broken save file

[grassy]

Save file breaks when computer bombs (e.g. overheats) while playing. This happens on 3.1.2.dev. Anyway to recover these?

[flechette]

You aren't overclocking to play angband are you? ^^

[grassy]

crappy laptop

[takkaria]

Save file breaks when computer bombs (e.g. overheats) while playing. This happens on 3.1.2.dev. Anyway to recover these?

Email me one at takkaria@gmail.com and I'll have a look, but no promises.

[Pete Mack]

This should never happen. A few questions:
1. What OS?
2. Does it happen always, or only sometimes?
3. Are you sure that it is angband that is pegging the CPU? (On *NIX, top; on Windows, task manager.)

[grassy]

+ The save file after the crash is reduced to 0 bytes (angband indicates it's broken - but it's essentially deleted) - thus it wouldn't make sense posting.
+ I compiled using my home directory as the install target.
+ I'm playing the game on ubuntu karmic (x86) running through sun virtuallbox on win7 x64.
+ Happen always? So far every time the computer bombed (2x). Lost 2 nifty 35+ level female warriors
+ no, angband is not hogging the cpu, win processes are.

[PowerDiver]

You sound ept enough to set up a daemon to copy the savefile once every 10 minutes [only] while you are playing. Versioning would be a pain, but even if you always copy to the same location you'd only lose if the system crashed while the copy was happening.

The game currently autosaves on level change [I don't know what revision that got in], so a crash would cost the max of the current dLevel or 10 minutes [or whatever] if you use sufficiently recent code.

[Pete Mack]

What windows process is pinning it?
And why play on linux, when you can just as well play on the host OS?
EDIT:
since you're on Linux, can you run it under gdb (compiled -g) and see what causes the fault?

[d_m]

+ The save file after the crash is reduced to 0 bytes (angband indicates it's broken - but it's essentially deleted) - thus it wouldn't make sense posting.
+ I compiled using my home directory as the install target.
+ I'm playing the game on ubuntu karmic (x86) running through sun virtuallbox on win7 x64.
+ Happen always? So far every time the computer bombed (2x). Lost 2 nifty 35+ level female warriors
+ no, angband is not hogging the cpu, win processes are.

Had you saved your game at all before the crash, or were you playing a new character straight through?

My understanding is that Angband doesn't change the savefile until you die, save, quit, or until it gets sent a signal to be killed that it can handle. I think things like "kill -9" or overheating might not allow it to write anything before the process dies. So if you hadn't saved yet, there would be no "old version" of the savefile present when you reload.

[PowerDiver]

My understanding is that Angband doesn't change the savefile until you die, save, quit, or until it gets sent a signal to be killed that it can handle.

As I indicated above, the savefile is currently written over after each dLevel change. At least, it was the last time I checked a couple months ago playing nightlies.

[grassy]

d_m: I saved numerous times before the crash.
PowerDiver: copy the savefile - blasphemy I say

On a side not, farming a large room with an average weapon is pretty cpu intensive.

[LostTemplar]

This is common problem with ext4 filesystem with ubuntu, not only related to angband. All files, modified just before crush a generally reduced to 0 bytes.

[werepacman]

I just faced this problem.
This is known ext4 problem.

To prevent this in future I disable delayed allocation in /etc/fstab by adding nodelalloc option to home partition mount rule.