Log relocation error

[robbor8]

I'm getting the following error when launching game through steam and after downloading the installer from wesnoth.org. The first path mentioned has no .log file and the second had files such as the one attached.

---

Battle for Wesnoth

Log relocation failed.

Runtime error: No such file or directory (2)
New log file path: C:\Users<username>\Documents\My Games\Wesnoth1.14/logs/wesnoth-20180502-221248-1412.log
Old log file path: C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Temp/wesnoth-20180502-221248-1412.log

This may indicate an issue with your Wesnoth launch configuration. If the problem persists, contact the development team for technical support, including the full contents of this message (copy with CTRL+C).

OK

wesnoth-20180502-221248-1412.log

[irydacea]

Does the first location actually exist? That is, is there a My Games\Wesnoth1.14\logs folder in your Documents folder?

[Wedge009]

I don't know that this is necessarily Window-specific - I tried the Steam build for the first time today and had no issues. I was pleasantly surprised that it uses the same paths for preferences, etc, as my normal development builds.

[irydacea]

It is Windows-specific because it's the only platform where log management exists, out of necessity.

(Technical explanation for @Wedge009 and other devs follows. The person posting this report may prefer to stop reading after this line.)

To elaborate, Wesnoth is a GUI application (IMAGE_SUBSYSTEM_WINDOWS_GUI is the subsystem value on the executable header) so it doesn't get a text console by default. I introduced --wconsole in 1.13.2 to allow people to have an option to get a console on startup to see log output in real-time. Additionally, since SDL 2.0 doesn't include the (also Windows-specific) stderr redirection code sitting above our main() that SDL 1.2 had, I introduced our own along with the log rotation feature — without this, console output would not be recorded anywhere even if you used redirection operands on the command prompt, because that's how Windows works with GUI subsystem applications, their stdout and stderr are just discarded entirely unless you do something special with them from inside.

On all other platforms this is a non-issue since stdout and stderr are controlled from outside.

[Wedge009]

Got it, thanks. Yes, I remember dealing with Console vs GUI for Win32 development...

[robbor8]

@shikadiqueen the folder exists but it's empty

[robbor8]

Not sure if this helps, but cwesnoth.cmd seems to run just fine

[irydacea]

That's to be expected since it disables log file management. Do you have any issues writing save files and installing add-ons when it's started like that, though?

Also, do you have your Documents\My Games folder managed using OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox or any other kind of cloud storage mechanism? Could you post the log file left behind in Temp when Wesnoth is started with --log-debug=filesystem?

(For Steam, the way to accomplish this would be to go into the game's properties, and set the Launch Options to --log-debug=filesystem. Outside steam you'd add that after the game exe's path in the shortcut properties, one space after the closing quotes.)

[jyrkive]

We got some new information from Ethanil on Discord, who is also affected by this issue:

The folder it is complaining about is in fact read-only but i can't seem to change that... any solutions?

[jyrkive]

More info from Ethanil:

I posted an error message yesterday, found a solution .... my bitdefender blocked wesnoth and i had it on gaming mode so i got no notification about it, unblocking it solved the issue 😃 @jyrkive

So, it appears that AVs are one reason why this issue can occur.

[jyrkive]

I happened to run across this tidbit of information, related to the OneDrive problems:

Reparse points can also be used for other functionality such as the placeholder files used by OneDrive in Windows 8.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/06/15/wsl-file-system-support/

[GregoryLundberg]

Probably just being nit-picky but is it C:\Users<username> or C:\Users\<username>?

[cooljeanius]

I think this affects save files too, and not just log files

[soliton-]

Do you have any indication on how this can possibly affect save files?

[cooljeanius]

Do you have any indication on how this can possibly affect save files?

It was something I noticed when trying to play on a different computer that I don't currently have access to at the moment, so, no, I can't find the info that I thought indicated this at the moment; sorry...

[Wedge009]

Would be good to have a current report on this. Not that I expect it should affect the underlying log location issue, but logs are written by default across platforms now, so this may not be Windows-specific any more.

[Pentarctagon]

It might be best to close this issue and open one specifically for the OneDrive problem? This specific error message doesn't exist anymore since the logging system consolidation and if Wesnoth doesn't have write permission to a folder it needs then that's not really something Wesnoth can solve.

[Wedge009]

If the error doesn't exist any more, then it sounds like this issue is resolved, at least for 1.17.