disappearing lines

disappearing lines

[Peter Münster]

Hi,

My todo.org file is always loaded in an emacs buffer. Sometimes (at
least 2 times during the last 3 years), I observe, that all lines
beginning with 2, 3, 4 or 5 have disappeared. I guess, that I've made
accidentally some keystroke, that deletes such line. What could this be please?

TIA for any hints,
-- 
           Peter

Re: disappearing lines

[Panagiotis Koutsourakis]

Hi Peter,

On Mon, Jan 16 2023, Peter Münster wrote:

> Hi,
>
> My todo.org file is always loaded in an emacs buffer. Sometimes (at
> least 2 times during the last 3 years), I observe, that all lines
> beginning with 2, 3, 4 or 5 have disappeared. I guess, that I've made
> accidentally some keystroke, that deletes such line. What could this be please?
>
> TIA for any hints,

I don't know specifically what key/command might have done this, but you
can use the function `view-lossage' (bound to "C-h l" by default) to see
the last few (300 by default) keystrokes emacs processed.

-- 
Best regards,
Panos.

Re: disappearing lines

[Arash Esbati]

Peter Münster <pm@a16n.net> writes:

> My todo.org file is always loaded in an emacs buffer. Sometimes (at
> least 2 times during the last 3 years), I observe, that all lines
> beginning with 2, 3, 4 or 5 have disappeared. I guess, that I've made
> accidentally some keystroke, that deletes such line. What could this be please?

You can check your last keystrokes with `C-h l':

,----[ C-h k C-h l ]
| C-h l runs the command view-lossage (found in global-map), which is an
| interactive native-compiled Lisp function in ‘help.el’.
| 
| It is bound to C-h l, <f1> l and <help> l.
| It can also be invoked from the menu: Help → Describe → Show Recent
| Inputs
| 
| (view-lossage)
| 
| Display last few input keystrokes and the commands run.
| For convenience this uses the same format as
| ‘edit-last-kbd-macro’.
| See ‘lossage-size’ to update the number of recorded keystrokes.
| 
| To record all your input, use ‘open-dribble-file’.
| 
|   Probably introduced at or before Emacs version 23.1.
| 
`----

So next time this happens, hit `C-h l' and see what you've hit.

Best, Arash

Re: disappearing lines

[Peter Münster]

On Mon, Jan 16 2023, Arash Esbati wrote:

> You can check your last keystrokes with `C-h l':

This is not so easy, it works only in the same emacs session.
Last time, I've discovered the disappearance of the lines 9 days later.
I make daily backups, so I've used the diff between backup of 9 days ago
and 8 days ago, to restore my file. It's annoying, because it's a very
big file, with all things that I need to remember. About 20k lines.
And about 300 lines have vanished...
I would really like to understand, how this could happen...

No, I don't have a cat, walking on the keyboard... ;)


> | To record all your input, use ‘open-dribble-file’.

I guess, that it would be very hard to find the bad keypress several
days later. There are no timestamps...

Best,
-- 
           Peter

Re: disappearing lines

[Jean Louis]

* Peter Münster <pm@a16n.net> [2023-01-16 22:33]:
> On Mon, Jan 16 2023, Arash Esbati wrote:
> 
> > You can check your last keystrokes with `C-h l':
> 
> This is not so easy, it works only in the same emacs session.
> Last time, I've discovered the disappearance of the lines 9 days later.
> I make daily backups, so I've used the diff between backup of 9 days ago
> and 8 days ago, to restore my file. It's annoying, because it's a very
> big file, with all things that I need to remember. About 20k lines.
> And about 300 lines have vanished...

Did you find in backups?

Did you watch in todo file in ~/.emacs.d/todo/ or where? Did you find
it directly in file without using todo mode?

When you say lines are missing do you mean only in todo-mode or maybe
in the file when you open it without todo-mode?

There may be backup file pending too.

What happens when you use hide/show with v and V?

-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: disappearing lines

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2023-01-16, at 20:31, Peter Münster <pm@a16n.net> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 16 2023, Arash Esbati wrote:
>
>> You can check your last keystrokes with `C-h l':
>
> This is not so easy, it works only in the same emacs session.
> Last time, I've discovered the disappearance of the lines 9 days later.
> I make daily backups, so I've used the diff between backup of 9 days ago
> and 8 days ago, to restore my file. It's annoying, because it's a very
> big file, with all things that I need to remember. About 20k lines.
> And about 300 lines have vanished...
> I would really like to understand, how this could happen...

I know that won't help you /right now/, but I had similar problems in
the past, and I pretty much got rid of them by commiting all my Org mode
files to Git every day (well, almost every day - my average over the
last 640 days is 0.90 times per day, although I'm getting closer to 1
recently).  It would be great if Org mode had some way to warn me when
I delete something that is invisible (or undo in invisible parts of the
buffer), but I know of no such feature, so I do what I do.  It takes
literally a minute or two every day, and I find it a very useful habit.

Hth,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: disappearing lines

[H. Dieter Wilhelm]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

> I know that won't help you /right now/, but I had similar problems in
> the past, and I pretty much got rid of them by commiting all my Org mode
> files to Git every day (well, almost every day - my average over the
> last 640 days is 0.90 times per day, although I'm getting closer to 1
> recently).  It would be great if Org mode had some way to warn me when
> I delete something that is invisible (or undo in invisible parts of the
> buffer), but I know of no such feature, so I do what I do.  It takes
> literally a minute or two every day, and I find it a very useful habit.

From time to time I lost, more or less, large portions of my org file -
from various self inflicted reasons.  For me Emacs' auto numbered
backups (for 200 days) are good enough, so far.

