sabnzbd truncates its own config file

[sym3tri]

This happened when I ran out of disk space. Noticed the config file was on disk, but empty. No backup file around. Found this in the logs:

2014-11-01 11:48:40,801::INFO::[SABnzbd:335] Web dir is /usr/share/SABnzbd/interfaces/Plush
2014-11-01 11:48:40,802::INFO::[SABnzbd:335] Web dir is /usr/share/SABnzbd/interfaces/Config
2014-11-01 11:48:40,807::WARNING::[config:782] Cannot create backup file for /etc/sabnzbd.ini.bak
2014-11-01 11:48:40,807::INFO::[config:783] Traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/SABnzbd/sabnzbd/config.py", line 779, in save_config
    shutil.copyfile(filename, bakname)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/shutil.py", line 83, in copyfile
    with open(dst, 'wb') as fdst:
IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/etc/sabnzbd.ini.bak'
2014-11-01 11:48:40,814::ERROR::[config:791] Cannot write to INI file /etc/sabnzbd.ini
2014-11-01 11:48:40,815::INFO::[config:792] Traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/SABnzbd/sabnzbd/config.py", line 787, in save_config
    CFG.write()
  File "/usr/share/SABnzbd/sabnzbd/utils/configobj.py", line 2113, in write
    h.close()
IOError: [Errno 28] No space left on device

[thezoggy]

sab stores config in memory and writes on exit. so yes you prob shouldnt run out of hd space on the drive you run sab. nothing we can do about user error

[sym3tri]

how about not attempting to write the config file if the backup operation fails? seems like a reasonable check to make the software more resilient to failures.

[shypike]

Could be a bug.
If the write action fails, the backup should be renamed back.
Although when disk-full also blocks rename actions, that could fail.
I'll have a closer look at this.
Which OS are you using?

[thezoggy]

when does sab backup the config (in sb we do it on every upgrade, thus the previous back could be months old)?

[sym3tri]

@shypike Fedora 19

[Safihre]

I tried to reproduce, but SAB already first tries to make the backup and only if that succeeds it will save a new config. Don't think we can make it safer than that..
This is a very exotic problem since it was not reported again in 2 years.
Closing for now, nothing we can really do more.