2016-06-27 GnuCash IRC logs

00:00:04 <arlie> also, I tried copying an older dividend transaction, and now that one's broken too. It would be one that had been successfully recovered from the log file, most likely, given its date.
00:00:40 <arlie> also, I tried copying an older dividend transaction, and now that one's broken too. It would be one that had been successfully recovered from the log file, most likely, given its date.
00:01:43 <arlie> other history - the data was imported from some early version of quicken, already several years long, at least a decade ago
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00:15:26 <arlie> note - it's 21:22 Sunday my local time. if folks really wont be on until normal business hours Monday, I'll probably be AFK and asleep by that time. Will provide any needed data when i wake up again ;-)
00:17:47 <jralls> arlie: I'm here finishing up the release.
00:19:37 <arlie> I see my timing is interesting ;-) Will keep this window unburied then - and I'm not about to fade or anything. Was just reading FAQs and guessing why the silence
00:19:38 <jralls> arlie: If you're using the SQL backend then there's no automatic backing-up of GnuCash data. It's your job in that case. The XML backend OTOH renames your old file with a timestamp and saves a new one, so the backup is a complete dataset before the work done at the timestamp.
00:20:15 <arlie> I'm using whatever installs as a binary on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
00:20:58 <arlie> Not a sophisticated user ;-)
00:21:29 <jralls> arlie: I'm talking about how you save your data. The default is XML so unless you changed it you have backups for every save within the timeframe you set for keeping backups and log giles in Preferences.
00:22:46 <jralls> Look again at the folder where your main account file lives. You should have files with names like foo.gnucash.2016623112314.gnucash, where the numbers in the middle are year, month, day, hour, minute, second.
00:23:12 <arlie> What I had was a file named mainA-ccounts, files with names like main_accounts.20160124195933.gnucash and files with names likemain_accounts.20160118225413.log
00:23:37 <jralls> Right, the ones ending in gnucash are the backups.
00:23:53 <arlie> main_accounts and *gnucash proved to be gzipped files without the gz extension. Or more correctly, some kind of formatted text. might easily be xml
00:24:17 <arlie> Problem was, in June I found that no *gnucash file had anything from Feb-May
00:24:54 <arlie> and my save retention period was 1 month. Which sent me to my system backups
00:25:10 <arlie> There was a huge, very old log file
00:25:45 <arlie> which when applied gave me much of what I'd entered from Jan-June
00:26:13 <arlie> bunch of smaller log files as well
00:26:40 <jralls> Looks like you need to review your retention and system backup scripts. If you use GnuCash only once a month then a 30 day retention is obviously not much help.
00:26:52 <arlie> I did various combinations of opening .gnucash and applying logs, then doign a "save as" until I got what appeared to be sane data
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00:27:13 <jralls> But that's water over the dam now. I guess you've got some sort of a file recovered but it's not working right?
00:27:18 <arlie> I use gnucash as things happen, many times a week, but tend not to close the program between uses
00:28:01 <arlie> I think the root cause of the mess is that gnucash is written for people who open the program, add some data, and then close the program. and that's not my style
00:28:28 <arlie> and yes, I did review my retention period ;-)
00:29:22 <arlie> And yes, the current problem is a specific issue, so far seen in only one account
00:29:39 <arlie> This is an asset account consisting of a single mutual fund
00:29:52 <arlie> An old account, from before the data loss.
00:29:56 <jralls> arlie: It's written for people who save frequently. All of the work you do between saves is in memory, not on disk. That's very risky. You needn't close the program, but you do need to save often.
00:30:24 <arlie> A second account was created during the data loss period, and didn't recover sane, but I thought I'd kludged it into submission
00:30:25 <jralls> So what's wrong with the account?
00:30:37 <arlie> and autosave is NOT a save.
00:31:35 <arlie> So I open up the account, enter a date, description of "income dividend", and try to enter shares and $amount [column=buy]
00:31:47 <jralls> arlie: Not for the purpose of making a backup, no.
00:32:06 <arlie> what it should do now is helpfully compute the price, to a precision I can't enter [and dont have on my statement]
00:32:42 <arlie> what it actually does is keep the price as 1, and misadjust either the shares or the price
00:33:14 <arlie> I tried duplicating an exisitng similar transaction, and now the original is messed up too
00:33:51 <arlie> it was willing to enter a new investment, with the money coming from my checking account
00:34:32 <arlie> and earlier income dividends - which I haven't touched - appear sane
00:34:40 <jralls> That would be a reinvested dividend. If you fill in two fields of the three, or make one of them so that shares * price isn't = credit/debit then it should pop a dialog box saying that it's out of balance and asking which one you want it to adjust.
00:34:56 <arlie> yep. it does that, but then it misadjusts
00:35:13 <arlie> just wont let me have a price other than 1
00:35:43 <arlie> I don't know how to check, but I suspect it's somehow decided that for this purpose, we're talking $$ not mutual fund shares
00:35:51 <jralls> What would the approximate correct price?
00:36:06 <arlie> but not for everything in the account - it let me do a direct investment
00:36:29 <arlie> probably around $23 per share
00:36:39 <jralls> And what's the "other" acount?
00:38:37 <jralls> Edit the account and make sure that the commodity and max fraction are right.
00:38:56 <arlie> the one was using to purchase shares. standard checking account, in US $
00:40:10 <arlie> t looks right. Type is FUND and expected name.
00:40:38 <arlie> and account shows as mutual fund, as it should
00:41:32 <arlie> max fraction is use commodity value.
00:41:50 <arlie> smallest fraction, on this version
00:43:57 <jralls> OK. Now look at the commodity in, gee in 2.4 was it called the "stock editor"?
00:44:36 <jralls> Make sure its max fraction hasn't changed on you.
00:44:44 <arlie> security editor?
