Fix corrupted txt file (NULL)
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I found this file from this issue thread and it seems that this file can be used to confirm that the backup is the culprit.
Unfortunattely your build is crashing also when doing the trim trailing spaces action.
I’m currently running some tests like doing it 100 times in a row and 100 times after restart npp … to see if this is really the case.The test file is a bit unusual as I described in the issue thread and needs to be investigated as well
but at least it looks like there is a reliable way to crash npp and therefore a chance to find out what it is causing it.
Whether or how NULL backup files are involved can’t be said at the moment.Cheers
Claudia -
Hi @Claudia-Frank ,
Thanks for trying and for pointing to that file.
I can do some tests on my own now.BR
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OK, I think I got what the problem is.
This is the cause for the problem in this issue as well.Backup is running in a separate thread as can be seen in Notepad_plus.cpp,
void Notepad_plus::launchDocumentBackupTask().
What it does is periodically executing Buffer.cpp,bool FileManager::backupCurrentBuffer().Now imagine that we launch a long-running operation in Notepad++ from the user thread.
While it is running and doing its processing on the Scintilla buffer the periodic backup thread kicks.
Thebool FileManager::backupCurrentBuffer()is called which GETS THE RAW SCINTILLA BUFFER POINTER here:FILE *fp = UnicodeConvertor.fopen(fullpath, TEXT("wb"));
if (fp)
{
int lengthDoc = _pNotepadPlus->_pEditView->getCurrentDocLen();
char* buf = (char*)_pNotepadPlus->_pEditView->execute(SCI_GETCHARACTERPOINTER); //to get characters directly from Scintilla bufferNow backup can be written at once or in portions depending if
WcharMbcsConvertor *wmc = WcharMbcsConvertor::getInstance()conversions are needed BUT anyway:WHILE BACKUP FILE IS BEING WRITTEN FROM THE RAW SCINTILLA BUFFER,
THE SCINTILLA BUFFER ITSELF IS BEING UPDATED BY THE USER LONG RUNNING OPERATION THREAD (THIS MIGHT EVEN INCLUDE BUFFER RELOCATION IF MORE MEMORY ALLOCATION IS NEEDED).I’ll have to figure out a proper way to fix that now.
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One update:
The
bool FileManager::backupCurrentBuffer()properly locksLongRunningOperationso the concurrent Scintilla buffer access shouldn’t happen during backup but it seems it still does. Which means theLongRunningOperationlock is not done properly for Trim trailing spaces and Find and Replace in Files and probably in other places. -
Hi again @Claudia-Frank ,
Could you please try again with this binary:
https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/3tfm2eeubr9hg9y9/artifacts/Notepad%2B%2B.Win32.Unicode Release.exe ?It has fix for Trim trailing spaces and I cannot reproduce the issue on my side anymore.
Sorry to bother you again, I appreciate your help.BR
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Hi @pnedev
Sorry to bother you again, I appreciate your help.
No problem, if I can be of any help I will do so but same as yesterday, I will do the test later today.
I’m on late shift this week.Cheers
Claudia -
Hi again @Claudia-Frank ,
I have made official pull request addressing the issue:
https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/pull/4803 .The corresponding x86 binary is:
https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/p3t4vsd8lj202wjm/artifacts/Notepad%2B%2B.Win32.Unicode Release.exe .This needs to be thoroughly tested though as it changes the way backup is performed.
I hope it fixes the file corruption problems observed so far but only time will tell.Thank you.
BR
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Hi @pnedev
I’m currently thinking of the using the test file and add additional data to fulfill
the requirements for all modification actions like find/replace, trim, convert case …
basically what can be done using edit/search/view menu (encoding menu I’m unsure atm??)Then I run each action to see that if it crashes npp with the original npp binary and your build.
Afterwards I’m doing long running test which means each action do get executed 100 times
in a row and a following test of 1000 random actions in a row.I will be using python script plugin as the only additional plugin and the test would be something like
while counter < 100 notepad.menuCommand(ACTION_ID) editor.undo()and modified for having 1000 iterations with random ACTION_ID
I know, having an additional plugin loaded might have impact on the test itself but
if the result is success then it should be ok. If not I do it manually with minimum npp setup.What do you think?
@all - any additional ideas?Cheers
Claudia -
A test to see if the backup file gets created correctly is needed too.
