saving on network drive generates spurious error message
Oliver Dain
via web
I've been a happy MoneyDance user for many years now. I just recenly moved our data files onto a networked RAID array. Now when I save the current file I get the following error message:
"error making backup: java.io.FileNotFoundException: /path/to/my/data/files/moneyDanceData.md-2010-05-16 (No such file or directory)"
but the save actually succeeds (I can close and re-open MoneyDance and the data has been preserved) and the file /path/to/my/data/files/moneyDanceData.md-2010-05-16 exists, is non-empty, and at least from a quick glance in a text editor doesn't appear to be corrupt. I think this is a false error message but not sure what's causing it.
I'd like to keep the data on the shared NAS device if I can because it allows both me and my wife to open and look at the data from different computers (though we'll obviously be very careful not to open the same files from two different computers at the same time) and the array is RAID1 thus providing a bit of security for important data.
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Support Staff 2 Posted by Ben Spencer on 17 May, 2010 02:27 PM
The data file called "moneyDanceData.md-2010-05-16" is backup file rather than your primary data file. This is not the file that is opened when you run Moneydance. The configuration options for backup files including the path to save them to are under File->Preferences->Backup. It seems like Moneydance is able to save your primary data file. But not able to create the backup file. What is the location of your primary data file? Is that also on your NAS or is it being stored locally. If you are running windows or linux the location of the currently open data file is shown in the title bar of the application. If you don't know where it is on OS X you may have to use spotlight search to look for the file called "moneyDanceData.md".
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
3 Posted by Oliver Dain on 17 May, 2010 05:48 PM
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Here are concrete steps to
reporoduce:
1) Put all MoneyDance data (main file and backups) on a CIFS external file
system
2) Open the main file in MoneyDance
3) Hit Ctrl-S to save the file again. It will successfully create a new
backup file called moneyDanceData.md-2010-05-17 (e.g. today's date)
4) Hit Ctrl-S again to save the file again. The second attempt to save will
result in the error message described in the original email. Namely:
Error making backup: java.io.FileNotFoundException:
/home/oliver/dlink/share/shared/MoneyDance/Home/moneyDanceData.md-2010-05-17
(No such file or directory)
Even though that file, at that path, does exist and was created by
MoneyDance in step (3) above. All further attempts to save result in the
same error message. Note that it does correctly save the main data file but
the mtime of the backup file is not changed indicating the MoneyDance is not
rewriting that file. I'm not sure what the correct behavior is - should it
rewrite it or just check for existence and do nothing as long as a backup
has already been made?
4 Posted by Oliver Dain on 17 May, 2010 05:49 PM
Just to be clear, my main data file is at
/home/oliver/dlink/share/shared/MoneyDance/Home/moneyDanceData.md and the
backup files are being saved to the same directory. /home/oliver/dlink/share
is an automounted cifs/samba share that points to a NAS device. I'm running
this on Linux.
Thanks,
Oliver
5 Posted by Oliver Dain on 21 May, 2010 08:58 PM
ping...
Summary: Saving the backup file on a network drive doesn't work. I got a
reponse to this bug report telling me what a backup file was and how to
change the location of the file but I don't think I've gotten info about the
issue itself. I'm hoping to find out that either:
1) I'm doing something wrong and here's how to do it right
2) Its a bug and will be fixed in some future release
3) Its a bug and won't be fixed because there's a workaround.
I suppose I can always put the the backup file on local disk while still
storing the main MD data on the network drive as a workaround. Is there
anything more elegant to be done?
6 Posted by Oliver Dain on 21 May, 2010 11:57 PM
More info: this appears to be specific to samba/cifs. If I put the data on
an nfs mount instead its fine. I think the issue may be that ctime is
handled correctly with cifs shares on linux so perhaps the error message
indicating that the file doesn't exist is incorrect and what is meant is
that the file doesn't have the expected ctime??
7 Posted by ljb on 22 May, 2010 01:39 AM
FYI, I've tried Moneydance 2010 with the data file and the backups over CIFS, and did not experience any problems at all. I'm using Moneydance 2010r3 (750). Client is Xubuntu-10.04, with the remote volume mounted using "mount.cifs -o noperm" (I need the option because the ids differ). The server side is running a different Linux distribution with Samba-3.2.15 providing the shared file service (yes this is an old series).
I did what you said: Ctrl+S a few times; each time the file is saved and backup created without errors.
I'm wondering about your NAS with CIFS. Could the issue be with what's inside? You don't say what it actually runs - real Windows, Samba, or other... Any chance you can fire up something like wireshark and watch the SMB protocol exchange? It would be interesting to see if the service is returning an error.
Dumb question: Are the clocks reasonably synchronized between your client and server?
8 Posted by Oliver Dain on 22 May, 2010 01:48 AM
Thanks much for the reply. It sounds like this may be specific to my setup.
The NAS is a dlink dns-323 (which runs linux and a Samba server). I don't
think the clocks are terribly well synchronized (probably to within a few
minutes of each other - not running NTP or anything fancy). If I have time
I'll try Wireshark but since this seems specific to my setup and since
moving to nfs fixes things I'll likely leave it alone.
Thanks much for your help,
Oliver
9 Posted by ljb on 22 May, 2010 09:54 PM
That looks like a pretty neat box. (But it's running an even older version of Samba than me...)
If you haven't yet given up on using CIFS with it, you might want to take a look at this report:
http://www.zeitoun.net/articles/dsn323-samba-dfs-bug/start
(Yes the URL has a typo, DSN should be DNS, but that is the correct URL.)
I suppose it is a long-shot but it just might be relevant.
10 Posted by Oliver Dain on 23 May, 2010 04:42 AM
Thanks for sending that along! I did some looking for a dns-323 samba bug
and didn't find anything but this does indeed appear to be the issue. Looks
like a pretty easy fix too.
FWIW the problem only seems to happen from my Linux box. When I use OS-X as
a client I don't see the issue.
Angie Rauscher closed this discussion on 02 Jul, 2010 01:01 AM.