Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Wolfgang Engelmann]

Normally if you load your lyx file and there is an emergency file it 
tells you and if you agree it loads it. You are than asked whether you 
would like to keep the emergency file, and I would suggest to keep it.

Wolfgang
Am 15.05.2014 04:20, schrieb Steve Burnham:

Forum,

I was working on my thesis and tried to change some line spacing and fonts and 
LyX crashed on me and I cannot get the file to open up anymore (LyX freezes 
when I try to open it).  Under normal circumstances I have an online backup 
always running and I can just roll back to 15 minutes previously.  
Unfortunately I was doing this work in the airport and on the airplane so I had 
no internet access.  I have the following files:

Thesis 2.lyx and Thesis 2.lyx.emergency

I assume the emergency was made when LyX crashed on me as a means to restore 
any lost work.  I noticed that the .lyx file can be opened in a text editor and 
it appears as LaTeX code.  Because of these two files I am hoping there is a 
way to possibly de-corrupt the file that crashed and get it opened up again.

I am using LyX 2.1.0 on OSX 10.9.2.  I’m attaching the crash report in case it 
means something to anyone.  It’s beyond my understanding of coding.

When all is said and done it’s only about 6 hours worth of work and I have all 
of my thesis in an unformatted word document so if it cannot be fixed there’s 
no lost content, only time spent formatting.  Any help or insight is 
appreciated.



-Steve

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

2014-05-15 4:20 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:

 Forum,

 I was working on my thesis and tried to change some line spacing and fonts
 and LyX crashed on me and I cannot get the file to open up anymore (LyX
 freezes when I try to open it).  Under normal circumstances I have an
 online backup always running and I can just roll back to 15 minutes
 previously.  Unfortunately I was doing this work in the airport and on the
 airplane so I had no internet access.  I have the following files:

 Thesis 2.lyx and Thesis 2.lyx.emergency

 I assume the emergency was made when LyX crashed on me as a means to
 restore any lost work.  I noticed that the .lyx file can be opened in a
 text editor and it appears as LaTeX code.  Because of these two files I am
 hoping there is a way to possibly de-corrupt the file that crashed and get
 it opened up again.

 I am using LyX 2.1.0 on OSX 10.9.2.  I’m attaching the crash report in
 case it means something to anyone.  It’s beyond my understanding of coding.

 When all is said and done it’s only about 6 hours worth of work and I have
 all of my thesis in an unformatted word document so if it cannot be fixed
 there’s no lost content, only time spent formatting.  Any help or insight
 is appreciated.


Of course this should not happen.

In case the files are really corrupted, that is, if the .lyx and/or the
.lyx.emergency file do not end with
\end_body
\end_document

you can check if you have a working backup in your backups directory (see
Tools  Preferences  Paths).

HTH
Jürgen





 -Steve

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[aparsloe]

On 15/05/2014 6:37 p.m., Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

In case the files are really corrupted, that is, if the .lyx and/or the 
.lyx.emergency file do not end with

\end_body
\end_document

you can check if you have a working backup in your backups directory 
(see Tools  Preferences  Paths).


HTH
Jürgen

I've often thought that the backup files should be more accessible -- 
for instance through the normal File  Open dialog. At present the 
dialog has a combo box (is that the term?) at the lower right offering 
LyX Documents (*.lyx) and a triangular arrow suggesting there are more 
options below. But there aren't. It would be good to see *.lyx~ files 
there and to have the ability to open them. I realise naming conflicts 
would need to be sorted out, but the present accessibility of backup 
files is awkward (which may be a good thing of course).


Andrew

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Steve Burnham]

On May 15, 2014 at 03:40:54 AM, aparsloe (apars...@clear.net.nz) wrote:

On 15/05/2014 6:37 p.m., Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote: 

In case the files are really corrupted, that is, if the .lyx and/or the 
.lyx.emergency file do not end with 
\end_body 
\end_document 

you can check if you have a working backup in your backups directory 
(see Tools  Preferences  Paths). 

HTH 
Jürgen 


I checked my backups directory and just my luck, there is no directory listed 
for backups.  I opened up the .lyx file and there is no \end_body or 
\end_document anywhere in the file.  The document ends with “\begin_inset 
Tabular”.  It actually looks like the entire document isn’t even there, 
possibly ending at chapter 5 (of 8 total plus appendix).  

I tried to add \end_body and \end_document to the end of the .lyx file but when 
I open it up now I just get that the file ended unexpectedly, which means that 
it is probably corrupted.



On May 15, 2014 at 24:29:12 AM, Wolfgang Engelmann (engelm...@uni-tuebingen.de) 
wrote:

Normally if you load your lyx file and there is an emergency file it 
tells you and if you agree it loads it. You are than asked whether you 
would like to keep the emergency file, and I would suggest to keep it. 
Wolfgang 


Unfortunately I cannot even get to the point where I am asked to keep the 
emergency file.  LyX just completely freezes as soon as I try to open up the 
file.  Any other file opens  up just fine, it’s only this one. 

I installed LyX and MikTeX on my Windows machine at school to see if this was a 
problem isolated to OSX, unfortunately LyX freezes when opening the file on 
Windows as well (Windows 8.1, LyX 2.1.0).  