Cheers
Claudia -
I can confirm that your build didn’t crash when running the trim_trailing_space test.
1st results - 100 successful runsRun | compare document and backupfile hashes | runtime in sec | undo deleted backup file ======================================================================================== 1 | ok | 31.40 | ok 2 | ok | 31.38 | ok 3 | ok | 31.60 | ok 4 | ok | 31.78 | ok 5 | ok | 32.28 | ok 6 | ok | 32.25 | ok 7 | ok | 33.00 | ok 8 | ok | 32.94 | ok 9 | ok | 31.59 | ok 10 | ok | 31.62 | ok 11 | ok | 31.56 | ok 12 | ok | 31.67 | ok 13 | ok | 31.66 | ok 14 | ok | 31.41 | ok 15 | ok | 31.32 | ok 16 | ok | 31.46 | ok 17 | ok | 31.68 | ok 18 | ok | 32.92 | ok 19 | ok | 33.97 | ok 20 | ok | 33.94 | ok 21 | ok | 32.90 | ok 22 | ok | 33.56 | ok 23 | ok | 34.08 | ok 24 | ok | 34.69 | ok 25 | ok | 38.68 | ok 26 | ok | 38.63 | ok 27 | ok | 38.36 | ok 28 | ok | 38.22 | ok 29 | ok | 39.75 | ok 30 | ok | 39.57 | ok 31 | ok | 39.72 | ok 32 | ok | 39.29 | ok 33 | ok | 37.99 | ok 34 | ok | 38.21 | ok 35 | ok | 39.12 | ok 36 | ok | 39.88 | ok 37 | ok | 39.55 | ok 38 | ok | 38.28 | ok 39 | ok | 39.21 | ok 40 | ok | 39.55 | ok 41 | ok | 38.15 | ok 42 | ok | 38.46 | ok 43 | ok | 38.50 | ok 44 | ok | 39.24 | ok 45 | ok | 39.05 | ok 46 | ok | 39.64 | ok 47 | ok | 39.05 | ok 48 | ok | 39.55 | ok 49 | ok | 38.99 | ok 50 | ok | 38.98 | ok 51 | ok | 37.86 | ok 52 | ok | 39.44 | ok 53 | ok | 39.90 | ok 54 | ok | 39.64 | ok 55 | ok | 40.21 | ok 56 | ok | 39.84 | ok 57 | ok | 40.28 | ok 58 | ok | 40.60 | ok 59 | ok | 39.33 | ok 60 | ok | 35.01 | ok 61 | ok | 40.56 | ok 62 | ok | 39.85 | ok 63 | ok | 39.12 | ok 64 | ok | 40.14 | ok 65 | ok | 39.19 | ok 66 | ok | 39.41 | ok 67 | ok | 39.36 | ok 68 | ok | 38.37 | ok 69 | ok | 38.43 | ok 70 | ok | 39.00 | ok 71 | ok | 38.87 | ok 72 | ok | 38.43 | ok 73 | ok | 39.46 | ok 74 | ok | 38.17 | ok 75 | ok | 39.24 | ok 76 | ok | 39.03 | ok 77 | ok | 39.01 | ok 78 | ok | 39.22 | ok 79 | ok | 36.97 | ok 80 | ok | 37.75 | ok 81 | ok | 39.70 | ok 82 | ok | 39.39 | ok 83 | ok | 39.58 | ok 84 | ok | 39.24 | ok 85 | ok | 39.40 | ok 86 | ok | 37.53 | ok 87 | ok | 32.78 | ok 88 | ok | 35.11 | ok 89 | ok | 31.46 | ok 90 | ok | 34.63 | ok 91 | ok | 34.72 | ok 92 | ok | 35.40 | ok 93 | ok | 34.99 | ok 94 | ok | 35.08 | ok 95 | ok | 34.97 | ok 96 | ok | 34.82 | ok 97 | ok | 34.84 | ok 98 | ok | 34.84 | ok 99 | ok | 34.80 | ok 100 | ok | 34.75 | okMore tests will follow.
Cheers
Claudia -
Hi Claudia,
Your test approach seems very good and should catch most functional issues pretty well.
I don’t think covering encoding menu is necessary. The only potential thing missing is macro recording/execution but that cannot be automated.
