[GRASSLIST:9489] Re: aaargh! another location lost

[James Plante]

Ian MacMillan wrote:

> Hi all, so I hate to write about this again, but somehow I have had 
> another location erased while using imagery commands.  This is the 
> second time this has happened to me.  I have a hard time narrowing 
> down how it happened this time, but last time I was using i.points, 
> and a location disappeared (~300 MB of data) (GRASSLIST 8827).  This 
> time I couldn't pin down which imagery command did it (I can only pin 
> it down to a 5 minute time frame), but I again encountered problems 
> using i.points.  I tried to run the program, but got a 'false start' 
> where after entering the imagery group in the pop-up terminal window, 
> the terminal window disappeared, and i.points never started up.  
> Within minutes after this, I noticed that the target location had been 
> erased (another ~500 MB down the drain).  Again, checking my 
> bash_history, there is nothing there that would indicate a command 
> that would do this.  I have also checked my whole computer for this 
> location (or any files in it), to no avail.
>
> I am running 6.1cvs (Dec-12 Lorenzo's binaries) on mac 10.3.9.
>
> I can't understand what can be happening.  I have tried repeating my 
> steps exactly, and can not get the same error in the program to 
> occur.  I have no idea how to isolate the issue at all.  I have had no 
> other troubles with this computer in 1.5 years of use, it has plenty 
> of memory, and runs really smooth (like most macs).
>
> This is really strange behavior obviously, but very troublesome to me 
> since it has happened twice now, though with slightly different causes.
>
> I have no idea how to test for this behavior, and looking at the 
> responses from last time, I am not sure how they could necessarily 
> result in this behavior multiple times.  Any other ideas out there?
>
> -Ian
>
>
> PS I know I need to back up data, and I do, but this is still 
> infuriating.
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> This message has been scanned by Postini anti-virus software.
>
At the risk of suggesting the obvious, have you run a virus scan? I 
could see perhaps a corrupted file, but completely erased suggests 
something other than GRASS. Do you have a disk utiltiy which can unerase 
or recover files?

I wouldn't have the temerity to suggest something so obvious, except for 
the fact that the Mac is seldom visited by viruses. As a result, we 
often fail to check for them regularly.