time i can generally do it a lot faster 2nd time around after i lose work.  Decisions that were agonised over or researched are taken in moments 2nd time around. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

A simpler solution is to make a small change (to activate the save
icon) immediately after loading and then save the file. Once it has
been saved by hand, autosaving no longer does any harm. I can't
remember who discovered this but it was notified on this list, and I
have never lost images since I started using this trick.

I would not like to do without autosave. When I am in full flow, I
frequently forget to save; knowing that it has been taken care of is a
great relief.

Hi :slight_smile:
If it's been working for you then it obviously does work quite comprehensively.  I don't remember it from this list but there is tons of stuff that i miss or don't remember.  That does sound like a much better answer too. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hazel Russman wrote:

A simpler solution is to make a small change (to activate the save
icon) immediately after loading and then save the file. Once it has
been saved by hand, autosaving no longer does any harm. I can't
remember who discovered this but it was notified on this list, and I
have never lost images since I started using this trick.

I would not like to do without autosave. When I am in full flow, I
frequently forget to save; knowing that it has been taken care of is a
great relief.
  

Hazel,
Yes, that is exactly what happened to me yesterday. I was totally involved with my work on the Base Guide and lost track of time. When I realized I needed to save my work, LO crashed when I went to save the 4-hours or so of work. Murphy's Law reigns supreme! Now I get to try to remember what I edited in those 4 hours or so...
Girvin

Tom,
That is easy to say and I do agree about backing up regularly, but when I am deep into work, I sometimes lose track of time and it is difficult for me to regularly come out of that and save. In fact, this crash happened when I saved! I agree that sometimes it is irritating to wait while the file is saving, especially, when it seems to like doing so in the middle of typing in text or right after clicking on something. Hardly ever if I am idle, just reading what I have written (proofreading). In all my years of working with OOo and now LO and hundreds of documents, many with images and/or Draw figures, I have never lost images or anything like this "bug" says could happen. I have always had AutoRecovery enabled as well as "Always create backup copy". I guess I got used to that feature, because it always worked when either program crashed. I never have lost my work. In fact, after recovery, the cursor is usually where it was when it crashed! That is impressive. I had second thoughts about complying with the Contributor's Guide direction to turn AutoRecovery off, but I went ahead and did it anyway, against my better judgment. I should have taken my reluctance seriously. Every time I do not listen to that little warning voice in the back of my head, I regret it.

It appears that the consensus is that this "bug" is no longer with us or that it is trivial. So I am going to turn AutoRecovery back on so this does not happen again. The file I am working on does not have any hidden images anyway, so the risk is minimal - much less than losing work again if Lo crashes.

I am a firm believer in Murphy's Law. But in this case, it is all about risk.
Take care.
Girvin

Tom Davies wrote:

Hi :slight_smile:
I think this advice is worth following too. 
Good luck Girvin!
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

I totally agree.

Funny, the save icon activation described is very similar to what I experience when I change the template. Once changed, I must immediately save the document, close it, reload it and then I can continue. If I edit the document after the template change without going through this procedure, LO will crash. Maybe not immediately, but sometime during the session it will crash. Guaranteed and repeatable over several versions.
Thanks.
Girvin

Tom Davies wrote: