"Cannot save the file The project file is maybe read-only" Bug in Oxygen 18.1 build 2016101417

[martindholmes]

Hi there,

A couple of days ago I installed the latest Oxygen 18.1 build 2016101417. Since then, I've been experiencing a very nasty error. I can open projects as usual, but when I make a change to a project which would result in re-saving the project file, I get a message like this:

Cannot save the file The project file is maybe read-only file:/home/mholmes/WorkData/linguistics/ewa/moses/moses.xpr

The program then seems to delete the original project file, so it's gone from my disk. I can restore it from a backup, but as soon as I do that the problem recurs. This has happened with every single project I've worked on since updating Oxygen (about four).

This is so catastrophic that I'm now going to roll back to the last version, but I'm posting in case anyone else has seen the same issue. I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 with Gnome Shell, and Oxygen is running with its built-in JRE.

Has anyone else seen this, or anything like it? It seems only to affect project files; I can save other files with no problem from Oxygen, and no other applications are affected.

Cheers,
Martin

[adrian]

Hello,

Later Edit: I'm inserting this here for better visibility, in case anyone else encounters this with Oxygen 18.1 build 2016101417 and wants their project file back.
If you've encountered the error Cannot save the file The project file is maybe read-only, your .xpr file has already been deleted from its original location, but you can still recover it from the /tmp folder, as long as you do NOT quit Oxygen. If you've already quit or restarted, I'm afraid it's already gone (temporary folder gets cleaned at quitting time).

If you still have Oxygen running, you will find a temporary copy of the .xpr file in /tmp/OxygenXMLTemp-username. Where "username" is your account name.
Temporary project files are named like this: oxy_projectFile.xpr9999999999999999999.tempSave.xpr
e.g. For myProject.xpr you will find something like this:

Code: Select all

oxy_myProject.xpr1810663293635237195.tempSave.xpr

To copy all these temporary files to a safe place, run in a terminal

Code: Select all

cp -a /tmp/OxygenXMLTemp-*/oxy_*.xpr ~

This copies all temporary project files to your user home (/home/username). You can rename them and place them to their original locations afterwards.

This issue has already been resolved in v18.1 build 2016102619 (and later), so you can simply update to the latest maintenance build of v18.1 to avoid the issue.

Previous message was:

This has now become a known critical issue for the initial build of v18.1, 2016101417 on Linux systems that use tmpfs (temporary filesystem) for /tmp (the temporary folder). This issue has already been fixed in our development stream and it's currently under testing. We are preparing to release a maintenance build that includes the bugfix in a couple of days. We will notify this thread as soon as it becomes available.

You can identify this trigger for the Oxygen issue by running in a Linux terminal this command

Code: Select all

df /tmp

If the command returns tmpfs, then Oxygen 18.1 build 2016101417 is affected.

To avoid this issue you can set a different temporary folder for Oxygen.
1. First check the new temporary folder. The location /var/tmp is usually already available (persistent temporary folder). Test it with:

Code: Select all

df /var/tmp

If it exists and has a regular file system (other than tmpfs), it can be used.

2. Create a file named custom_commons.vmoptions in the Oxygen folder with the following contents:

Code: Select all

-Djava.io.tmpdir=/var/tmp

3. Restart Oxygen and check in Help > About, System properties if java.io.tmpdir has the value /var/tmp.

Regards,
Adrian

[pmasereeuw]

Same problem here, Linux Mint 18 Sarah, running Oxygen XML Editor 18.1, build 2016101417

However, my /tmp is of type ext4.

Haven't yet tried the suggested solution, though.

[martindholmes]

Glad to hear you're working on it!

That method of diagnosis doesn't seem to work if you're using an encrypted filesystem:

df /tmp
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root 89428160 66949012 17913340 79% /
mholmes@spud-2015:~$


Cheers,
Martin

[adrian]

Hi,

To clarify, "Linux systems that use tmpfs (temporary filesystem) for /tmp (the temporary folder)" is just one situation where the problem is known to occur (this is an out-of-the-box configuration for some Linux distributions). So the diagnosis I provided is for a single pinpointed situation.
However, after further investigation the problem is a bit more widespread, it occurs if you are working with an .xpr file that is on a different file system (different partition) than the one where /tmp is located. There are many possibilities here (/home mounted from a different file system/partition, .xpr located on another drive/network, etc). I'm afraid that the /var/tmp workaround will not work for all situations, you may need to point Oxygen to another temporary folder that is close to your .xpr (project) file.

We will soon release a patched maintenance build of Oxygen that resolves the issue.

Regards,
Adrian

[adrian]

Hi,

We have released a new maintenance build of v18.1 (2016102619) that fixes this issue.

You can download it from our web site:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/download.html

The list of bug-fixes can be found here (will be updated soon with the additional fixes included in this build):
http://www.oxygenxml.com/build_history.html#2016102619

You can follow the release/build RSS feed here:
http://www.oxygenxml.com/rssBuildID.xml

Let us know if you encounter further problems with this new build.

Regards,
Adrian

[martindholmes]

My situation is that all my project data is on a spinning disk, while the tmp filesystem and the os live on an SSD.

I'll try the new build as soon as I have a chance to do another install. Many thanks!

Cheers,
Martin