help didn't save chat session, marriage may depend on it!

[themaze333]

i didn't realize i didn't have the logging option
checked. we chatted last night and there is no copy
or log of our conversation and she wants it. she used
ichat with the saving turned off also. when i checked
the box for it to save the last few lines of a chat, i
see the last few lines. i ramped it up to 99 lines
but it isn't there. is there anyway to recover a
closed chat that wasn't logged? where is it that it
stores the last few lines? is my previous chat stored
in the byobject folder but all garbled? i'm losing my
mind!


thanks,

mark

[zac]

i didn't realize i didn't have the logging option
checked. we chatted last night and there is no copy
or log of our conversation and she wants it. she used
ichat with the saving turned off also. when i checked
the box for it to save the last few lines of a chat, i
see the last few lines. i ramped it up to 99 lines
but it isn't there. is there anyway to recover a
closed chat that wasn't logged? where is it that it
stores the last few lines? is my previous chat stored
in the byobject folder but all garbled? i'm losing my
mind!


thanks,

mark

If you didn't set it to log, there's no way to recover it.

[Ethion]

cache?

[kirk]

I know this is a little personal, but why would your marriage depend on it?

[The_Tick]

Ya, if your marriage is so fragile that it depends on a log file..

[twopeak]

if you think there may be a chache file, use the search function to search the content of all files on your computer with some of the text from the previous conversation.
Seems like there's no way it's going to work but if it's that important you might try...

[Arenzera]

I know this is a little personal, but why would your marriage depend on it?

Dude you do not probably want to ask...

Kiel :-)

[Githon]

Bumping to whine:

Sometimes I'm too clever for my own good, and I had set it up so my laptop, instead of having a logs folder, had a symbolic link to the logs folder on my desktop computer, so Adium on the laptop just wrote to the desktop's logs.

Took a vacation (of sorts) and had to pack in a hurry. Didn't think of this fact.

My computer time was reasonably limited so I didn't just sit around screwing with it and so I didn't realize I hadn't changed this fact. Which, normally, isn't a problem. If the location a symbolic link points to doesn't exist and a program is trying to write for it, it always just seems to make the directory structure on it's own.

Yeah, well, Adium didn't. Instead, it just disabled the logging option. Without telling me. So none of my conversations the entire trip were saved, some of which were shockingly important for IM conversations one has while on vacation (Not "My marriage depends on it" kind of important, but still).

Either way, I think that Adium, unlike everything else I've seen, didn't just make the directory structure when trying to write the file, is a problem. Even if this is from some OS update or something, it still didn't *tell* me it turned logging off or that it was unable to write to a log. And that's definitely a problem.

[DcBob]

yes i've had this problem with adium not writing a file because it can't make a directory or something. Mainly the downloads because i store them in a special folder, and i changed the name of the folder few days ago and forgot to change the path in the adium preferences. So some downloads were lost until i changed this...

oh, and Mark, if your marriage depends on a log file, then you're in trouble

[evands]

yes i've had this problem with adium not writing a file because it can't make a directory or something. Mainly the downloads because i store them in a special folder, and i changed the name of the folder few days ago and forgot to change the path in the adium preferences. So some downloads were lost until i changed this...

Please file a bug report (trac.adiumx.com).

[evands]

If the location a symbolic link points to doesn't exist and a program is trying to write for it, it always just seems to make the directory structure on it's own.

And overwrite your symbolic link? Sounds generally undesired.

[Githon]

Not overwrite the link. Basically, the behavior of everything I've seen is this:

I'll make a symbolic link from where a program's preferences folder would be to ~/Desktop/WTF or something, so it saves it's settings in the folder on the desktop.. Then at some point I'll throw away the WTF folder on the desktop, and the program will try to save it's preferences. So, when it does this, it will either create a new WTF folder on the desktop, or it will ask if I want to create a new one.

Which, admittedly, is a bit weird. But that's just how I've seen everything *but* Adium handle that problem.

Adium, however, didn't create a new location for it's logs. Which is fine, I suppose. The big problem, however, is that it didn't say "~/Desktop/WTF cannot be located! Logs cannot be saved! Disabling Logging Function! Go fix it or you lose your logs!" or anything to the effect. It just silently noticed it couldn't find the log folder, and disabled logging, all without telling me.

Naturally, I can go and create a folder on my own easy enough and fix that no problem. But only if I know it's having a problem writing to the log location in the first place.

[The_Tick]

Why are you symlinking your stuff like that in the first place?