-Steve

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Scott Kostyshak]

Hi Steve,

Sorry to hear about all this. It sounds like a really frustrating
experience and even though it's 6 hours, it would be 6 painful hours
to do something you've already done.

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 12:24 PM, Steve Burnham dan...@gmail.com wrote:

 Unfortunately I cannot even get to the point where I am asked to keep the
 emergency file.  LyX just completely freezes as soon as I try to open up the
 file.  Any other file opens  up just fine, it’s only this one.

 I installed LyX and MikTeX on my Windows machine at school to see if this
 was a problem isolated to OSX, unfortunately LyX freezes when opening the
 file on Windows as well (Windows 8.1, LyX 2.1.0).

The file really is corrupted then. Looking in the file, can you check
whether it has the part that you worked on? It's possible that part
was lost somehow.

It sounds like a bunch of strange things happened at once (no online
backup and a LyX crash), but if you want to protect yourself from this
in the future, you might want to consider revision control.

Best of luck,

Scott

Scott

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

2014-05-15 18:24 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:

 I checked my backups directory and just my luck, there is no directory
 listed for backups.


Ouch.


  I opened up the .lyx file and there is no \end_body or \end_document
 anywhere in the file.  The document ends with “\begin_inset Tabular”.


So you were hit exactly by this nasty bug:
http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/9049

We really need the fix this, but we are sort of stuck :-(

Jürgen

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Scott Kostyshak]

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:56 PM, Jürgen Spitzmüller sp...@lyx.org wrote:

 We really need the fix this, but we are sort of stuck :-(

Steve, can you send your preferences file? Since we don't know what's
going on, maybe with a few more reports we can get lucky and pick out
a pattern.

Scott

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Steve Burnham]

On May 15, 2014 at 12:08:40 PM, Scott Kostyshak (skost...@lyx.org) wrote:

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:56 PM, Jürgen Spitzmüller sp...@lyx.org wrote: 

 We really need the fix this, but we are sort of stuck :-( 

Steve, can you send your preferences file? Since we don't know what's 
going on, maybe with a few more reports we can get lucky and pick out 
a pattern. 

Scott 


I sure can, I think this is the right file.  Happy to send anything that might 
help.

-Steve

preferences
Description: Binary data

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

2014-05-15 20:08 GMT+02:00 Scott Kostyshak:

 Steve, can you send your preferences file? Since we don't know what's
 going on, maybe with a few more reports we can get lucky and pick out
 a pattern.


I was hit myself again by this some days ago while I pasted in a table.
After I restored the lost data, I repeated the actions, but could not
trigger the crash anymore. It seems there is some action needed while at
the same time a background process (autosave?) is performed.

The problem is that even people who got the crash when running LyX in a
debugger could not get a backtrace. And without this, debugging is really
searching the needle in the haystack.

Jürgen



 Scott

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Steve Burnham]

On May 15, 2014 at 11:56:05 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller (sp...@lyx.org) wrote:

2014-05-15 18:24 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:
I checked my backups directory and just my luck, there is no directory listed 
for backups.


Ouch.


I didn’t even know that was an option.  I’m still learning LyX, but it only 
takes once to make sure there is a directory listed there.




 
 I opened up the .lyx file and there is no \end_body or \end_document anywhere 
in the file.  The document ends with “\begin_inset Tabular”.  


So you were hit exactly by this nasty bug:
http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/9049
 
We really need the fix this, but we are sort of stuck :-(

Jürgen


That’s what it looks like my problem is.  Too bad it’s being difficult to 
replicate and isolate the problem.  Should it happen again I will be sure to 
update.  I can’t remember exactly what I was doing.  It was something to do 
with chaining font styles and single/double spacing.

The file really is corrupted then. Looking in the file, can you check 
whether it has the part that you worked on? It's possible that part 
was lost somehow. 


It’s actually missing a very significant amount, not just what I had most 
recently been working.  Probably 2/3 of the document.





It sounds like a bunch of strange things happened at once (no online 
backup and a LyX crash), but if you want to protect yourself from this 
in the future, you might want to consider revision control. 

It sounds like at this point I am probably just SOL.  A minor annoyance though 
compared to what I was going through with MSWord and as I am getting better at 
using LyX, things go faster now.  I am going to start using version control.  I 
found this page about it (http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/VersionControl), 
unfortunately it is very vague.  I have all the necessary packages to have it 
working on OSX.  I noticed there are a bunch of options like “check in changes” 
“copy” “revert” and “compare”.  Is there another document that might explain 
what these features are?  I have it turned on but I really don’t have any idea 
how to work it properly.  Particularly the check in and out changes options.

-Steve

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

2014-05-15 20:19 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:

 It sounds like at this point I am probably just SOL.  A minor annoyance
 though compared to what I was going through with MSWord and as I am getting
 better at using LyX, things go faster now.  I am going to start using
 version control.  I found this page about it (
 http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/VersionControl), unfortunately it is very vague.
  I have all the necessary packages to have it working on OSX.  I noticed
 there are a bunch of options like “check in changes” “copy” “revert” and
 “compare”.  Is there another document that might explain what these
 features are?  I have it turned on but I really don’t have any idea how to
 work it properly.  Particularly the check in and out changes options.


