TW Node.js losing Tiddlers randomly - how to debug?

[David Szego]

In the last few days I'm finding that new Tiddlers get saved OK, then when I reopen them to tweak, they're completely or partially lost. Usually the title and tags are OK, but the text is always wiped out.

I can't find rhyme or reason for this... I'm waiting for any lag on saving (dirty indicator), but don't get an error message and nothing shows in the server log.

End result is that I can't use it on Node.us anymore and have to save a local version (and load manually / save with TiddlyFox).

Any hints on how to debug?

[jwd]

In the last few days I'm finding that new Tiddlers get saved OK, then when I reopen them to tweak, they're completely or partially lost. Usually the title and tags are OK, but the text is always wiped out.

In the Node.js / tiddlywiki --server version individual tiddlers are simply individual files, no? I find this is one of the benefits of using the tiddlywiki --server version because then I can commit those changes to a git repository (my backup method of choice) and let normal file version control deal with saving backups, seeing diffs, restoring older versions, etc.

One of the motivations for me to switch from the single HTML / TiddlyFox saved version to the Node.js --server version was that I started losing almost whole HTML files on save. I did not prove, but blamed, overly aggressive virus scanning software noticing that a browser was updating the filesystem repeatedly; or some other external cause. I got tired of having to lose all updates I'd made since I last backed up the HTML file. I have not regretted adjusting to the Node.js version once I admitted that my requirements exceeded Firefox and TiddlyFox.

Any hints on how to debug?

First questions: What OS are you on? Version of Node.js and, of course, version of tiddlywiki? Any external software that might account for this?  Any other browser plugins? Any TiddlyWiki plugins?

When you say "new Tiddlers get saved OK", how do you know that? Can you inspect the actual .tid files in the tiddlers folder and verify that all the expected contents actually gets out to disk?

If you can verify that they are saved in their entirety I would conclude that something about re-opening them is failing. I'd start by temporarily eliminating all of the TiddlyWiki plugins; then disabling any browser plugins. I'd do that, too, if the filesystem verification proved that the 'saved' tiddlers were not actually saved.

Assuming tiddlers are making it to disk, are you creating backups of changed tiddlers? Can you easily restore them?

[BJ]

there is a bug with node.js at the moment, it is a polyfill function and only effects some (older) version of node

https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/2571

all the best
BJ

[David Szego]

Thanks, BJ. So - I read the GitHub thread... and I'm more lost now. How do I incorporate the fix into my Node backend? =-)

Cheers,
David.

On Tuesday, 11 October 2016 08:47:59 UTC-4, BJ wrote:

there is a bug with node.js at the moment, it is a polyfill function and only effects some (older) version of node

https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/2571 - 

[BJ]

If you are seeing tids with repeated file extensions (ie .tid.itd...) Then your problems may include this.

I use git with tiddlywiki and am using the pull request via

git pull origin pull/2572/head

until there is a new release.

If you are not using git then you could try updating your node install so that the 'follyfil' is not invoked (I have not done this so don't know to which version).

Alternatively you could regress to an early version of tiddlywiki.

You could modify the file locally as show in the pull request, but if you do this you will have to remember to remove it once we have a new release.

We really need a new release :-(

cheers

BJ