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Message #56145
[Bug 817326] Re: [Upstream] Previously-saved LibreOffice document lost by power outage (became 0 bytes long) - LibreOffice should call fsync
As a stopgap measure, I suggest not relying on the auto-save and using
"save as" and changing the filename everytime, for example appending v1,
v2, etc. I'm guessing if the last used file is scrapped by an outage or
suspend, the previous one won't.
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/817326
Title:
[Upstream] Previously-saved LibreOffice document lost by power outage
(became 0 bytes long) - LibreOffice should call fsync
Status in LibreOffice Productivity Suite:
Confirmed
Status in “libreoffice” package in Ubuntu:
Confirmed
Bug description:
I was working on a document in LibreOffice today while my battery was
low and so I was frequently saving, which I thought would help me if I
lost power. However, when I eventually did lose power and later
rebooted, the document had become 0 bytes long. LibreOffice was not
able to restore the auto-saved copy either. As a result, I have lost a
whole week of notes for one of my courses.
After researching online, it seems that this is caused by the
application not calling fsync() (or fdatasync()) when saving files.
Due to delayed allocation in modern filesystems, there is no guarantee
that the new file's data has actually been written to disk unless the
application calls fsync. So if an app writes a new file and replaces
the old one with it without fsync'ing the new one first then there is
a window of opportunity during which a power failure will result in
the loss of BOTH versions of the file. In ext4 this window is also
much larger than in ext3.
Theodore Tso blogged about this at http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org
/blog-entry/delayed-allocation-and-zero-length-file-problem and
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-
media/blogs/browse/2009/03/don%E2%80%99t-fear-fsync. He strongly
recommends to call fsync in this situation.
Please update LibreOffice to fsync() saved files so that other users
do not lose their data like I did.
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: libreoffice-core 1:3.3.2-1ubuntu5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Jul 27 21:37:02 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
LANGUAGE=en_US:en
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: libreoffice
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-04-29 (89 days ago)
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