[GRASS-dev] [bug #4426] (grass) Almost entire GRASS database deleted. Suspect grass startup.

[Hamish]

> Please help by suggesting what program could have done this short list
> of symptoms:
> 
> All grass database files (vectors, rasters, regions, etc.) and their
> directories completely removed.
> 
> Projection and other support files except for MYNAME removed. MYNAME
> still has the correct name for the location, so the whole folder
> wasn't deleted.

> WIND and DEFAULT_WIND either removed and rewritten with proj and zone
> lines or all the defaults of 0 and 1 were written to the remaining
> files.

this suggests it happened during a session, g.region creates a new WIND
if it finds that it is missing.

were you in the PERMANENT mapset at the time?

stuff to check:

$GISBASE/etc/clean_temp

I always get lots of /tmp/grass6-$USER-$$  dirs left over after exiting
GRASS, suggesting they might not be getting removed correctly.
(maybe from repeated `grass61 -gui` <cancel> ?)

e2fsck?

It is interesting that directories were removed too(?), suggesting
"rm -rf" not "rm -f", or some sort of "find | rm -f":

A while back I made a mistake coding a script which didn't check that a
g.tempfile was successfully created. At the cleanup() stage it did
"rm -f ${TMP}*", but g.tempfile failed and TMP was unset, so it ran as
"rm -f *" and wiped off all the files (but not dirs) in a home dir.
luckily my victim had a recent backup :/

I don't think common unlink() will remove dirs.

Is there a map name with loc/mapset name the same as a map name?

corrupted stream of data sent to the shell? `find` files moved to
other parts of the file system?

luck,
Hamish