OSCAR Notes disappearing

[elliotg]

Recently I have been trying out different masks and so that I can keep track of which was in use each night I enter this information into Notes.  In the past this has been very helpful.  But now I find that text entered into the Notes disappears after about 1 week!  Before that time there is nothing in the Notes tab (and no boldening of the any dates in the Calendar to indicate a Note).

I will this need to make a manual note in a document to keep this information which is a pain. I checked and I definitely have the latest version of Oscar.  Would starting a new profile help?

[sheepless]

idk why they'd disappear after a week unless the program hasn't been shut down properly as it's the only way to save notes. as a new feature request, I suggest adding a save button for notes.

[kappa]

Can you confirm your exact OSCAR version and platform. If you look at the debug pane (Help | Troubleshooting | Show Debug Pane) you should see 'Saving "OSCAR" "Journal" Summaries' any time you click outside the notes after making any change to the note.

[elliotg]

Thanks for getting back.

I am using OSCAR 1.3.1 on Windows 10 (version 21H2)..And I always shut down OSCAR using the OSCAR File menu Exit option.

I have tried the debug panel, added a note and moved off Notes. And I indeed find "909175: Debug: Saving "OSCAR" "Journal" Summaries". But this is not a surprise as it is not the most recent entries which go missing - it is the older ones (certainly those older than a week or two).

To check if it is a profile issue I have now set up a new profile. I will see how this goes, but this might take a week or two. Any other suggestions welcome!

[kappa]

Hmmm. I have notes for every day and haven't lost any since upgrading from 1.2 (which did have an issue with saving notes, which only exhibits after restarting OSCAR). As indicated by the log, the journal is flushed to disk whenever the notes pane loses focus.

You could try rebuilding the summary file:
0) Take note of missing note dates.
1) Stop OSCAR or switch to another profile
2) Backup your journal (<OSCAR Data Path>/Profiles/<profile name>/Journal_* )
3) Delete, move or rename any Summaries.xml or Summaries.xml.gz file in the Journal_*/ directory (do both exist or just one of them?)
4) Restart OSCAR or switch back to problem profile and see if missing notes are visible.

[elliotg]

[quote pid='439979' dateline='1647998478']
[
Hmmm. I have notes for every day and haven't lost any since upgrading from 1.2 (which did have an issue with saving notes, which only exhibits after restarting OSCAR). As indicated by the log, the journal is flushed to disk whenever the notes pane loses focus.

You could try rebuilding the summary file:
0) Take note of missing note dates.
1) Stop OSCAR or switch to another profile
2) Backup your journal (<OSCAR Data Path>/Profiles/<profile name>/Journal_* )
3) Delete, move or rename any Summaries.xml or Summaries.xml.gz file in the Journal_*/ directory (do both exist or just one of them?)
4) Restart OSCAR or switch back to problem profile and see if missing notes are visible.
[/quote]

Thanks Kappa,

This did not fix the issue.  But I now know what the issue is!
Inside my main profile I have not one but two journals
   

Each of these have their own summaries folders and .gz file. The first journal has in its summaries folder 113 small files while the second journal has merely 6 in its summaries folder. It is clear that it is this second journal that it is the current one in use. And from the dates I can see that the swap over to the new journal took place on March 8th!

What I would like to know is why this switch occurred?  Now that I know what happened I am less worried about this although I would like to merge the two sets of data.  Is there any one out there who can help?

[kappa]

OK. Great. What are the Journal directory names? (Is one Journal_0000001, and does this contain the more recent entries?)

You should be able to:
0) Stop OSCAR
1) Backup Journal_* directories
2) Rename or move the older Journal_* folder (so it doesn't start with "Journal_" or is outside the profile dir)
2) copy the .000 files from the Summaries folder of renamed/moved Journal_* directory to the remaing one
3) delete the Summaries.xml.gz from the remaining Journal_* folder
4) restart OSCAR

As to why, I'm not sure. There is a note in the code about the Journal directory being recreated historically if the profile.xml becomes corrupted (actually, it should say machines.xml), but OSCAR 1.3.1 should pick up any existing Journal_* directory. Does the active Journal_*/Summaries/ folder contain older as well as newer entries? What versions of OSCAR/SH has this profile been used with?

[elliotg]

Hi Kappa,

I have now followed your advice.  The two Journal folders were Journal_00004cab, which contained summary files from dates until March 8th of this year,  and Journal_0000243b which contained 6 files from after that date. 

First I closed the OSCAR application. I then made a copy of the active journal (for backup), then copied the files in the Summaries subfolder of the inactive Journal_00004cab with dates from the beginning of this year into the Journal_0000243b summaries folder.  I also deleted the Summaries.xml.gz from this Journal folder.  I then opened OSCAR and confirmed that all my Notes from this year were back!  (A new Summaries.xml.gz file was created as soon as I started OSCAR).

I see no reason why I could not copy the previous years' notes from Journal_00004cab to Journal_0000243b but I probably won't bather as I am unlikely to need to refer back to them.

Thank you for your valuable help!

Elliot