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Computer Crash - Missing MT Data from 3+ days
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jmsalk  
#1 Posted : Saturday, January 18, 2014 3:06:58 AM(UTC)
jmsalk

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Joined: 8/9/2012(UTC)
Posts: 15
Hi. My computer crashed today (suddenly my monitors went to black and claimed no computer input even though the computer was still on - I eventually hard-shut it down). Upon rebooting and ManicTime starting-up, I discovered that I was missing all my MT data from today (1/17/14) all the way back to mid-day, Monday, 1/13/14.

Is there anything I can do to recover the seemingly-missing data?

I also noticed that the modified date of the ManicTime.sdf file was 1/13/14 1:30 PM. That begs the question: When is the database written to? Only on a clean shutdown of ManicTime? If so is there a temp cache of outstanding data to persist to the database eventually? I imagine that data had to have existed somewhere since I had seen it previously (e.g., in the day view, timesheet view, etc.)

Don't know if it matters but when the computer crash happened, I had the timer running in ManicTime (and it resumed running, per my setting, when ManicTime started again after the reboot).

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks.

Edited by user Saturday, January 18, 2014 3:08:14 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Removed redundant text in "Description:" single line field
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admin  
#2 Posted : Saturday, January 18, 2014 3:12:57 PM(UTC)
admin

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MT writes to the db every 30 seconds or so. One idea that comes to mind is system restore to previous checkpoint.

In MT go to Tools - Adv Pack log files. Can you send them to me. You can check if there are any log entries for the missing time.
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jmsalk  
#3 Posted : Wednesday, February 19, 2014 12:58:41 AM(UTC)
jmsalk

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Thanks for the reply. Sorry for the delay - have been really busy. Since this is at work (on my work computer), I may have to get the logs reviewed (for any sensitive personal or project-related data) before I can send them (I did pack them around the time of your initial response).

I just looked at all of them and both ManicTime.log and ManicTimeProcessInfo.log have entries that appear to have been logged during at least some of the dates/times corresponding to the dates/times in which the tags and data in the UI are currently missing. Anything in particular I should be looking for in the logs?
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admin  
#4 Posted : Thursday, February 20, 2014 1:16:05 PM(UTC)
admin

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Were there any time changes at the time when it stopped tracking. It will be in the logs, something like Time changing....
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jmsalk  
#5 Posted : Friday, July 18, 2014 9:52:10 PM(UTC)
jmsalk

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Joined: 8/9/2012(UTC)
Posts: 15
Hi. This happened again recently, and I lost all my data from the end of 7/3/14 - 7/10/14 around the time after I rebooted my computer.

Some additional information that may help understanding or reproducing my problems:
* I leave my computer on without rebooting usually for weeks at a time.
* When I lost my data just recently, I had a timer active in ManicTime when I rebooted my computer (similar to my first instance of lost data as described in this thread's first post).
* I usually have the ManicTime GUI running all the time (I shrink it down and move it to a corner of my desktop where i can see the the Stopwatch button, Day end, and Duration).
** Interestingly, I just noticed now that ManicTime.sdf had not been written to in a couple days (around the the last time I had logged into my computer earlier this week (I've been away from computer in a training class all week)). When I closed the ManicTime GUI, ManicTIme.sdf got updated (modified date reflected current date/time). After re-opening the GUI, I don't see the .sdf file's modified date updating anymore. So it seems that whenever the GUI is opened, the .sdf file doesn't get written to??? This would explain the two data loss incidents I've described in this thread (since in neither one did I first manually close the ManicTime GUI before shutting down (in the case of the crash) or rebooting (which I did recently intentionally to apply some Windows updates)).

If the last sub-bullet describes why this is happening, is there a setting to fix this or some workaround (besides always remembering to close the MT GUI before rebooting or shutting-down, which isn't fool-proof since system crashes can still happen, and besides manually closing (and then re-opening) the MT GUI periodically (e.g., once a day so I'd only lose at most one day's worth of data))?

Thanks.
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jmsalk  
#6 Posted : Friday, July 18, 2014 9:57:17 PM(UTC)
jmsalk

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Joined: 8/9/2012(UTC)
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A couple other things:
* In line with my findings in the previous post, even backups between 7/3/14 and 7/10/14 (created via Windows backup running daily and writing to an external hardrive) only had .sdf's that had been last modified earlier in the day on which my data loss first starts (7/3/14).
* Where is the data stored before it gets written to the .sdf file? Only in memory (RAM)? Or is there a temp file somewhere that might have the lost data?
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jmsalk  
#7 Posted : Friday, July 18, 2014 10:01:09 PM(UTC)
jmsalk

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Joined: 8/9/2012(UTC)
Posts: 15
Originally Posted by: admin Go to Quoted Post
Were there any time changes at the time when it stopped tracking. It will be in the logs, something like Time changing....


I didn't see anything like this in the most recent data loss incident. Again, this wasn't a case of ManicTime not tracking, since I did see the data, including tags for times during which I had the Stopwatch running, in the GUI just fine during the days for which data was eventually missing/lost. (As explained above, though, after the computer rebooted that data that I had seen was no longer there).
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admin  
#8 Posted : Monday, July 21, 2014 9:53:19 AM(UTC)
admin

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The GUI mostly reads from the db, it writes a setting or two, but that's more or less it.
I doubt stopwatch has any relation. My guess would be that the tracker crashes, either the whole process or just some part of it and it just stops writing to the database.

Would you send me your log files, Settings - Tools - Pack log files...

