Hello Jim
Sorry to hear your operator lost QSO's. It would really be nice if Writelog
could save an ADIF complete backup log or even a Writelog backup file on
another drive, but I don't think that's possible with the current software.
I don't use AutoSave and just hit Cntrl "S" whenever convenient. I lost
power twice while operating in Aruba and both times when I restarted,
Writelog asked me if I want to recover the unsaved QSO's. Perhaps your
operated, being tired and in a hurry hit "no".
73,
John KK9A / P40A
To: <writelog@contesting.com>
Subject: [WriteLog] Fat fiingers, WL HANGS and Journal backup question.
From: "jims" <jims@psws.com>
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2005 17:21:51 -0800
List-post: <mailto:writelog@contesting.com>
We had a problem with WL in this past CQWW CW test.
Towards the end of the contest, a call of 0M (zero mike) was entered in
the call field, of the entry window, followed by the Enter key.
WL Immediately HANGS!
It turns out that you can enter a Ham band followed by 'M'(Megahertz)
like 7M, 14M to go a different frequency.
This is documented in WL under 'Keyboard band and Mode Selection' in the
help topics.
WL protects you from going to non-ham bands like 6M, 8M....
It looks like 0M is not protected. Perhaps WL is trying to switch to
zero Megahertz?
In any case WL stops responding and must be killed with the Windows task
manager.
I realize 0M is not a good entry, but WL should not HANG.
This problem appears to be version and OS independent
After restarting WL, the operator informed me he lost about 50 QSOs. I
inquired if he answered 'YES' to any Dialogs about recovering Journal
QSOs when he restarted WL. The operator claimed that no dialog appeared.
His autosave count was set to 50 QSOs and it looked like he lost about
48 contacts.
This is sad because his score is a new world record for 20 SOSB.
My friend has only been using WL for a few contests. The WL log
indicated a missing 30 minutes
My idea was to check the WL backup file after the test(1 hour to go).
I have tried to duplicate the lost QSO problem locally with several
versions of WL but had no success.
I found that I did not fully understand the relationship between WL, the
Journal file and the Backup file.
My updated current understanding is as follows:
Every time you enter a call and then log it to the log window, the ADIF
record, for that QSO, is created and appended into the journal
(filename_jou.adi) file. When the number of Qsos in your journal file
reaches the 'Autosavecount' value the WL file is saved to disk and the
journal file is renamed to the Backup file ((filename_bck.adi)
If WL stops running, for any reason. the journal file always has at most
the last 'Autosavecount' -1 QSOs.
When you restart WL, the existance of the Journal file, causes WL to
prompt you with a recover QSO dialog.
You answer Yes to the dialog and the QSOs are added to your WL file. The
Journal file is not renamed to the Backup file until you save the WL
file or the next save is triggered by the 'Autosavecount' value.
.
This save/recovery scheme seems to work pretty well with few problems.
However I do not know what happened to the missing 48 QSOS!
PROBLEM:
I did NOT realize that the WL Backup file only contains a snapshot of
your WL QSOs. This snapshot can never be bigger then your
'Autosavecount' . The Backup file is really only a backup of your last
journal.
This logic seems to imply a near absolute trust in the journal method.
Only back up images of the journal are created.
Why doesn't the Backup file contain a complete image of the WL QSOs?
I think it is impossible to test all failure conditions for the Journal
method. The fact that the journal is backed-up implies that it may be
possible to lose at least one journal.
Why not just append each Journal to the Backup file. This would generate
a complete ADIF record of the contest which allows a user to recover the
missing 48 QSOs. Maybe the 48 QSOs were in the Backup file, but the next
Journal save, destroyed any record of these QSOs.
If the problem that caused the missing QSOs is a WL problem or an
Operator error , a user is exposed to losing a maximum of
'Autosavecount' QSOs.
I never paid much attention to the 'Autosavecount' . If we had set it to
5 QSOs we would have not lost so many QSOs. If you don't set it you may
be exposed to 100 QSOs lost.
What does the user community think about a FULL log backup in the Backup
file?
73 Jim W7EJ CN2R
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