[xubuntu-users] mousepad wiped out file content when font change tried

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2014 01:32:45 +0000 (UTC)
"Juan R. de Silva" <juan.r.d.silva at gmail.com> wrote:

> Editing a file in Mousepad I wanted to change to Italic font. I
> opened View->Select Font, selected Italic and clicked OK. And...
> 
> Suddenly all text disappeared. I tried to close the file and, quite 
> logically in this situation, selected DO NOT SAVE when I was prompted.
> 
> When I reopened the file it was JUST PLAIN EMPTY. To my horror I
> found that Mousepad did not do an automatic backup either. 
> 
> Well folks, I'm in Linux for a long time but this is something new.
> Quite an aCHIEVEMENT. :-( Very impressive. :-(
> 
> For last several days I've been working almost exclusively in Xubuntu 
> environment testing it. I say, I liked it very much, and I was
> seriously considering switching to it. But know I'm not quite sure in
> this anymore. Does XFCE generally has such type of bugs or it's just
> Xubuntu?

Neither. It's just (apparently) mousepad. Most editors never do
anything that stupid. I've used Vim for years, and had no unexpected
data loss. Nothing in XFCE or Xubuntu has ever cost me data (I'm
usually the cause of my lost data).

> And the most important... Is there any way to recover the loss?!!
> Well, I'm asking just being totally desperate. :-( A day of work has
> been vanished! :-(

I know little about it, but until somebody gives you more information,
if I were you I wouldn't write anything to that disk.

I know this is a little too late, I should have told you yesterday, but
I have a script called "bupsky" that backs up the current tree. I run
it about every hour, plus every time I hit a milestone, when I'm hot on
a project. Here it is:

=================================================
#!/bin/bash

buptrunk=/scratch/bup
curdir=$(pwd | sed -e "s/.*\///")
bupdir=$buptrunk/$curdir
now=$(date +%Y%m%d_%H_%M_%S)
src=../$curdir
dst=$bupdir/${curdir}_$now

if test ! -d $bupdir; then
	mkdir $bupdir
fi

cp -Rp $src $dst

echo backup written to $dst
=================================================

Since I started using bupsky, I never lose more than a half hour on a
hot project.

Hope this helps (at least for next time)

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance