Wire-desktop: Wire Desktop for Windows still detects every now and then a new Device, then all logs to date are lost!

[tokariu]

Wire for web version: 3.0.2828
Operating system: Win7x64
Which antivirus software do you have installed: Windows internals

I have no direct route to reproduce this issue for you.

But I can tell you that this has happend a dozen times in the past two years I'm using Wire Desktop:

Every now and then (this is approx. every 1-2 month), I start Wire-Desktop and instead of seeing a loaded Wire App I just get to the login screen. When I login, Wire says it's the first time I'm using this device and then I've lost all history logs of the past time, because wire doesn't show them on new devices. And I can guarantee you that this is not a new device and nothing has changed, no software, no hardware.

Why does this happen? I had a talk with a Wire techie ages ago, and we supposed that wire could ran low on disk space sometimes and that it could be one of the reasons that causes the issue. I don't think this is very likely, but I cannot exclude it. However, if that would be a reason, shouldn't the Wire-achitecture have been built around this issue of running low on disk-space? warning the user of low disk space due to ever growing cache/db folders or the like? shouldn't wire take care of the case, that it doesn't lose the device status so all logs are lost when disk space is getting low?

I'm not pointing over to low disk space as the only reason that might cause this issue, this is just because we talked about the possibility before, but it could be other reasons just as well.

However, it's disturbing and annoying that this still happens and no fix has been found.

[gregor]

Can you provide us with logs of a situation when this happens?

[tokariu]

I don't have any logs, but I can provide additional information now which hardens the suspicion on low disk space.

I didn't have this issue again since I opened it. I guess the reason for that is, that I moved (hard linked) the profile directory of wire experimentally to another drive which I was sure is never running low on disk space. And what to say.. since I did that, the error never occured again so far..

So all indications point towards a low disk space issue.
The wire (windows) profile directory usually is on drive c: %appdata%. and whenever disk space is running low on drive c: it seems wire messes up with the profile. It obviously misses a check for low/no disc space available during runtime. And when it tries to save some session information the files get corrupted leading to loss in the profile and all the history logs.

The only solution i can think of to fix that would be to implement a method that monitors the available diskspace and handles low-to-no disk-space situations.

[gregor]

Thanks. That is most likely the reason. Disk space usage in electron based apps is managed by the underlying Chrome browser. Sometimes it deletes stuff it shouldn't. We intend to improve this behavior but have not gotten around to do so.