#58

Is this at all related to the OP report or the other unrelated reports in thread? Based on the error in your screenshot, it looks like the OS filesystem was preventing Obsidian from writing files. If Obsidian is unable to write files to your device, it’s not obvious at all that this is even Obsidian’s fault.

1 Like
#59

Im having this exact same issue on an M1 2020 mac. No issue with accessing file system on other applications and storing the vault on my desktop no icloud. I also just started using obsidian today. Edit: To clarify, I am seeing the exact same errors in the application console and the same undesired behaviour of being unable to save.

#60

New user, on a 2019 macbook running Catalina 10.15.7. I have plenty of space on my device, but I keep getting the unable to write/load errors. General security settings have been enabled for Obsidian, but I keep getting the errors. I’ve lost half a days worth of notes. There were snapshots to help me restore some of it, but the last two snapshots were just blank.

#61

@dmarz @cfstanton

Disclaimer: I’m not a developer or mod, but want you to get a resolution.

These are strange, unreproducible issues so your best chance of getting a resolution is to provide enough in your reports that might provide enough clues that someone has a prayer of advising or there is enough data points collected in aggregate to point to a cause.

Just having the same exception in the dev console doesn’t necessarily point to the same root cause or even that this is an Obsidian issue. But only reporting “I have the same issue” isn’t enough for any developer or fellow user to even help.

If you go to the bug report section there is New Topic button. Clicking that will show you the bug report template. If you can provide at least as much information as that template guides you to report, you’ll stand a better chance at someone being able to help you.

1 Like
#62

I just installed Obsidian new, decided to do my 750 words in the app and immediately experienced this problem. My words were lost after several instances of “File system operation timed out” notifications popping up. After reading this thread I discovered the command option +i trick to view the console, which is full of these errors.

Tried snapshots, only got a single snapshot in file recovery, with a word and a half when I just started.

Running macOS 11.5.2 (Big Sur)
Vault located in Dropbox synced folder, however dropbox was not running at the time as I have it set not to start when I start my computer, and had just restarted for an unrelated update.

Not much else to report tech-wise, but after getting all hyped up watching people review Obsidian on YouTube, having my very first entry disappear and then discovering that this has been an issue for nine months is kinda a major thing for me or anyone else with the idea of switching to using this app.

#63

After receiving a private reply, I’ve tried to replicate the original issue. Alas I cannot, which leaves me in the odd position of wanting to try this app but also being a bit tentative in that it may randomly decide not to save.

I would like to mention that the person who PM’ed me said that we are likely experiencing diverse issues and self-diagnosing it as the same issue. The implication is that these smaller issues are being solved and it’s just not being mentioned here… so with this: If you do have a data-loss event happen, it might be good to post it as a new issue rather than reply here, and if the developers think it’s this issue they can move it here.

If there are no more posts after this one, you can assume the app works I guess.

#64

I have also experienced what I think is this bug today (2022-02-10), but with a twist: I wrote a few paragraphs, and attempted to open a different extant file. That file failed to open, and in the filesystem I later discovered it had gone to zero bytes, and the original file I was working in lost the few paragraphs of changes I had made. I have plenty of space on the filesystem, so it’s not a space issue. MacOS 10.15.6, Obsidian insiders v0.13.24.

#65

Are you using iCloud, Obsidian Sync, or another sync service on your vault?

#66

If that was addressed to me: I am using Obsidian Sync but no other sync options.

#67

Hi,
I’m new and to put this first: not a techie.

Today I made my very first note and experimented with the markdown syntax (which I’m not familiar with yet). My very first 30 minutes of ‘work’ with Obsidian was lost. Off to a rough start…

I’m on an old machine (MB Air mid 2012), up-to-date with not much additional programs. I like to keep the things as they ship. Same for Obsidian: no plugins or anything. Switching to light mode was the only change I made to this program.

As previously mentioned, I as well got the ‘File system operation timed out.’ warning, but didn’t take it seriously (I’m coming from windows…). Not only the progress was not saved, but the whole file was wiped. Since it was the only file in this vault at the time, I can’t even be sure that not everything would have been wiped if more would have existed.