     Dieter

-- 
Best wishes
H. Dieter Wilhelm
Zwingenberg, Germany

Re: disappearing lines

[Samuel Wales]

you probably already know this but backup-walker is a useful package
for a quick overview and i think there is a more generic one that
allows different backends [one could want git or rsnapshot but idk
which are supported].

in addition to git i use a shell script to compare old and new
versions.  it is for if git is not working, i suspect git or magit
corruption [which i definitely do], and other purposes.  as a sort of
double check.

i am currently wondering if it is possible to store a copy of files or
shas and times someplace and use them to detect silent [e.g. git-fsck
does not notice] corruption in files or in magit or git or even fs.
but i do not have a clear idea on this.  i know there's a program
called bitrot that does one thing for this.

i wonder if you could automate narrowing to specific issues so that
you do not have to wade through large diffs?

is it possible you have hardware issues such as a flaky cable inside your kb?

i'd think other hw issues would be less likely given the specificity
of the format.


[still no guarantee i will notice any replies even if to or cc me :[
but i tryt o check occsionally.  gmail filtering !@#$.]

Re: disappearing lines

[Peter Münster]

On Mon, Jan 16 2023, Jean Louis wrote:

> Did you find in backups?

What?

Yes, I did find the vanished lines.


> Did you watch in todo file in ~/.emacs.d/todo/ or where?

My todo.org is elsewhere.


> Did you find it directly in file without using todo mode?

I don't use todo-mode, but org-mode.


> When you say lines are missing do you mean only in todo-mode or maybe
> in the file when you open it without todo-mode?

In the file todo.org (but the name doesn't matter).


> What happens when you use hide/show with v and V?

???

-- 
           Peter

Re: disappearing lines

[Peter Münster]

On Mon, Jan 16 2023, Samuel Wales wrote:

> is it possible you have hardware issues such as a flaky cable inside
> your kb?

I really don't know. But IMO it's more likely some emacs-command, that I
invoke accidentally, than a kb-issue.

-- 
           Peter

Re: disappearing lines

[Panagiotis Koutsourakis]

On Mon, Jan 16 2023, Marcin Borkowski wrote:

> On 2023-01-16, at 20:31, Peter Münster <pm@a16n.net> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jan 16 2023, Arash Esbati wrote:
>>
>>> You can check your last keystrokes with `C-h l':
>>
>> This is not so easy, it works only in the same emacs session.
>> Last time, I've discovered the disappearance of the lines 9 days later.
>> I make daily backups, so I've used the diff between backup of 9 days ago
>> and 8 days ago, to restore my file. It's annoying, because it's a very
>> big file, with all things that I need to remember. About 20k lines.
>> And about 300 lines have vanished...
>> I would really like to understand, how this could happen...
>
> I know that won't help you /right now/, but I had similar problems in
> the past, and I pretty much got rid of them by commiting all my Org mode
> files to Git every day (well, almost every day - my average over the
> last 640 days is 0.90 times per day, although I'm getting closer to 1

I have something like this in my emacs configuration:

(run-at-time t 600
             (lambda ()
               (org-save-all-org-buffers)
               (call-process "org-git-sync.sh" nil "*Org git sync*" nil)))

The script org-git-sync.sh performs a git commit. Essentially this
autosaves my org directory every 10 minutes. One nice property is that
if nothing has changed in the last 10 minutes git commit will fail, so I
only get meaningful history in my git repository.

> recently).  It would be great if Org mode had some way to warn me when
> I delete something that is invisible (or undo in invisible parts of the
> buffer), but I know of no such feature, so I do what I do.  It takes
> literally a minute or two every day, and I find it a very useful habit.

There is the option `org-fold-catch-invisible-edits'
(`org-catch-invisible-edits' in older versions of org mode) that will
warn you or throw an error or both if you make changes in an invisible
part of the org buffer. I am not sure if it works for undo, though.

>
> Hth,

-- 
Best regards,
Panos.

Re: disappearing lines

[Peter Münster]

On Tue, Jan 17 2023, Panagiotis Koutsourakis wrote:

> (run-at-time t 600
>              (lambda ()
>                (org-save-all-org-buffers)
>                (call-process "org-git-sync.sh" nil "*Org git sync*" nil)))

Thanks, this seems interesting. I'll try to set up a script, that warns
me, whenever too many lines have changed. And then I could use
view-lossage.


> if you make changes in an invisible part of the org buffer.

Everything is visible in my buffer, so that doesn't apply in my case.

-- 
           Peter

Re: disappearing lines

[Jean Louis]

* Peter Münster <pm@a16n.net> [2023-01-17 09:52]:
> On Mon, Jan 16 2023, Jean Louis wrote:
> 
> > Did you find in backups?
> 
> What?
> 
> Yes, I did find the vanished lines.
> 
> 
> > Did you watch in todo file in ~/.emacs.d/todo/ or where?
> 
> My todo.org is elsewhere.

Entschuldigung Peter, but I was thinking you use todo-mode and not Org
mode.

There are many ways how I have lost lines of code. Not that I can
remember how I came to it. But it happens. 

I have implemented automatic version control system by using database,
so I do not think about it. But when I need something missing, I
recall it back, or can do diff over previous snapshots and find what
is missing. 

It can happen to me due to invoking unknown commands or human
mistakes.


-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: disappearing lines

[H. Dieter Wilhelm]

Samuel Wales <samologist@gmail.com> writes:

> you probably already know this but backup-walker is a useful package
> for a quick overview and i think there is a more generic one that

Thank you for the hint, I didn't know about backup-walker.

Installed it from Melpa but unfortunately it isn't working for my
backups from Emacs-28.2 on Windows.  (This package was last updated in
2013!)  But the idea looks promising, I think I'll have a deeper look
when I'm in the need of my backups.

        Dieter
-- 
Best wishes
H. Dieter Wilhelm
Zwingenberg, Germany