[GRASSLIST:8827] major data loss bug with i.points!

[Ian MacMillan]

Hi all, I just experienced some VERY weird behavior using grass 6.1cvs. 
  The end result is that somehow GRASS erased an entire location 
(several 100's of MB), without much prompting by me.  Here is how it 
happened.

I was using i.points in an xy location when I mistakenly resized the 
i.points terminal window as I was entering points.  The terminal window 
looked a little funky (mishapen i.points display), and I was presented 
with a grass prompt, instead of the normal i.points display.  My cursor 
no longer responded on the monitor, though it still displayed the 
typical 'cross' cursor from i.points.  I tried to control-c to kill 
i.points, but my cursor would not change.  Everytime I did this the 
grass prompt would repeat itself without a carriage return such that it 
looked like:

GRASS 6.1.cvs (xy):~ >     GRASS 6.1.cvs (xy):~ >      GRASS 6.1.cvs 
(xy):~ >

rather than

GRASS 6.1.cvs (xy):~ >
GRASS 6.1.cvs (xy):~ >

Carriage returns yielded the same behavior.  I decided things looked a 
little screwy, so I typed exit.  Grass seemed to quit in a normal way 
(D.m disappeared along with the terminal).  Upon immediately restarting 
Grass and firing up i.points again, I discovered that I had lost my 
target location!  This included ALL data in the target location (a few 
hundred megabytes, many hours of work).  I have searched thoroughly on 
my system, and it is all gone (not in the trash either and I haven't 
emptied it).  My XY location is still there, but the target location 
has disappeared.  The target files of the imagery groups all still 
point to the lost location.  This all happened in a span of 2 minutes.  
Out of fear I have not attempted to recreate this scenario.

The last commands from my .bash_history file don't reveal much:
i.points
fg
exit
i.points
I tried to see if i.points was running in the background after its 
initial weird behavior.

I feel pretty comfortable with grass (regular user for 4 years), and 
this is the first time I have ever experienced anything remotely 
similar to this.  It definitely scares me as I have a lot of data I 
don't care to lose.  Anyone have any ideas out there about this?  
Developers?  Is this something that has happened before with a cvs 
version?

I have been very happy with GRASS, but a bug like this really makes me 
question my use of the program.  I know one should make regular 
backups, but this is very bothersome.

-Ian

Mac OS 10.3.9 (latest update), GRASS 6.1cvs from Lorenzo (source Oct. 
22, 2005)


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