Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 70177
File Recovery restores obsolete document version
Last modified: 2008-11-06 21:56:45 UTC
I'm afraid this is going to be a bit vague, but I've noticed this three times now, and am really worried about it. Right now, it's even got me a bit angry (at the software and at myself). After a crash, the file recovery kicks in. I'm not quite sure when the last time was I saved, so I click ok. After the recovery, I *know* for a fact though, that I had saved a newer version already, and the recory has not recovered some of my work. Now this would not be an issue, if the recovery had not *replaced* the file on disk (newer) with the recovered version (older)! When using file recovery, OOo needs to create temporary files that are not saved over the last manually saved versions. This is more than dangerous, and has caused problems for a colleague at least once (when I was there, at that time I told her she had NOT saved a more "advanced" version while I trusted OO and told her, she must be wrong) and now for the second time today for me, at which point I'm starting to loose trust in OO and know for a fact that the above is true. I don't have time to start testcases right now, I'm in the middle of learning for my finals, which is why I'm so disapointed by OO (in this matter).
I also see the problem with "2.0.2 German version WIN XP: [680m5(Build9011)]". I get a recovery - definitively for an older version than my latest saved one - without remembering any crash. The problem is that that happens occasionally, I have no Idea how to make that reproducible. It is even worse with "2.1.0 German version WIN XP: [680m6(Build9095)]", again and again I get recoveries (when I start working and open OOo after I started the PC) without any memory that there has been a crash. I use that PC very seldom so that I can not remember whether I had such "fallbacks" to older document versions. P2 because of dataloss. Here we should only discuss the problem that OOo starts recovery without any reason and that it restores obsolete versions. @imforumman: For your suggestion to use new temporary files for the recovery you might open a separate new ENHANCEMENT issue.
Today again :-( It seems that it happened during an unnecessary recovery: I was asked whether I want to recover several documents, although there has not been any crash and OOo was already running, as a screenshot shows: <http://www.openoffice.org/nonav/issues/showattachment.cgi/42742/screenshot.png>
Two things: 1. Just to clarify: I've never had the crash recovery kick in without there having been a crash. IMHO, this should be an extra bug "Document restore invoked without crash". 2. I don't know how this Document Recovery thing works, but for me, this bug has two components: a) low priority: document recovery restores obsolete document version b) high priority: document recovery overwrites saved version with obsolete recovered version. Latter is the BAD BAD BAD thing, which has caused me meanwhile to abandon OO until this is fixed. Suggestion: - We close this bug. - New bug: Document Recovery restores obsolete version - New bug: Document Recovery overwrites saved version with restored version without asking - New bug: Document Recovery is activated without a crash
@imforumman : the right path. I am just trying to find some relations between these recovery issues (I also found Issue 70372 as an additional problem) and I believe something similar to your proposal will be the result.
Please submit different issues for different problems/behaviour, so that we can close this one. Thanks !
Not reproducible in a more recent build like a m217 anymore -> worksforme
It's really a mess with "2.2.1 Multilingual German version WIN XP: [680m18(Build9161)]". Again and again document recovery starts after PC-start -> OOo-start, and often I get obsolete document versions as result. The problem began after I checked menu 'Tools > Options > Load Save > General > Save AutoRecoveryInformation all 10 minutes'. I hope "m217" is more advanced than 2.2.1?
I can confirm, that for v3 beta this appears fixed. Great job!
close the invalid issue