First, of course, this bug needs to be fixed ASAP. But then, if you have
the backup directory set up and you regularly hit save, you'll at least not
lose _much_. Version control is of course a further option, but I am not
sure RCS (which is described on that wiki page) could not be corrupted as
well by this bug. Other version control options are described in Help 
Additional Features, sec. 7.2.

Jürgen

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Steve Burnham]

On May 15, 2014 at 12:28:41 PM, Jürgen Spitzmüller (sp...@lyx.org) wrote:

2014-05-15 20:19 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:
It sounds like at this point I am probably just SOL.  A minor annoyance though 
compared to what I was going through with MSWord and as I am getting better at 
using LyX, things go faster now.  I am going to start using version control.  I 
found this page about it (http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/VersionControl), 
unfortunately it is very vague.  I have all the necessary packages to have it 
working on OSX.  I noticed there are a bunch of options like “check in changes” 
“copy” “revert” and “compare”.  Is there another document that might explain 
what these features are?  I have it turned on but I really don’t have any idea 
how to work it properly.  Particularly the check in and out changes options.

First, of course, this bug needs to be fixed ASAP. But then, if you have the 
backup directory set up and you regularly hit save, you'll at least not lose 
_much_. Version control is of course a further option, but I am not sure RCS 
(which is described on that wiki page) could not be corrupted as well by this 
bug. Other version control options are described in Help  Additional Features, 
sec. 7.2.

Jürgen



I just realized as well, if the file becomes corrupted then revision control 
won’t do anything for me as I cannot get the file open to access it correct?  I 
think what I will do then is just have that backup directory and save 
frequently like I have been.  I don’t have any more trips planned before the 
thesis is due so I will also always be on the internet with my online backup 
service running.

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Scott Kostyshak]

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 2:40 PM, Steve Burnham dan...@gmail.com wrote:

 On May 15, 2014 at 12:28:41 PM, Jürgen Spitzmüller (sp...@lyx.org) wrote:


 but I am not sure RCS
 (which is described on that wiki page) could not be corrupted as well by
 this bug. Other version control options are described in Help  Additional
 Features, sec. 7.2.

 Jürgen

 I just realized as well, if the file becomes corrupted then revision control
 won’t do anything for me as I cannot get the file open to access it correct?
 I think what I will do then is just have that backup directory and save
 frequently like I have been.  I don’t have any more trips planned before the
 thesis is due so I will also always be on the internet with my online backup
 service running.

Sounds like you have a good plan, Steve, and I think revision control
might be unnecessary. But just to be clear, unless this corruption bug
corrupts external files, I don't see how it would disrupt revision
control. Once you have a change checked in, you should always be able
to get back to that change, unless you do something silly (override
something) or unless you haven't checked in a change. I only have
experience with Git though, so maybe I'm misunderstanding something.

And comparing revision control to just saving frequently, there are
other advantages. For example, my document takes a long time to
compile, so I don't compile frequently. When I do compile and it fails
because of one of LaTeX's famously incomprehensible bugs, instead of
dealing with it, I put my revision control on autopilot and it will
tell me which of the changes I made first stopped the document from
compiling.

Again, it might be unnecessarily complicated for many, but I would be
an unorganized mess without it.

Scott

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Wolfgang Engelmann]

Normally if you load your lyx file and there is an emergency file it 
tells you and if you agree it loads it. You are than asked whether you 
would like to keep the emergency file, and I would suggest to keep it.

Wolfgang
Am 15.05.2014 04:20, schrieb Steve Burnham:

Forum,

I was working on my thesis and tried to change some line spacing and fonts and 
LyX crashed on me and I cannot get the file to open up anymore (LyX freezes 
when I try to open it).  Under normal circumstances I have an online backup 
always running and I can just roll back to 15 minutes previously.  
Unfortunately I was doing this work in the airport and on the airplane so I had 
no internet access.  I have the following files:

Thesis 2.lyx and Thesis 2.lyx.emergency

I assume the emergency was made when LyX crashed on me as a means to restore 
any lost work.  I noticed that the .lyx file can be opened in a text editor and 
it appears as LaTeX code.  Because of these two files I am hoping there is a 
way to possibly de-corrupt the file that crashed and get it opened up again.

I am using LyX 2.1.0 on OSX 10.9.2.  I’m attaching the crash report in case it 
means something to anyone.  It’s beyond my understanding of coding.

When all is said and done it’s only about 6 hours worth of work and I have all 
of my thesis in an unformatted word document so if it cannot be fixed there’s 
no lost content, only time spent formatting.  Any help or insight is 
appreciated.



-Steve

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

2014-05-15 4:20 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:

 Forum,

 I was working on my thesis and tried to change some line spacing and fonts
 and LyX crashed on me and I cannot get the file to open up anymore (LyX
 freezes when I try to open it).  Under normal circumstances I have an
 online backup always running and I can just roll back to 15 minutes
 previously.  Unfortunately I was doing this work in the airport and on the
 airplane so I had no internet access.  I have the following files:

 Thesis 2.lyx and Thesis 2.lyx.emergency

 I assume the emergency was made when LyX crashed on me as a means to
 restore any lost work.  I noticed that the .lyx file can be opened in a
 text editor and it appears as LaTeX code.  Because of these two files I am
 hoping there is a way to possibly de-corrupt the file that crashed and get
 it opened up again.