I suppose you are testing with the pull request binary (https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/13302/fix-corrupted-txt-file-null/53), right? It should fix all potential backup concurrency issues so far.My main concern actually is the “power loss -> data loss” issue but that is impossible to reproduce and is beyond our control.
Thank you very much for testing the changes.
BR
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I suppose you are testing with the pull request binary
correct, and the x64 binary from the artifacts from here.
Concerning your concerns :-), for sure we can’t cover every kind of situation but
I’m thinking ofPowerloss - VirtualBox/Qemu shutdown
Dataloss - kill the process when accessing real and backup file.
Macros - missed that totally - maybe some kind of sendkeys solution (!?) - need to think of.One, side question, if allowed - testing 64bit npp seems to run ~30% faster than 32bit.
Any idea why this might be? I mean, I expected it to be faster but ~30% ??
As far as I can tell I didn’t hit any limit when testing the 32bit npp.And most important - THANK YOU for that fix - even haven’t tested all functions yet,
it looks very promising.Cheers
Claudia -
Hi @Claudia-Frank ,
Powerloss - VirtualBox/Qemu shutdown
Dataloss - kill the process when accessing real and backup file.That’s worth trying. I don’t know about the macros, I have never used them actually.
Any idea why this might be?
I suppose it might be connected to the memory buffers allocations in Scintilla and in general. Perhaps the pre-allocated memory chunk size is bigger in 64 bit which leads to less buffer re-allocations and data moves making things a lot more optimal.
Thanks,
BR -
hello guys . i got a solution for this issue.
in fact i got the same problem this morning and the current fille on wich i was working get corrupted and content a serie of NULL character .i use recuva as mention . by other to solve that issue .
this is what i did:- don’t update the corrupted file . i you have updated it , don’t save it .
- run recuva . and in the wizar . access the particular place where your file is located .
- for the firs time , no need to activate deep scan .
- at the main page of search in recuva . find advance mode / option
- click option --> action
- check scan for non deleted file.
- click ok
- start the scan .
- after the scan. check for your file in the list . and most probably you will find it .
- check the box to select the file --> click on restore
- restore in a different location .
thank you . hope it help you to solve your problem.
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Hi guys
I randomly found the best and easy solution. Just run the corrupted file to chrome, instad of null you will see the right code, then just the classic ctrl+u and you have again the code (if is html/css etc) eg for php cannot work for obvious reasons… -
Hello guys.
Sorry for warming up this old thread. Don’t know if it is solved yet.
I had the same problem (correct file size but only NULLs) on some embedded devices (Windows 10 Enterprise IoT 1607) with NPP and other (in-house) applications.
When changing configuration files on the device using NPP, saving them and immediately power-cycle the device, sometimes the file is corrupted as described above. Sometimes the file (configuration) is written correctly but NPP schows NULLs when reopening. In that case closing and reopening that file shows the correctly saved content (It seems to me as only some NPP-chach is corrupted).
Anyway, after disabling the write cache on the not-write-protected disk, everything went fine.
So probably this is NOT an error caused and CANNOT be fixed by NPP.
HOW TO: Manually Turn Disk Write Caching On or Off
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\<BUS>\<DISK_NAME>\<INSTANCE_ID>\Device Parameters\Disk" /v UserWriteCacheSetting /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f && shutdown -r -t 0 -
Hi, right now, i have same problem windows 7 x64 npp 7.5.9.
Restored by previous version of file windows fuctionality. -
such issues are hard to track down, as you see it already took sometime before one
found a reliable way to reproduce this issue but once found a possible fix can be coded.
In order to help identifying/fixing such an problem it is needed to know what has been done,
what happened and how is/was npp configured.
And the best would be if you already know how to reproduce in a reliable way. -
@dontEatMe said:
i have same problem windows 7 x64 npp 7.5.9.
This is BAD as 7.5.9 supposedly fixed this problem!
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if you say that some of your files got restored by previous versions of the same file using 7.5.9, some possible reasons are:
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you have multi-instance enabled, and auto backup and periodic snapshot is enabled, and at one time you had the same file opened in 2 different instances without noticing it, where one of them was not saved, which is the version that will be restored, even though you saved the same file with newer contents at the other instance.
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you have more than one notepad++ installed, eg. an installed one and a portable one, and auto backup and periodic snapshot is enabled, and you have modified the same file from both of them, and one of them was not saved and is restored from the snapshot that contains an older state.
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