Author Topic: WeatherCat October data file trunated !?!?!?!  (Read 2172 times)

elagache

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WeatherCat October data file trunated !?!?!?!
« on: October 18, 2014, 10:05:07 PM »
Dear WeatherCat fans,

I just had the shock of my life when I tried to start up WeatherCat after installing the latest OS X security update.  I got a dialog box claiming a corrupted data file!!  This was quite a shock and I had to fumble to finally manage to restore my data between one of WeatherCat's daily backups and what was left in my Davis data logger.

Looking at the October data file, sometime in between Tuesday Oct. 14th and Wednesday Oct. 15th, all the data older than Wednesday 7:15 pm disappeared.  The file starts with the 7:15 data.  The text isn't corrupted, simply everything before that (including the file headers) are missing.

Now this could be something my computer perpetrated on my data and have nothing to do with WeatherCat, but I thought I would mention it as a quick "heads-up."  I've send the Tuesday and Wednesday backups to Stu just in case he can do some clever Sherlock Holmes stuff on it.

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

Blicj11

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Re: WeatherCat October data file trunated !?!?!?!
« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2014, 10:39:14 PM »
I just had the shock of my life when I tried to start up WeatherCat after installing the latest OS X security update.
I updated to the new security patch to protect against POODLE and had no problems. Sorry to hear your data file went missing.
Blick


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Re: WeatherCat October data file trunated !?!?!?!
« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2014, 11:53:22 PM »
Hi Edouard,
Just downloaded your data and had a look.

It isn't possible for WeatherCat to write a file like that - in the course if normal running all it does is append to the file; if it's writing the whole file, the first thing it would write is the header.

So that got me thinking as to possible causes. One possibility is the directory entry in the file system for the file was wrong, in that it's pointing to the wrong block as the start of the file. However, it seems somewhat coincidental that the corrupt file starts with a complete line - if it was the wrong block, the chances are that the first line of the corrupt file would itself be incomplete. So, one other explanation is the file was empty when the data was appended to it at 7:15pm. This would of course be fine and throw no errors.

So to answer your question, all I have is conjecture I'm afraid. Either way, I'd suggest a Disk Utility run on the volume to check it for any errors it can find (there may be none now).






elagache

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Early Halloween? (Re: WeatherCat data file trunated !?!?!?!)
« Reply #3 on: October 19, 2014, 09:53:05 PM »
Howdy Stu and WeatherCat troubleshooters,

It isn't possible for WeatherCat to write a file like that - in the course if normal running all it does is append to the file; if it's writing the whole file, the first thing it would write is the header.

I didn't think so either.

So that got me thinking as to possible causes. One possibility is the directory entry in the file system for the file was wrong, in that it's pointing to the wrong block as the start of the file. However, it seems somewhat coincidental that the corrupt file starts with a complete line - if it was the wrong block, the chances are that the first line of the corrupt file would itself be incomplete.

I agree.  If something got corrupted the file should be full of garbage.  It does look like "sabotage" . . .

So, one other explanation is the file was empty when the data was appended to it at 7:15pm. This would of course be fine and throw no errors.

It has to be something like that, but what clobbered the file?

So to answer your question, all I have is conjecture I'm afraid.

Well that leaves two remaining potential culprits . . . . . gremlins or ghosts!  After all Halloween is coming up!!

Oh well, all is well now.  Just a bit of a shock!   :o

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

Blicj11

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Re: WeatherCat October data file trunated !?!?!?!
« Reply #4 on: October 20, 2014, 02:34:44 AM »
Like I said on another thread, follow Steve to Yosemite and kiss that corrupt file goodbye.
Blick