 I am using LyX 2.1.0 on OSX 10.9.2.  I’m attaching the crash report in
 case it means something to anyone.  It’s beyond my understanding of coding.

 When all is said and done it’s only about 6 hours worth of work and I have
 all of my thesis in an unformatted word document so if it cannot be fixed
 there’s no lost content, only time spent formatting.  Any help or insight
 is appreciated.


Of course this should not happen.

In case the files are really corrupted, that is, if the .lyx and/or the
.lyx.emergency file do not end with
\end_body
\end_document

you can check if you have a working backup in your backups directory (see
Tools  Preferences  Paths).

HTH
Jürgen





 -Steve

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[aparsloe]

On 15/05/2014 6:37 p.m., Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

In case the files are really corrupted, that is, if the .lyx and/or the 
.lyx.emergency file do not end with

\end_body
\end_document

you can check if you have a working backup in your backups directory 
(see Tools  Preferences  Paths).


HTH
Jürgen

I've often thought that the backup files should be more accessible -- 
for instance through the normal File  Open dialog. At present the 
dialog has a combo box (is that the term?) at the lower right offering 
LyX Documents (*.lyx) and a triangular arrow suggesting there are more 
options below. But there aren't. It would be good to see *.lyx~ files 
there and to have the ability to open them. I realise naming conflicts 
would need to be sorted out, but the present accessibility of backup 
files is awkward (which may be a good thing of course).


Andrew

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Steve Burnham]

On May 15, 2014 at 03:40:54 AM, aparsloe (apars...@clear.net.nz) wrote:

On 15/05/2014 6:37 p.m., Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote: 

In case the files are really corrupted, that is, if the .lyx and/or the 
.lyx.emergency file do not end with 
\end_body 
\end_document 

you can check if you have a working backup in your backups directory 
(see Tools  Preferences  Paths). 

HTH 
Jürgen 


I checked my backups directory and just my luck, there is no directory listed 
for backups.  I opened up the .lyx file and there is no \end_body or 
\end_document anywhere in the file.  The document ends with “\begin_inset 
Tabular”.  It actually looks like the entire document isn’t even there, 
possibly ending at chapter 5 (of 8 total plus appendix).  

I tried to add \end_body and \end_document to the end of the .lyx file but when 
I open it up now I just get that the file ended unexpectedly, which means that 
it is probably corrupted.



On May 15, 2014 at 24:29:12 AM, Wolfgang Engelmann (engelm...@uni-tuebingen.de) 
wrote:

Normally if you load your lyx file and there is an emergency file it 
tells you and if you agree it loads it. You are than asked whether you 
would like to keep the emergency file, and I would suggest to keep it. 
Wolfgang 


Unfortunately I cannot even get to the point where I am asked to keep the 
emergency file.  LyX just completely freezes as soon as I try to open up the 
file.  Any other file opens  up just fine, it’s only this one. 

I installed LyX and MikTeX on my Windows machine at school to see if this was a 
problem isolated to OSX, unfortunately LyX freezes when opening the file on 
Windows as well (Windows 8.1, LyX 2.1.0).  

-Steve

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Scott Kostyshak]

Hi Steve,

Sorry to hear about all this. It sounds like a really frustrating
experience and even though it's 6 hours, it would be 6 painful hours
to do something you've already done.

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 12:24 PM, Steve Burnham dan...@gmail.com wrote:

 Unfortunately I cannot even get to the point where I am asked to keep the
 emergency file.  LyX just completely freezes as soon as I try to open up the
 file.  Any other file opens  up just fine, it’s only this one.

 I installed LyX and MikTeX on my Windows machine at school to see if this
 was a problem isolated to OSX, unfortunately LyX freezes when opening the
 file on Windows as well (Windows 8.1, LyX 2.1.0).

The file really is corrupted then. Looking in the file, can you check
whether it has the part that you worked on? It's possible that part
was lost somehow.

It sounds like a bunch of strange things happened at once (no online
backup and a LyX crash), but if you want to protect yourself from this
in the future, you might want to consider revision control.

Best of luck,

Scott

Scott

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

2014-05-15 18:24 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:

 I checked my backups directory and just my luck, there is no directory
 listed for backups.


Ouch.


  I opened up the .lyx file and there is no \end_body or \end_document
 anywhere in the file.  The document ends with “\begin_inset Tabular”.


So you were hit exactly by this nasty bug:
http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/9049

We really need the fix this, but we are sort of stuck :-(

Jürgen

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Scott Kostyshak]

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:56 PM, Jürgen Spitzmüller sp...@lyx.org wrote:

 We really need the fix this, but we are sort of stuck :-(

Steve, can you send your preferences file? Since we don't know what's
going on, maybe with a few more reports we can get lucky and pick out
a pattern.

