David,
Actually, I was more trying to remind Ken that he could just turn off
AutoSave altogether by setting the Interval to zero. That way he has
complete *manual* control over how many saves are done, and when --
rather than being dependent on user activity or the calendar. One thing
that might have caused confusion is calling those save files "backups".
The reason I like having those saves is because it gives me the chance
to go back in time in a granular way if I need to see what a certain
action or transaction of mine might have done to possibly cause a
problem. But it's definitely not a recourse in the event of a
catastrophic failure. If the disk dies, those saves die right along
with it. I think we all realize that. My backup program copies those
90 some files off to a completely separate physical disk at the end of
each day. That other disk is the *actual* backup.
Tom
On 06/18/2026 11:21 PM, David T. wrote:
... And as most long time subscribers to this list will note, the
developers and the general user group have emphasized that it is the
user's responsibility to provide necessary backups using proper backup
tools.
GnuCash's log files and backups provide a modicum of recourse in the
event of a catastrophic failure, but users should be in the habit of
creating reliable backups separately.
Tom, you missed Ken's point about the creation of backup files, which
is that their creation is dependent on user activity (how and when the
user opens GnuCash), whereas the setting is strictly calendar based.
We could go on and on about how GnuCash manages these files, or we
could spend the time identifying a proper backup program that
preserves user data in the way we seek to have it preserved. I suggest
engaging in the latter.
David T.
On June 19, 2026 9:44:12 AM GMT+05:30, Tom Route36
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Ken, The number of backups you have is dependent on your
Auto-Save Time Interval and how long GnuCash is open (and also
depends on if you're manually doing saves). If you set the
Auto-Save Interval to zero, then you've disabled Auto-Save, and
the number of backups will be totally determined by you --
whenever you decide to do a save. BTW, I'm not sure that you need
to be concerned about limiting backups. I have over 30 years
worth of data in my GnuCash data file; and it's only 11 MB in
size. So disk space isn't really an issue. I have my backup
retention time set to 21 days; and currently I have about 90
backups. For me, having multiple backups is more reassuring than
a bother. Just my opinion. Tom On 06/18/2026 07:48 PM, Ken Pyzik
wrote:
OK - I think I may have found the answer to my own question.
In the EDIT>>Preferences>>General, there is a setting to
Retain Logs/Backup files with three options - Never, For X
number of days or Forever. The default appears to be 30 days.
Now this is interesting. If this is true - which I believe it
is - this means that if you go into Gnucash every day, you can
end up with up to 30 or 31 logs and backup files. So, someone
could assume that they could just change it to 3 days and that
would be fine. However, if you do NOT open Gnucash everyday -
but instead open it up once a week, you would need keep the
logs for 21 days in order to have 3 backups. By the same
token, if you are someone who only opens Gnucash once a month
- or only once every couple of months, you would need to keep
the files for up to 60 or 90 days in order to get 3 full
backups. I am guessing that this is the behavior and that it
has probably been this way forever. I am also guessing that if
you only want 3 backups definitively - you have to adjust the
days accordingly to the way you use the system - i.e., how
often you open and work with the files. And if you go into the
system multiple times a day - you could end up with A LOT of
backups and logs files. Is this behavior correct? If yes,
would changing it to be a definitive number be difficult? I
assuming it is, otherwise I would have thought it would have
been changed by now. Ken
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:
gnucash-user<[email protected]>
on behalf of Ken Pyzik<[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, June
18, 2026 6:05 PM To: Gnucash Users<[email protected]>
Subject: [GNC] Logs and Backups This may have been mentioned
in the past - and if so - sorry for the repeat. However, I
noticed today 10 ".log" and 10 ".<<date>>.gnucash" files. So,
I am assuming that gnucash is keeping 10 transaction and log
file backups. Is this correct? If so, is this the default and
if it is the default, can this be changed to only 2 or 3?
Thanks for the reply.
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