I may have been sketching out a home but I'm in the dog's house now...

[tc111]

I'm running Ubuntu v10.04 and SH3D v2.6. The file was saved, the computer was idle. I returned to SH3D and got a kernel panic. Now the 97% completed job will not open. What can I do? Here's my error: Can't open home.

[starrunner]

Have you read the section "Sweet Home 3D refuses to open a SH3D file I created. Is there a way to recover it?" in the FAQ?

[hansmex]

Spencer,

Something else you could try:
- while in Ubuntu click Places --> Home Folder
- on your keyboard tap CTRL H to show hidden directories
- go to .eteks/sweethome3d/work
- check if any file is there, and try to open it.

The /work directory is where SH3D saves your work, while working on it.

Hans

[Puybaret]

Caution! From version 3.0, old files in the .eteks/sweethome3d/work directory will be automatically deleted after a 20 seconds delay when you launch Sweet Home 3D again. Therefore, should I increase this delay?

[hansmex]

Emmanuel,

You may, or may not, remember the request for an Autosave feature. This is one of the reasons for such a request. I've stopped complaining about the frequent crashes myself, just using the workaround I've found to avoid most of them.

Suppose I have created a file called file1.sh3d .
- When I open file1.sh3d, SH3D creates file1.work and file1.bak.
- Exiting with saving, SH3D updates file1.sh3d and deletes file1.work; file1.bak should not be altered from its last state, so that in case the save operation fails, the backup file can "save the day".
- Exiting without saving (from a power outage or crash), leaves the old file1.sh3d and file1.bak without changes, and a corrupt file1.work.
- Restarting SH3D with either file1.sh3d or file1.bak, creates a new file1.work which overwrites the old, corrupt file1.work.
- When starting on a new project called file2.sh3d, there would be created a file2.bak and file2.work, so that older work isn't overwritten.

Just my two cents.

Hans

[Puybaret]

Hans, you seem to want some kind of continuous save, what would be the only solution to keep your work as it was at the moment of a crash, since it may happen at any time! [:)]
More seriously, I'm ok to program an autosave feature, because it's now possible to save a project in Sweet Home 3D without stopping user input. But I don't like the backup file option. Creating a backup file has as much chance to crash than saving the project itself.

[tc111]

Hans, YOU 'da man! Your steps got me to a file called .eteks/sweethome3d/work/'unique-hash'/'hashed-filename'.sweethome3d . Added a '.sh3d' to the end of a copy of that file. This file was the point at which I had started yesterday's work. So, now I'm back to 70% of work completed instead of 0%. With some brain-power and my measuring tape, I can finish up my work, again. Thank you so much!

--Spence

[hansmex]

Emmanuel,

Continuous save is what you have in Google Docs, where each key press is automatically saved.
Autosave, in my view, comes with a setting that allows to determine the interval, say every 5 minutes, every 10 minutes, etc.

I have complete faith in your solution, whichever you choose

Hans

[Puybaret]

I increased the auto deletion of work files from 20 seconds to 5 minutes, to let users more time to retrieve their files using this tip.

By the way, remembering the bug about file access rights, I think it won't be always possible to create a backup file in the same directory as the original one and with the good access rights. So I won't create the backup files suggested by Hans in a close future.

[hansmex]

Emmanuel,

Reading the comments on the bug about the access rights, it says:

Date: 2009-12-26 20:24:08 UTC
Sender: puybaret

Bug fixed in version 2.2

Maybe this refers to something else?

Hans