Scott

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Steve Burnham]

On May 15, 2014 at 12:08:40 PM, Scott Kostyshak (skost...@lyx.org) wrote:

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:56 PM, Jürgen Spitzmüller sp...@lyx.org wrote: 

 We really need the fix this, but we are sort of stuck :-( 

Steve, can you send your preferences file? Since we don't know what's 
going on, maybe with a few more reports we can get lucky and pick out 
a pattern. 

Scott 


I sure can, I think this is the right file.  Happy to send anything that might 
help.

-Steve

preferences
Description: Binary data

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

2014-05-15 20:08 GMT+02:00 Scott Kostyshak:

 Steve, can you send your preferences file? Since we don't know what's
 going on, maybe with a few more reports we can get lucky and pick out
 a pattern.


I was hit myself again by this some days ago while I pasted in a table.
After I restored the lost data, I repeated the actions, but could not
trigger the crash anymore. It seems there is some action needed while at
the same time a background process (autosave?) is performed.

The problem is that even people who got the crash when running LyX in a
debugger could not get a backtrace. And without this, debugging is really
searching the needle in the haystack.

Jürgen



 Scott

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Steve Burnham]

On May 15, 2014 at 11:56:05 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller (sp...@lyx.org) wrote:

2014-05-15 18:24 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:
I checked my backups directory and just my luck, there is no directory listed 
for backups.


Ouch.


I didn’t even know that was an option.  I’m still learning LyX, but it only 
takes once to make sure there is a directory listed there.




 
 I opened up the .lyx file and there is no \end_body or \end_document anywhere 
in the file.  The document ends with “\begin_inset Tabular”.  


So you were hit exactly by this nasty bug:
http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/9049
 
We really need the fix this, but we are sort of stuck :-(

Jürgen


That’s what it looks like my problem is.  Too bad it’s being difficult to 
replicate and isolate the problem.  Should it happen again I will be sure to 
update.  I can’t remember exactly what I was doing.  It was something to do 
with chaining font styles and single/double spacing.

The file really is corrupted then. Looking in the file, can you check 
whether it has the part that you worked on? It's possible that part 
was lost somehow. 


It’s actually missing a very significant amount, not just what I had most 
recently been working.  Probably 2/3 of the document.





It sounds like a bunch of strange things happened at once (no online 
backup and a LyX crash), but if you want to protect yourself from this 
in the future, you might want to consider revision control. 

It sounds like at this point I am probably just SOL.  A minor annoyance though 
compared to what I was going through with MSWord and as I am getting better at 
using LyX, things go faster now.  I am going to start using version control.  I 
found this page about it (http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/VersionControl), 
unfortunately it is very vague.  I have all the necessary packages to have it 
working on OSX.  I noticed there are a bunch of options like “check in changes” 
“copy” “revert” and “compare”.  Is there another document that might explain 
what these features are?  I have it turned on but I really don’t have any idea 
how to work it properly.  Particularly the check in and out changes options.

-Steve

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

2014-05-15 20:19 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:

 It sounds like at this point I am probably just SOL.  A minor annoyance
 though compared to what I was going through with MSWord and as I am getting
 better at using LyX, things go faster now.  I am going to start using
 version control.  I found this page about it (
 http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/VersionControl), unfortunately it is very vague.
  I have all the necessary packages to have it working on OSX.  I noticed
 there are a bunch of options like “check in changes” “copy” “revert” and
 “compare”.  Is there another document that might explain what these
 features are?  I have it turned on but I really don’t have any idea how to
 work it properly.  Particularly the check in and out changes options.


First, of course, this bug needs to be fixed ASAP. But then, if you have
the backup directory set up and you regularly hit save, you'll at least not
lose _much_. Version control is of course a further option, but I am not
sure RCS (which is described on that wiki page) could not be corrupted as
well by this bug. Other version control options are described in Help 
Additional Features, sec. 7.2.

Jürgen

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Steve Burnham]

On May 15, 2014 at 12:28:41 PM, Jürgen Spitzmüller (sp...@lyx.org) wrote:

2014-05-15 20:19 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:
It sounds like at this point I am probably just SOL.  A minor annoyance though 
compared to what I was going through with MSWord and as I am getting better at 
using LyX, things go faster now.  I am going to start using version control.  I 
found this page about it (http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/VersionControl), 
unfortunately it is very vague.  I have all the necessary packages to have it 
working on OSX.  I noticed there are a bunch of options like “check in changes” 
“copy” “revert” and “compare”.  Is there another document that might explain 
what these features are?  I have it turned on but I really don’t have any idea 
how to work it properly.  Particularly the check in and out changes options.

First, of course, this bug needs to be fixed ASAP. But then, if you have the 
backup directory set up and you regularly hit save, you'll at least not lose 
_much_. Version control is of course a further option, but I am not sure RCS 
(which is described on that wiki page) could not be corrupted as well by this 
bug. Other version control options are described in Help  Additional Features, 
sec. 7.2.

Jürgen



I just realized as well, if the file becomes corrupted then revision control 
won’t do anything for me as I cannot get the file open to access it correct?  I 
think what I will do then is just have that backup directory and save 
frequently like I have been.  I don’t have any more trips planned before the 
thesis is due so I will also always be on the internet with my online backup 
service running.