00:45:03 <arlie> aha - that's what I wanted to know ehere to find
00:45:46 <arlie> seems like some have 10000 and some have 100000
00:46:15 <arlie> this one has 10000
00:46:41 <arlie> older ones have 100000 - suspect they were quicken imports - mostly fund I haven't been using in decades
00:48:20 <arlie> presume that's more or less the denominator...
00:49:16 <jralls> Huh. Guess we changed the name longer ago than I remembered. 10000 should be OK. Hmm, it does seem to be treating that account as currency. Are you looking at the txn in split view?
00:50:08 <arlie> double line, not split
00:50:27 <jralls> Try split and see if the extra detail shows you anything.
00:50:54 <arlie> OK, there's another "account" in income Income:Dividends:Vanguard:VTIAX Dividends
00:51:16 <arlie> Maybe *that's* the one that's got its commodity fubar'd
00:52:04 <arlie> OK, it gets better. that one seems to be a new creation... probably part of me trying to fix this
00:53:21 <arlie> hmm, I had somehow been using the same income account for dividends in each of my vanguard mutual funds
00:53:47 <arlie> and that one has decided that it's currency - Andorran franks (!)
00:54:17 <arlie> it's also unwilling to be switched out of currency
00:55:15 <arlie> as was the new one I created in trying to sort this mess
00:55:49 <arlie> seems as if "income" account can only be currency?
00:56:02 <jralls> That means its type is wrong: Stock and fund accounts are always something not currency, everything else is currency, including income.
00:56:32 <arlie> This is the account for dividend income. Not the asset account, which is fine.
00:56:52 <jralls> VTIAX isn't paying your dividend in shares. It's paying you in cash and then using that cash to buy more shares. You must represent that in 4 splits.
00:57:33 <arlie> so income: dividends: ... -> currency
00:58:05 <arlie> That's fair enough. so not a problem that this is cash, though the andorran currency should be fixed ...
00:58:06 <jralls> The income account should be in USD. If it's in another currency for which there's no exchange rate then it will screw things up. There are fixes for that in 2.6.
00:59:18 <arlie> OK, so the existing one was in andorran franks, dunno when/how that happened. changed that. hope it doesn't readjust all past use of it
00:59:54 <arlie> the new dividend account, created during all this has probably always been usd
01:00:18 <arlie> going back a bit - 4 splits?
01:00:37 <arlie> I'd have tht just $ in, shares bought ==> 2
01:01:44 <arlie> got same effect, trying to edit the messed up dividenf
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01:02:41 <jralls> That doesn't really represent the situation correctly. I suppose this is all happening inside the Vanguard account and it doesn't have a cash component.
01:02:43 <arlie> same behaviour when entered a new one. either dividend income account
01:03:04 <arlie> they do automatic dividend reinvestment
01:03:31 <arlie> what they tell me is how many shares, what price, what $ amount, and new total shares :-)
01:04:23 <arlie> would be more interesting if they were sending the dividends to a different account i suppose. [that is, a diferfent mutual fund]
01:04:45 <arlie> all I have there is a bunch of mutual funds, no cash sweep or similar.
01:05:05 <jralls> Yeah. But the real effect is that you have income->cash->shares. Even though the cash exists only for a second. But GnuCash isn't smart enough to enforce that. It would be more apparent if you held the funds in "street name" in a brokerage account.
01:05:18 <arlie> going to do another experiment - try to record a dividend in a different vanguard account
01:05:46 <arlie> ah yes, you are right.
01:06:57 <jralls> Anyway, the direct income->stock should work as long as the income is the same currency as the asset account that contains the share account. I expect that things got screwed up because of the mismatch. Try deleting those transactions, changing the income account from Andoarran Francs to US Dollars, and recreating the transaction.
01:07:31 <arlie> did the change currency and create new xaction part. didnt delete old one. No joy.
01:09:02 <arlie> with the bad one deleted, typing a new one it miscopied an old one - you know how you give it enough to recognize, then tab...
01:09:30 <arlie> oh bah, had 2 bad ones
01:10:24 <jralls> Don't let it autofill. Add or change some text so that you can make a wholly new transaction.
01:11:02 <arlie> bingo - when i suppressed my habit of tab, I got a good one
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01:11:52 <arlie> crossing my fingers - this may have nailed it
01:12:11 <jralls> OK. Now save! ;-) Then look through your other accounts and make sure you don't have any other goofy currencies.
01:13:01 <arlie> phew!
01:13:31 <arlie> wonder why/how/when it get set wrong...
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01:13:46 <arlie> thank you very much
01:14:47 <arlie> another question while I'm being a naive luser ;-) would it make sense to consider upgrading to a more recent version. I'm on an elderly Ubuntu, and wont be upgrading my OS till it's out of support
01:15:04 <arlie> but I could maybe avoid sending people like you on trips into ancient history
01:15:21 <arlie> the worry is that if the file is messed up, a newer version might choke on it worse
01:15:52 <arlie> also that I might go crazy downloading dependencies, since I'd presumably have to build from source
01:20:12 <jralls> Yeah, it's easy to get into dependency hell with an old distro like that. I know you can run 2.6.12 (13 as soon as the &^*&^ windows build finishes) on 1403LTS, not at all sure about 12.
01:21:05 <arlie> going to be forced to upgrade the OS in another 8 months anyway :-(
01:22:21 <arlie> I guess I'll cross that bridge when i get to it
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01:22:54 <arlie> Meeanwhile, an enormous thank you to you for helping me sort this out. was pretty well at the end of my debugging-foo
01:23:31 <arlie> and of allt he data I dont want to use, financial is high on the lists, even though i do have paper backups of most of it
01:23:38 <arlie> use --> lose
01:23:51 <arlie> and my apologies for my typing too
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