Hi there,
We had a power cut the other day and the server eventually went down. started back up and tried logging into the Manager and no businesses appear. can you help? I have looked in the default location and there is data folders, but I don’t know how to re-add these back into manager as this isn’t a backup file.
thanks,
Mark
Are you saying that when you logged on, the “Manager Home Page” opened up ok but there were no businesses listed - is that correct.
You have a couple of options.
If you do (3), then go to the default file location first and rename the business files (the odd looking names) by putting - old - in front. These are now identified for later deletion once everything is back working.
hi there,
I have started again now, but can you help with where the .MANAGER files are stored. I have created 3 new businesses and these create folders inside the data folder, but I cannot find the .MANAGER file so when I break it to test a restore, I am unable to locate the MANAGER file for each business meaning I cannot import. this is a major issue as I am going to be reliant on manually backing up or restoring the complete server to get manager seeing my businesses.
thanks,
Mark
Have you tried restoring according to this Guide?
If the files for the three businesses are in the location shown under About Manager, they will have incomprehensible alpha-numeric names, and you will be able to see them from within the application. They do not have the same format as a backup file.
If you have to restore from a backup file, you must navigate to the backup from within the application, as well. You cannot open the backup file directly. But backup files have names that include the name of the business and a date.
What do you mean by “when I break it to test a restore?” The test of a restore is that the business is available and opens from the application’s splash page.
Hi there,
what I mean is that if the server version loses the businesses that were listed, I want to be able to make sure I can re-access the data. I want to add this to my automated backup of the server and know I can only get manager to recognise the businesses by importing the .MANAGER file or a backup file taken manually (which I do not want to do).
my issue is I cannot locate a .MANAGER file. I have the folders with the data with 00000 etc but no .MANAGER file meaing if the server software loses the fact it has businesses listed, I cannot reconnect the data files to server manager.
Basically this was an issue a day or so ago and the server rebooted from a lon power cut and then manager lost the connection to the businesses and as I couldn’t find the .MANAGER files, I couldn’t re-attach the data to server manager.
does this make sense? I just need to know what directories to backup so manager recognises the businesses if I have server issue etc.
by backing up just the APP Data folder, this wasn’t good enough.
can you try copy that 000…00 file in some other place, rename to something like tst.bak and try import it?
You need to backup the folder (directories) as detailed in the Application Path under About Manager
The files with 0000…00000 names are indexes. They contain no accounting data.
In the new structure? Cause I’ve checked this before posting and business was imported with all data/transactions.
Not from that file, it wasn’t. Look at the size of the 000…000 files: just a few kilobytes.
hmmm, mine files size ranges from 10Kb up to 100+Kb (different businesses, different number of transactions) - I do not use “attach” feature, so it only journals/invoice data/cash payments and receipts.
May be we are speaking about different 000…000 files, as I understand there are “two” types:
(1) One, that is in “main” (or “root”) data directory - this one indeed is small and contain only metadata of all businesses.
(2) number of other 000…000 files, that are located in subdirectories (with gibberish names - businesses uids, perhaps) of “main” directory - those files have different sizes, and, as I understand, contains data (transactions) of the business (I’ve copied this filed and successfully imported as a new business).
In my reply I suggest to try and import 2nd type.
Ok, there seems to have been a file/folder structure change.
Once upon a time there was a single folder with one 000,000 file plus the gibberish name files
Now the gibberish name files also have there own sub-folders with each one containing a 000…0000 file, but these remain as index files not live data file. These sub-folders start occurring prior to version 16.10.88 - possibly at the same time that the backup files started getting date stamped.
The live data files however remain under the main folder, not the sub folders. You can test this by doing some data entry - the date changes on the live data file but doesn’t change on the sub-folder 000…0000 file.
I am on 16.11.88 and my 000…000 files in subfolders with gibberish names contains data, not indexes. See screenshot with filesize.
The live data files however remain under the main folder
I am not sure, as files with gibberish names in “main” folder had not changed for a long time (despite I’ve entered transactions to businesses, I think last change was before my migration to newer version of Manager, that changed data file storage structure), 0000…0000 in “gibberish” name folder, on the contrary, changed.
That seems to conflict with local data. The first screenshot shows the sub-folder 000…0000 with an old date while the second screenshot shows the main folder with a more current date.