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Scott Kostyshak]

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 2:40 PM, Steve Burnham dan...@gmail.com wrote:

 On May 15, 2014 at 12:28:41 PM, Jürgen Spitzmüller (sp...@lyx.org) wrote:


 but I am not sure RCS
 (which is described on that wiki page) could not be corrupted as well by
 this bug. Other version control options are described in Help  Additional
 Features, sec. 7.2.

 Jürgen

 I just realized as well, if the file becomes corrupted then revision control
 won’t do anything for me as I cannot get the file open to access it correct?
 I think what I will do then is just have that backup directory and save
 frequently like I have been.  I don’t have any more trips planned before the
 thesis is due so I will also always be on the internet with my online backup
 service running.

Sounds like you have a good plan, Steve, and I think revision control
might be unnecessary. But just to be clear, unless this corruption bug
corrupts external files, I don't see how it would disrupt revision
control. Once you have a change checked in, you should always be able
to get back to that change, unless you do something silly (override
something) or unless you haven't checked in a change. I only have
experience with Git though, so maybe I'm misunderstanding something.

And comparing revision control to just saving frequently, there are
other advantages. For example, my document takes a long time to
compile, so I don't compile frequently. When I do compile and it fails
because of one of LaTeX's famously incomprehensible bugs, instead of
dealing with it, I put my revision control on autopilot and it will
tell me which of the changes I made first stopped the document from
compiling.

Again, it might be unnecessarily complicated for many, but I would be
an unorganized mess without it.

Scott

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Wolfgang Engelmann]

Normally if you load your lyx file and there is an emergency file it 
tells you and if you agree it loads it. You are than asked whether you 
would like to keep the emergency file, and I would suggest to keep it.

Wolfgang
Am 15.05.2014 04:20, schrieb Steve Burnham:

Forum,

I was working on my thesis and tried to change some line spacing and fonts and 
LyX crashed on me and I cannot get the file to open up anymore (LyX freezes 
when I try to open it).  Under normal circumstances I have an online backup 
always running and I can just roll back to 15 minutes previously.  
Unfortunately I was doing this work in the airport and on the airplane so I had 
no internet access.  I have the following files:

Thesis 2.lyx and Thesis 2.lyx.emergency

I assume the emergency was made when LyX crashed on me as a means to restore 
any lost work.  I noticed that the .lyx file can be opened in a text editor and 
it appears as LaTeX code.  Because of these two files I am hoping there is a 
way to possibly de-corrupt the file that crashed and get it opened up again.

I am using LyX 2.1.0 on OSX 10.9.2.  I’m attaching the crash report in case it 
means something to anyone.  It’s beyond my understanding of coding.

When all is said and done it’s only about 6 hours worth of work and I have all 
of my thesis in an unformatted word document so if it cannot be fixed there’s 
no lost content, only time spent formatting.  Any help or insight is 
appreciated.



-Steve

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

2014-05-15 4:20 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:

> Forum,
>
> I was working on my thesis and tried to change some line spacing and fonts
> and LyX crashed on me and I cannot get the file to open up anymore (LyX
> freezes when I try to open it).  Under normal circumstances I have an
> online backup always running and I can just roll back to 15 minutes
> previously.  Unfortunately I was doing this work in the airport and on the
> airplane so I had no internet access.  I have the following files:
>
> Thesis 2.lyx and Thesis 2.lyx.emergency
>
> I assume the emergency was made when LyX crashed on me as a means to
> restore any lost work.  I noticed that the .lyx file can be opened in a
> text editor and it appears as LaTeX code.  Because of these two files I am
> hoping there is a way to possibly de-corrupt the file that crashed and get
> it opened up again.
>
> I am using LyX 2.1.0 on OSX 10.9.2.  I’m attaching the crash report in
> case it means something to anyone.  It’s beyond my understanding of coding.
>
> When all is said and done it’s only about 6 hours worth of work and I have
> all of my thesis in an unformatted word document so if it cannot be fixed
> there’s no lost content, only time spent formatting.  Any help or insight
> is appreciated.
>

Of course this should not happen.

In case the files are really corrupted, that is, if the .lyx and/or the
.lyx.emergency file do not end with
\end_body
\end_document

you can check if you have a working backup in your backups directory (see
Tools > Preferences > Paths).

HTH
Jürgen


>
>
>
> -Steve
>

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[aparsloe]

On 15/05/2014 6:37 p.m., Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote:

In case the files are really corrupted, that is, if the .lyx and/or the 
.lyx.emergency file do not end with

\end_body
\end_document

you can check if you have a working backup in your backups directory 
(see Tools > Preferences > Paths).


HTH
Jürgen

I've often thought that the backup files should be more accessible -- 
for instance through the normal File > Open dialog. At present the 
dialog has a combo box (is that the term?) at the lower right offering 
"LyX Documents (*.lyx)" and a triangular arrow suggesting there are more 
options below. But there aren't. It would be good to see *.lyx~ files 
there and to have the ability to open them. I realise naming conflicts 
would need to be sorted out, but the present accessibility of backup 
files is awkward (which may be a good thing of course).


