Accidential data loss

[dschwoerer]

#1262 was caused by boutcore 😞
passing output:enabled=false to bc.init() avoids the empty datafile - as starting the post processing scripts calls the standard bout init routines, which open the dump files. Depending on the last run (if read from BOUT.settings) this does delete all data. I am not sure whether this is a regression, or whether I only used that script on simulation that had been started with restart append.

I am thinking of whether we should add a postprocessing mode for BOUT++:

• BOUT.inp -> BOUT.settings
• BOUT.settings -> BOUT.post
• Disable output
• ???

Proceed with care if you are using boutcore - copying the files to a new folder (with hard links rather than full copies should suffice full, deep copies are needed) with e.g. cp -al data post can prevent accidental deletion of files you still care about ...

[johnomotani]

Sorry, this is my fault. It's due to a change in behaviour introduced in #1195 that makes the datafiles be opened during BoutInitialise() instead of the first call to dump.write(). I had nearly the same problem, which prompted #1250, but I was running in a different directory than the outputfiles I was reading, so never overwrote the existing ones. In hindsight I should have realised the possibility for datafiles to be overwritten 😫

[dschwoerer]

Note that hard links do not suffice to prevent data loss, full copies are needed ...

[dschwoerer]

Another option is chmod -w for all dump files. That helps catching e.g. typos in output:enabled=false.

[ZedThree]

Is this fixed now?

[dschwoerer]

No.

The default is still to delete everything - dumps, logs, settings.