In fact, it appears that the sub-folders are only created when a Business has had a Back Up.
Businesses without a backup don’t have a sub-folder
Screenshot one shows all of the Business data files that have been created, including one just created (6th down). Screenshot two shows all of the sub-folders that have been created and they only relate to Businesses that have had Back Ups created.
Part of the confusion on this topic comes from the fact that Manager rarely or never does away with files. So an index file that is no longer used will sit there harmlessly. A little experimentation shows the following for the current data structure:
000…000 files with no extension seem to be obsolete indexes. If you remove one from the application data folder, nothing happens, nothing disappears, and life goes on.
The 000…000.manager file is the current index folder. If you remove it, the list of businesses comes up Empty. But Manager immediately regenerates an identically titled file, waiting for you to import backups or create businesses. Replacing the new index with the old one puts back all businesses as though nothing was ever done.
The size file stores certain last-used window parameters, and possibly screen size information. It will be regenerated, if missing, whenever the program is closed.
Most (but not all) of the alphanumericgibberish.manager files represent complete accounting files for businesses, including attachments and custom themes. Remove one and the business will still be listed (assuming the index file is untouched). But all data will be gone when the business is selected. And a new data file with the same name will be generated with only the default new business modules. Replace the regenerated file with the original one, and all the data will be back.
The folders with names matching the alphanumericgibberish business files do not appear because a business has been backed up. I have not been to determine when or why they are generated. Removing them from the application data folder has no obvious impact, at least for the desktop edition on a Mac. They are not automatically regenerated. If you remove the main file for the business and leave or reinstall the corresponding folder, the business is not accessible. In other words, the program does not recreate the main business file from its corresponding folder. But, as @koroko observed, the folders’ 000…000 files are almost as large as the main accounting files, and they appear to contain the accounting data also. These folders were not previously used, so I suspect they are related to changes in attachments, themes, or data structure.
At least one other alphanumericgibberish.manager file contains information about SQLite and an audit trail. File size on this one is very small.
I would like to add, that for me, Linux user, alphanumericgibberish business files are not updating when I post new transactions, however 0000…0000 files in alphanumericgibberish folders do.
But as we are running same program, this should be the case on every OS.
Strange. I just verified that in macOS, the opposite is true.
It would appear then that Windows / Mac files are updating differently to Linux files, perhaps (?) this relates to mono / SQLite / 32 bit issues relating to Linux / Ubuntu systems
Investigating further, these sub-folders started to appear after downloading 16.10.88 on Oct 27 at 9.04 PM, as their creation date/time stamp correlates with the opening of each business after the completion of that update, the first being at 9.07 PM.
None of the sub-folders 000…0000 files have a date/time stamp later then Dec 19 at 9.16 PM which happens to be just prior to the downloading of 16.12.37 on Dec 19 at 9.18 PM.
They don’t appear to have been used since and also that their sizes are much smaller then the associated gibberish named file in the main folder.
On the original topic, Manager uses SQLite which is ACID compliant and embedded database engine i.e. it guarantees the state of transactions once they are synchronously committed even if the system crashes.
Plus, the embedded nature of SQLite makes it easier to backup the raw files in mostly persistent state whenever you want (while the server-based RDBMSs cannot be backed up by merely copying raw files unless you’re using a copy-on-write snapshot based filesystem).
If you have a really busy server with legacy filesystems then files vanishing on sudden power loss, is not unheard of. Also, did any scanning utilities run? I’d check system logs to see any output for chkdsk on Windows, fsck on Linux (with default filesystems).
The file structure has changed recently. Here is how Manager stores data currently:
When you launch Manager the first time, Manager will create 00000000000000000000000000000000.manager which is SQLite database which will hold list of businesses, users and other global preferences. This file won’t contain any accounting data.
When you create new business, Manager will create new file (e.g. 69703781b9284b1684e494fdd5510cb8.manager). If you have more businesses, each business will have its own file.
So if you have 2 businesses, your file structure will look like this:
There might be one more file called size which will store size of window when desktop edition is closed.
Other than that, the latest version doesn’t use or create any other files or folders.
If you see other files or folders in your data folder, they are relics from the earlier versions which the latest version doesn’t care about.
