LMMS not saving files in educational setting

[tonapc1]

I am a high school teacher and I am currently teaching LMMS as part of a class on digital music production using Ubuntu Studio. I have had persistent, nagging problems with students losing work from day to day. Sometimes their file is gone completely and sometimes the file has reverted back to a earlier day's work. I am used to students making mistakes in not saving their work or saving over work, but in many cases I am convinced it is not human error. Has anyone else had issues with lmms losing files or keeping the file but not saving the latest work?

I have been trying to figure out the cause of the problems and these are some of my ideas:

Permissions issues. Most of my students this year are not on administrator accounts. Last year all my students had administrator accounts and furthermore ran lmms using "sudo lmms" to fix some issue I have forgotten. Is it possible that the file saving, even in the home folder/working directory, does not work as well without proper permissions?

"Recover" file - I think in some cases students have opened the recover file and found their latest work, done work in that file, and then saved it. Of course the file erases next time they open a new file. This is not a bug obviously, just a knowledge issue.

Multiple users - I have at least two student accounts per computer. Is there any file-sharing done by lmms that would destroy data on one account when another is in use?

Thanks!

Oh one more unrelated issue: both of my soundfont files that we use (Timid and Fluid) run errors constantly in the terminal (usually something like CRITICAL fluid_synth_font_unref) any ideas?

[brandystarbrite]

Hi. Well, I'm no Lmms programmer, but there were, a few previous posts on this forum, pertaining to saving problems. However I can't seem find them.
But I'll try to help: I think it's not linked to a save folder. If that is not the problem, then it may possibly be a bug. Or possibly it's a save location problem.

1)Check in Edit/settings/paths....... and "see where the Lmms Working directory path is." It should lead to Users/name of user"your name"/Lmms/Projects. etc.

OR

2)Normally, the Save Location is supposed to be in the Users Folder, in Windows 7,XP etc. If your Ubuntu OS is similar to Windows, then the file paths may be similar.
I hope.

3)Save a file and name it "tonapc"1 or whatever you want to save it as. When you open the save menu option, see where the file/folder save location is.( Write it down)
Save the file. Then close Lmms or restart etc. And try to open the file. If it can't open, try to find the file manually.
"Remember when I mentioned to write the file location down?"

I hope it works. If not probably it's a Ubuntu~Lmms bug. But I'm not sure.
Please keep checking this forum, as someone with more experience, will try to help you.
Hope the problem is solved. Bye

[tonapc1]

Thanks for your reply! I have been checking LMMS home folders and a few times when students try to save outside of the lmms folder it gives them a permissions error.
Thankfully I have not had any projects lost since I posted, possibly because I am being more diligent about telling them to save in the lmms/projects folder and not to use the "recover" file longer than they need to.

I am still suspicious that there may be a bug. but I also realized that my students are running 0.4.10 - hopefully updating will solve some issues. Thanks!

[musikbear]

one thing that could be an issue, is usage of non-english charachters in projectsnames/ save-foldes.
This leads to irradical behaviour, and should be avoided.
If you search, you can find several threads where i have pointed to this problem earlier, but that has mostly been in respect to paths and preservation of user preferences.. (??

Br.

[brandystarbrite]

Glad I could help tonapc1.
Thanks for that info too musikbear. I appreciate it.