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Audacity can not load ANY aup file

Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2020 3:31 pm
by NiceMicro
Hi!

I was working today with Audacity today, when it suddenly crashed. I was not phased much about this, as I just saved my project. So, I double click on my aup file, it tells me it wants to restore my project, I say yes, then it says it found orphan files, and I select continue without deleting and press OK, but what I got is just a big empty nothing. I tried everything: close it again, open again, I even restarted the computer, made a new project, when I save and close it, I can't open! I used Audacity last Friday, and I didn't have this problem. There was no version change in the meantime.
I am frustrated to no end. Please guide me on what steps should I take to troubleshoot this issue.

I use Arch Linux, installed it from the community repository with pacman.

Here's the log:

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00:18:04: Audacity 2.3.3
00:18:04: Warning: Cannot set locale to language "English".
00:18:04: Error: locale 'en_GB' cannot be set.
00:18:09: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries...
00:18:09: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries from system paths. File name is 'libavformat.so.58'.
00:18:09: Checking for monolithic avformat from 'libavformat.so.58'.
00:18:09: avformat not monolithic
00:18:09: Loading avutil from '/usr/lib/libavutil.so.56.31.100'.
00:18:09: Loading avcodec from '/usr/lib/libavcodec.so.58.54.100'.
00:18:09: Loading avformat from 'libavformat.so.58'.
00:18:09: Actual avutil path /usr/lib/libavutil.so.56.31.100
00:18:09: Actual avcodec path /usr/lib/libavcodec.so.58.54.100
00:18:09: Actual avformat path /usr/lib/libavformat.so.58.29.100
00:18:09: Importing symbols...
00:18:09: All symbols loaded successfully. Initializing the library.
00:18:09: Retrieving FFmpeg library version numbers:
00:18:09:    AVCodec version 0x3a3664 - 58.54.100 (built against 0x3a3664 - 58.54.100)
00:18:09:    AVFormat version 0x3a1d64 - 58.29.100 (built against 0x3a1d64 - 58.29.100)
00:18:09:    AVUtil version 0x381f64 - 56.31.100 (built against 0x381f64 - 56.31.100)
00:18:09: FFmpeg libraries loaded successfully.
00:18:09: Warning: Orphan block file: '/home/nicemicro/Documents/test_data/eff/d1f/eff1f37c.au'
00:18:09: Warning: Orphan block file: '/home/nicemicro/Documents/test_data/eff/d1f/eff1fc6d.au'
00:26:49: Warning: Project check found file inconsistencies inspecting the loaded project data.

Re: Audacity can not load ANY aup file

Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2020 3:45 pm
by steve
NiceMicro wrote:
Mon Mar 02, 2020 3:31 pm

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00:18:04: Warning: Cannot set locale to language "English".
00:18:04: Error: locale 'en_GB' cannot be set.
That's the first thing that strikes me as very peculiar. Is your computer set up for a non-English locale?

Re: Audacity can not load ANY aup file

Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2020 1:36 am
by NiceMicro
This is my output of the locale command:

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LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=hu_HU.UTF-8
LC_TIME=hu_HU.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=hu_HU.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=hu_HU.UTF-8
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT=hu_HU.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
I think I have the US, Hungarian and Korean locales generated. So, yeah, the en_GB local is not there, but why on earth Audacity wants that? Can that be related to the load issue? The program starts, I can import a wavefile, edit it and export it without no problem, I just can't load saved projects.

Re: Audacity can not load ANY aup file

Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2020 2:07 am
by steve
NiceMicro wrote:
Mon Mar 02, 2020 3:31 pm
So, I double click on my aup file, it tells me it wants to restore my project, I say yes, then it says it found orphan files, and I select continue without deleting and press OK, but what I got is just a big empty nothing.
That project is probably gone and lost forever.

To try and get back to a stable state, open Audacity, if it offers to restore an old project, select "No" so that Audacity is able to clear the junk out of the way. Then close Audacity and re-open. Audacity should now open without error. Do NOT try opening any other projects yet.

If Audacity now opens and closes correctly, create a short test project, and save it either to your Desktop or your Documents folder. Close down Audacity properly, then restart and see if you can open the project that you have just saved.

What happens?

Re: Audacity can not load ANY aup file

Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2020 2:07 pm
by NiceMicro
steve wrote:
Tue Mar 03, 2020 2:07 am
What happens?
I have done the following:
  1. Open Audacity
  2. It opens, no problem.
  3. I close Audacity, no problem.
  4. I run Audacity again.
  5. Record a short noise.
  6. Save project to Documents.
  7. Close Audacity.
  8. Open my file browser, double click on the .aup file
  9. Audacity comes up, it tells me about the orphaned files, get the same log entries as previously.
  10. The project is empty.
I have attached the aup file and the folder.

Re: Audacity can not load ANY aup file

Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2020 5:13 pm
by steve
What happens if you do this:
  1. Open Audacity
  2. Close Audacity
    (Ensure that it opens and closes with no errors or warnings)
  3. Launch Audacity.
  4. Record a short noise.
  5. Save project to Documents.
  6. Close Audacity.
  7. Launch Audacity.
  8. File menu > Open -> select the saved .aup file and click OK.

Re: Audacity can not load ANY aup file

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2020 1:18 am
by NiceMicro
steve wrote:
Tue Mar 03, 2020 5:13 pm
What happens if you do this:
Same result, project doesn't load.

Re: Audacity can not load ANY aup file

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2020 3:29 am
by steve
NiceMicro wrote:
Tue Mar 03, 2020 2:07 pm
Audacity comes up, it tells me about the orphaned files, get the same log entries as previously.
Does it list these orphan block files each time, or are they different files each time?

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/home/nicemicro/Documents/test_data/eff/d1f/eff1f37c.au
/home/nicemicro/Documents/test_data/eff/d1f/eff1fc6d.au

Re: Audacity can not load ANY aup file

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 3:15 am
by NiceMicro
steve wrote:
Wed Mar 04, 2020 3:29 am
Does it list these orphan block files each time, or are they different files each time?

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/home/nicemicro/Documents/test_data/eff/d1f/eff1f37c.au
/home/nicemicro/Documents/test_data/eff/d1f/eff1fc6d.au
If I open the same AUP file, yes. In the second test I made, it is

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12:14:29: Warning: Orphan block file: '/home/nicemicro/Documents/test2_data/eff/d1f/eff1ffde.au'
12:14:29: Warning: Orphan block file: '/home/nicemicro/Documents/test2_data/eff/d1f/eff1fd8c.au'

Re: Audacity can not load ANY aup file

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 10:19 am
by steve
This is very strange, because the test project that you posted is perfectly OK. It looks OK and I can open it without any problem.

I'm not sure what the file paths will be on Arch, so you will need to check these:

Look in ~/.audacity-data/. Do you see the files:

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audacity.cfg
pluginregistry.cfg
pluginsettings.cfg
and the folder:

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AutoSave

Assuming that you do, in ~/.audacity-data/ do you see a file named similar to:

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New Project - 2020-03-06 10-13-43 N-1.autosave

Do you also have a folder:

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/var/tmp/audacity-<your-name>/
If you do, does it contain one or more folders named something like:

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project1190746588