Also I suggest you install v3, its mostly the same but we did make a few changes and you never know...
http://forum.manictime.c...96_v3-beta.aspx#post6062
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jmsalk  
#9 Posted : Wednesday, August 6, 2014 10:43:02 PM(UTC)
jmsalk

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Joined: 8/9/2012(UTC)
Posts: 15
Figured out steps to consistantly reproduce the behavior:

FIRST time I open ManicTime GUI and leave it open, I notice the database (.sdf file) does indeed get updated every minute or even more frequently.

BUT, if I close the GUI and then re-open it and leave it open, the database (.sdf file) no longer gets updated UNTIL I once again close the GUI.

And this behavior repeats, regardless of how many times I re-close and re-open the GUI. Only way at this point to get out of the potential of losing data (e.g., on a system or ManicTIme crash) is to gracefully exit the ManicTime background process (after first closing the GUI so that the .sdf file gets written to first). Then, upon re-starting the ManicTime background process, and opening the GUI for the first time for the running lifetime of that background process, and leave it open, then the database once again updates >=1 times/minute and I start the "loop" described above (and thus, once again, as long as I leave the GUI open and it doesn't close/crash on its own, then I'm good at that point as far as not having the potential to lose data).
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admin  
#10 Posted : Thursday, August 7, 2014 8:38:46 AM(UTC)
admin

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Could you go to Tools - Adv - Open db folder and send me ManicTime.xml file so we can test the same settings you are using.
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jmsalk  
#11 Posted : Thursday, August 7, 2014 8:18:24 PM(UTC)
jmsalk

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Here is the requested file.
File Attachment(s):
ManicTimeXML.zip (2kb) downloaded 1 time(s).

You cannot view/download attachments. Try to login or register.
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admin  
#12 Posted : Monday, August 11, 2014 9:43:07 AM(UTC)
admin

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I can't replicate this. Whatever I do seems to work ok. Could you send me your log files one more time, we'll check what goes on when client starts and stops.
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jmsalk  
#13 Posted : Thursday, August 14, 2014 6:20:56 PM(UTC)
jmsalk

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Joined: 8/9/2012(UTC)
Posts: 15
Since this is a work computer, at the very least, I'm going to have to make sure there's no sensitive data in the logs (and possibly, get them officially reviewed and approved at work for sharing externally).

Is there somewhere other than the public forum I can send you those logs (after I've done the above)?
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jmsalk  
#14 Posted : Friday, August 22, 2014 2:46:20 AM(UTC)
jmsalk

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Joined: 8/9/2012(UTC)
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In the meantime/in lieu of all the log files, just now, while I had the GUI up (7:35 PM) it hadn't written to the .sdf file since 11:18 AM today. After closing the GUI, it wrote to the sdf finally, but I noticed the following in the ManicTimeClient.log:

2014-08-21 19:35:21.769 2 7432 1 Stopping ManicTime Client.
2014-08-21 19:35:21.831 2 7432 1 Disconnected from tracker.
2014-08-21 19:35:21.931 2 7432 1 Locking connection pool (0, 8, 8).
2014-08-21 19:35:21.932 2 7432 1 Connection pool locked (0, 8, 8).
2014-08-21 19:35:21.933 2 7432 1 Disposing all connections (0, 8, 8).
2014-08-21 19:35:21.935 1 7432 19 [10f410eb] System.ObjectDisposedException: Cannot access a closed pipe. at System.IO.__Error.PipeNotOpen() at System.IO.Pipes.PipeStream.get_IsMessageComplete() at Finkit.ManicTime.Common.Messaging.NamedPipes.PipeReader.EndRead(IAsyncResult ar)
2014-08-21 19:35:21.936 1 7432 19 [801bfdbd] Tracker connection faulted.
2014-08-21 19:35:22.526 2 7432 1 All connections disposed (0, 0, 0).
2014-08-21 19:35:22.527 2 7432 1 ManicTimeClient 2.5.4.0 stopped.

Then it didn't write to/update the .sdf again (with the GUI now closed) until I *re-opened* the GUI again. (But then after that update after re-opening the GUI, it didn't write again until I re-*closed* the GUI, so apparently, this is another "error" loop it has encountered.). And then, the last time closing, it had the following in ManicTimeClient.log, this time with no error (but saying like above, "Disconnected from tracker..." and "ManicTimeClient...stopped.", which I'm sure if that's normal:

2014-08-21 19:44:53.984 2 10140 1 Stopping ManicTime Client.
2014-08-21 19:44:53.985 2 10140 1 Disconnected from tracker.
2014-08-21 19:44:53.991 2 10140 1 Locking connection pool (0, 9, 9).
2014-08-21 19:44:53.994 2 10140 1 Connection pool locked (0, 9, 9).
2014-08-21 19:44:53.995 2 10140 1 Disposing all connections (0, 9, 9).
2014-08-21 19:44:55.070 2 10140 1 All connections disposed (0, 0, 0).
2014-08-21 19:44:55.081 2 10140 1 ManicTimeClient 2.5.4.0 stopped.

When I finally exited the background process (right-click systray icon>Exit), I got the following single line added to ManicTimeErrors.log:

2014-08-21 19:59:26.993 1 2648 2 [c0207131] WindowsMessageForm - UnregisterKey

Edited by user Friday, August 22, 2014 3:01:30 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified
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admin  
#15 Posted : Friday, August 22, 2014 8:01:51 AM(UTC)
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Sure, send them at support@manictime.com
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