Andrew

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Steve Burnham]

On May 15, 2014 at 03:40:54 AM, aparsloe (apars...@clear.net.nz) wrote:

On 15/05/2014 6:37 p.m., Jürgen Spitzmüller wrote: 

In case the files are really corrupted, that is, if the .lyx and/or the 
.lyx.emergency file do not end with 
\end_body 
\end_document 

you can check if you have a working backup in your backups directory 
(see Tools > Preferences > Paths). 

HTH 
Jürgen 


I checked my backups directory and just my luck, there is no directory listed 
for backups.  I opened up the .lyx file and there is no \end_body or 
\end_document anywhere in the file.  The document ends with “\begin_inset 
Tabular”.  It actually looks like the entire document isn’t even there, 
possibly ending at chapter 5 (of 8 total plus appendix).  

I tried to add \end_body and \end_document to the end of the .lyx file but when 
I open it up now I just get that the file ended unexpectedly, which means that 
it is probably corrupted.



On May 15, 2014 at 24:29:12 AM, Wolfgang Engelmann (engelm...@uni-tuebingen.de) 
wrote:

Normally if you load your lyx file and there is an emergency file it 
tells you and if you agree it loads it. You are than asked whether you 
would like to keep the emergency file, and I would suggest to keep it. 
Wolfgang 


Unfortunately I cannot even get to the point where I am asked to keep the 
emergency file.  LyX just completely freezes as soon as I try to open up the 
file.  Any other file opens  up just fine, it’s only this one. 

I installed LyX and MikTeX on my Windows machine at school to see if this was a 
problem isolated to OSX, unfortunately LyX freezes when opening the file on 
Windows as well (Windows 8.1, LyX 2.1.0).  

-Steve

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Scott Kostyshak]

Hi Steve,

Sorry to hear about all this. It sounds like a really frustrating
experience and even though it's 6 hours, it would be 6 painful hours
to do something you've already done.

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 12:24 PM, Steve Burnham  wrote:

> Unfortunately I cannot even get to the point where I am asked to keep the
> emergency file.  LyX just completely freezes as soon as I try to open up the
> file.  Any other file opens  up just fine, it’s only this one.
>
> I installed LyX and MikTeX on my Windows machine at school to see if this
> was a problem isolated to OSX, unfortunately LyX freezes when opening the
> file on Windows as well (Windows 8.1, LyX 2.1.0).

The file really is corrupted then. Looking in the file, can you check
whether it has the part that you worked on? It's possible that part
was lost somehow.

It sounds like a bunch of strange things happened at once (no online
backup and a LyX crash), but if you want to protect yourself from this
in the future, you might want to consider revision control.

Best of luck,

Scott

Scott

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

2014-05-15 18:24 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:

> I checked my backups directory and just my luck, there is no directory
> listed for backups.
>

Ouch.


>  I opened up the .lyx file and there is no \end_body or \end_document
> anywhere in the file.  The document ends with “\begin_inset Tabular”.
>

So you were hit exactly by this nasty bug:
http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/9049

We really need the fix this, but we are sort of stuck :-(

Jürgen

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Scott Kostyshak]

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:56 PM, Jürgen Spitzmüller  wrote:

> We really need the fix this, but we are sort of stuck :-(

Steve, can you send your preferences file? Since we don't know what's
going on, maybe with a few more reports we can get lucky and pick out
a pattern.

Scott

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Steve Burnham]

On May 15, 2014 at 12:08:40 PM, Scott Kostyshak (skost...@lyx.org) wrote:

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:56 PM, Jürgen Spitzmüller  wrote: 

> We really need the fix this, but we are sort of stuck :-( 

Steve, can you send your preferences file? Since we don't know what's 
going on, maybe with a few more reports we can get lucky and pick out 
a pattern. 

Scott 


I sure can, I think this is the right file.  Happy to send anything that might 
help.

-Steve

preferences
Description: Binary data

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

2014-05-15 20:08 GMT+02:00 Scott Kostyshak:

> Steve, can you send your preferences file? Since we don't know what's
> going on, maybe with a few more reports we can get lucky and pick out
> a pattern.
>

I was hit myself again by this some days ago while I pasted in a table.
After I restored the lost data, I repeated the actions, but could not
trigger the crash anymore. It seems there is some action needed while at
the same time a background process (autosave?) is performed.

The problem is that even people who got the crash when running LyX in a
debugger could not get a backtrace. And without this, debugging is really
searching the needle in the haystack.

Jürgen


>
> Scott
>

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Steve Burnham]

On May 15, 2014 at 11:56:05 AM, Jürgen Spitzmüller (sp...@lyx.org) wrote:

2014-05-15 18:24 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:
I checked my backups directory and just my luck, there is no directory listed 
for backups.


Ouch.


I didn’t even know that was an option.  I’m still learning LyX, but it only 
takes once to make sure there is a directory listed there.




 
 I opened up the .lyx file and there is no \end_body or \end_document anywhere 
in the file.  The document ends with “\begin_inset Tabular”.  