[evands]

Not overwrite the link. Basically, the behavior of everything I've seen is this:

I'll make a symbolic link from where a program's preferences folder would be to ~/Desktop/WTF or something, so it saves it's settings in the folder on the desktop.. Then at some point I'll throw away the WTF folder on the desktop, and the program will try to save it's preferences. So, when it does this, it will either create a new WTF folder on the desktop, or it will ask if I want to create a new one.

Which, admittedly, is a bit weird. But that's just how I've seen everything *but* Adium handle that problem.

Adium, however, didn't create a new location for it's logs. Which is fine, I suppose. The big problem, however, is that it didn't say "~/Desktop/WTF cannot be located! Logs cannot be saved! Disabling Logging Function! Go fix it or you lose your logs!" or anything to the effect. It just silently noticed it couldn't find the log folder, and disabled logging, all without telling me.

Naturally, I can go and create a folder on my own easy enough and fix that no problem. But only if I know it's having a problem writing to the log location in the first place.

I do agree that if we can't write a log when logging is enabled, we should report the problem to the user.

[The_Tick]

I do agree that if we can't write a log when logging is enabled, we should report the problem to the user.

Seconded

[Githon]

I do agree that if we can't write a log when logging is enabled, we should report the problem to the user.

Seconded

Firsted

As for why I was doing it, it was to just maintain one log file. Basically, the primary use of my laptop is to browse the internet while watching TV in the other room. In the past I had a big problem with my desktop computer (which is far and away the primary computer) and laptop having entirely different sets of logs, so I came up with the symlink solution. I have the laptop connect to my mini, then launch Adium, and it'd just read and write from the logs on the mini's hard drive.

Admittedly, I basically use my laptop as a really expensive portable IM device almost exclusively in my house.

I'm honestly completely surprised that Adium didn't tell me it was turning off logging, so much so that I'm betting there must have been an error involved in it's not telling me. Because not telling me just wouldn't make sense.

[pakmn]

As for why I was doing it, it was to just maintain one log file. Basically, the primary use of my laptop is to browse the internet while watching TV in the other room. .

How would one do this symlinking? I basically want to have my logs updated on my G5 when talking on my ibook while watching TV. Do i repleace my adium support folder with a shortcut to my networked G5? or do I edit the plist files? what did you githon?

[Githon]

I'm assuming you know how to make a symlink or have a tool to do so, since that's pretty easy.

What I did was, I went into the ~/Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0/Users/Default/ folder on my mini, made a symlink of the Logs folder, and replaced the same folder on the iBook with the symlink.

I may have done this slightly differently, but it probably doesn't matter exactly how. As long as the symlink points to the other computer. It was really easy is what I mostly remember.

Then, before launching Adium on the iBook, I would connect to the mini with Command-K in the Finder, the same way you would for normal file sharing. It worked perfectly right up until it didn't.

The reason I made the symlink for just the logs folder was so it would remotely access the log files, but all the plists, styles, sounds, etc, would still all be local, so it was less load on the mini and less load on the connection.

[quidire]

I have to say, I wish we had the option of having our logs sync via .Mac ...

I know some (many/most) don't bother w/ a .Mac account, but that doesn't stop the devs of NetNewsWire and OmniWeb (among others) from supporting that functionality.

Now they are paid for their efforts, whereas you guys just get grief from idiot users like myself but if it were possible, it would be stellar if the following could be sync'ed:
• Accounts and their data (keychains unnecissary, as they are already synced via normal .Mac preferences)
• installed xtras
• preferences, including the specific customisations one may have made to the appearance of their contact list or message window
• logs

Ideally one could choose one or all of these "categories" to sync, so people who aggressively use their iDisks and couldn't care less if they have the same emoticons on each instance of Adium aren't force to shut off the whole feature.

(As I just use mine for email and preferences of apps that do support it, 1GB seems like quite a bit of space.)

/Volumes/iDisk/Documents/Adium X/
./System/ <- to hold a lock file to prevent race conditions during sync?
and then the simplest organisation would be to mirror the App Pref folder

however another option would be to mirror the organisation above (or whatever categories you all choose) such as
./Accounts/
./Xtras/
./Preferences/
./Logs

(which also has the benefit of being more intuitive to the casual user)

Anyway, here's to hoping that this piques the interest of one of the devs!

-RS

[quidire]

Oh, this might come in handy, were any of the devs considering adding this feature:

http://developer.apple.com/internet/dotmackit.html

-RS