So you were hit exactly by this nasty bug:
http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/9049
 
We really need the fix this, but we are sort of stuck :-(

Jürgen


That’s what it looks like my problem is.  Too bad it’s being difficult to 
replicate and isolate the problem.  Should it happen again I will be sure to 
update.  I can’t remember exactly what I was doing.  It was something to do 
with chaining font styles and single/double spacing.

The file really is corrupted then. Looking in the file, can you check 
whether it has the part that you worked on? It's possible that part 
was lost somehow. 


It’s actually missing a very significant amount, not just what I had most 
recently been working.  Probably 2/3 of the document.





It sounds like a bunch of strange things happened at once (no online 
backup and a LyX crash), but if you want to protect yourself from this 
in the future, you might want to consider revision control. 

It sounds like at this point I am probably just SOL.  A minor annoyance though 
compared to what I was going through with MSWord and as I am getting better at 
using LyX, things go faster now.  I am going to start using version control.  I 
found this page about it (http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/VersionControl), 
unfortunately it is very vague.  I have all the necessary packages to have it 
working on OSX.  I noticed there are a bunch of options like “check in changes” 
“copy” “revert” and “compare”.  Is there another document that might explain 
what these features are?  I have it turned on but I really don’t have any idea 
how to work it properly.  Particularly the check in and out changes options.

-Steve

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Jürgen Spitzmüller]

2014-05-15 20:19 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:

> It sounds like at this point I am probably just SOL.  A minor annoyance
> though compared to what I was going through with MSWord and as I am getting
> better at using LyX, things go faster now.  I am going to start using
> version control.  I found this page about it (
> http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/VersionControl), unfortunately it is very vague.
>  I have all the necessary packages to have it working on OSX.  I noticed
> there are a bunch of options like “check in changes” “copy” “revert” and
> “compare”.  Is there another document that might explain what these
> features are?  I have it turned on but I really don’t have any idea how to
> work it properly.  Particularly the check in and out changes options.
>

First, of course, this bug needs to be fixed ASAP. But then, if you have
the backup directory set up and you regularly hit save, you'll at least not
lose _much_. Version control is of course a further option, but I am not
sure RCS (which is described on that wiki page) could not be corrupted as
well by this bug. Other version control options are described in Help >
Additional Features, sec. 7.2.

Jürgen

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Steve Burnham]

On May 15, 2014 at 12:28:41 PM, Jürgen Spitzmüller (sp...@lyx.org) wrote:

2014-05-15 20:19 GMT+02:00 Steve Burnham:
It sounds like at this point I am probably just SOL.  A minor annoyance though 
compared to what I was going through with MSWord and as I am getting better at 
using LyX, things go faster now.  I am going to start using version control.  I 
found this page about it (http://wiki.lyx.org/Mac/VersionControl), 
unfortunately it is very vague.  I have all the necessary packages to have it 
working on OSX.  I noticed there are a bunch of options like “check in changes” 
“copy” “revert” and “compare”.  Is there another document that might explain 
what these features are?  I have it turned on but I really don’t have any idea 
how to work it properly.  Particularly the check in and out changes options.

First, of course, this bug needs to be fixed ASAP. But then, if you have the 
backup directory set up and you regularly hit save, you'll at least not lose 
_much_. Version control is of course a further option, but I am not sure RCS 
(which is described on that wiki page) could not be corrupted as well by this 
bug. Other version control options are described in Help > Additional Features, 
sec. 7.2.

Jürgen



I just realized as well, if the file becomes corrupted then revision control 
won’t do anything for me as I cannot get the file open to access it correct?  I 
think what I will do then is just have that backup directory and save 
frequently like I have been.  I don’t have any more trips planned before the 
thesis is due so I will also always be on the internet with my online backup 
service running.

Re: LyX crash and cannot open file

[Scott Kostyshak]

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 2:40 PM, Steve Burnham  wrote:
>
> On May 15, 2014 at 12:28:41 PM, Jürgen Spitzmüller (sp...@lyx.org) wrote:
>

> but I am not sure RCS
> (which is described on that wiki page) could not be corrupted as well by
> this bug. Other version control options are described in Help > Additional
> Features, sec. 7.2.
>
> Jürgen
>
> I just realized as well, if the file becomes corrupted then revision control
> won’t do anything for me as I cannot get the file open to access it correct?
> I think what I will do then is just have that backup directory and save
> frequently like I have been.  I don’t have any more trips planned before the
> thesis is due so I will also always be on the internet with my online backup
> service running.

Sounds like you have a good plan, Steve, and I think revision control
might be unnecessary. But just to be clear, unless this corruption bug
corrupts external files, I don't see how it would disrupt revision
control. Once you have a change checked in, you should always be able
to get back to that change, unless you do something silly (override
something) or unless you haven't checked in a change. I only have
experience with Git though, so maybe I'm misunderstanding something.

And comparing revision control to just saving frequently, there are
other advantages. For example, my document takes a long time to
compile, so I don't compile frequently. When I do compile and it fails
because of one of LaTeX's famously incomprehensible bugs, instead of
dealing with it, I put my revision control on autopilot and it will
tell me which of the changes I made first stopped the document from
compiling.

Again, it might be unnecessarily complicated for many, but I would be
an unorganized mess without it.

Scott