I browsed all the relevant threads on this in this forum, but no one seems to be able to provide a solution - which seems odd to me, since data loss is the single most fundamental thing to prevent as a note taking app… I type information, so I don’t have to remember it. Typing information only makes sense, if it is stays where I put it. But this thread exists since early 2021… Is there something people do to be able to live with this? Did I miss something? I want to use Obsidian so badly, but I can’t (with this problem).

If there is information that I can provide so the problem can be better understood, I’m more than glad to help. But I might need a step-by-step guide on how and what.

Happy note-taking everyone. For now I stay with my txt files…

1 Like
#68

@rnax Nope you didn’t miss anything. I’m sorry this happened to you (and sad this was your first experience with Obsidian) but luckily you didn’t lose anything important.

I’m not sure whether this is just a low priority for the developer or (more likely) just something that is unfixable due to a combination of being quite hard to reliably reproduce and also very likely an “upstream” bug—meaning the bug is in the Electron framework itself or in one of the modules that Obsidian uses like CodeMirror.

I agree with you that the #1 priority for a note taking “second brain” app should be making sure the stuff you type in gets saved. But Obsidian is so freaking good at everything else that even with that (scary) shortcoming, myself and others continue to accept that risk.

I sincerely hope that this bug gets fixed one day but it’s looking less and less likely as months turn into years and people continue to report this issue. Maybe it will just magically disappear one day when Electron fixes it, which seems to be what happened to the kernel panic bug that was really big a while back.

What I’ve done to protect myself is:

  1. set snapshot period to 1 minute
  2. script that makes hourly backups of my vault and preserves the last 30 days
  3. script to monitor my vault and pop up an alert the moment it detects an “empty” file that was created >2 min ago

Even with all of this, I still hit the bug sometimes and just deal with it. I’m still hoping one day I figure out a way to trigger it so we can at least have hope of a fix.

2 Likes
#69

Or bug in MacOS

#70

that only affects Obsidian? I have 324 apps in my Applications folder at the moment…

#71

The kernel panic bug was an osx bug. It wasn’t electron that fixed it.

#72

I think it was Apple ended up solving the kernel bug.
And this bug is pointed to MacOS rather than Linux or Windows.

#73

A bug that causes a kernel panic is very different than one that simply causes a file to be truncated. Only very low level bugs can cause KPs and so it makes sense that that one needed help from Apple to fix.

Contrast that to this data loss bug which seems much more like a race condition or some other side effect. While it may be true that it only affects macOS at this point, that does not mean the bug isn’t in Electron, CodeMirror, or Obsidian. In fact, it’s highly likely that this is NOT a macOS bug because to my knowledge it has only been reported with Obsidian (again, contrast to the KPs which were also widely reported in other popular Electron apps such as VSCode and Discord)

#74

Thank you for your reply!

Sad to hear there is not much I can do. I did (1), but this won’t solve the problem at all since said snapshots are wiped as well. Do you know of any public plugin that could take care of (2) and (3) for me?

I just can’t wrap my head around how this is a problem people life with. If I can’t solve the initial problem, I try to fight the symptoms and put something in place that counter steers the problem, doesn’t I? This is a paid product after all. Somewhere I read about a warning banner being added in v0.13.25 that doesn’t vanish after a second, but this seems barely adequate to a bug like this. Especially so, because people are claiming they can’t even copy and paste their data out of it at that point.

Nevertheless I see the potential in this app that you called ‘freaking good’ after playing around with it today a bit more. Still not putting my data in…

#75

So the first question is ‘Did the file written in Obsidian ever get written to the disc?’
Followed by ‘Does Obsidian have permission to write to the folder you were trying to save in?’
If it’s not written in the first place, it’s quite a different problem to the original data being lost during an edit.
Then ‘Is there a sync service running?’

If you get a File System error, you do need to pay attention because it means that the file system isn’t working at that moment and data may not be being written to disc at all. Sometimes the message can be intermittent if two programs are attempting to access that file at the same time.

txt and md are the same - it’s only the extension that’s different.
You can write markdown syntax into txt files. You can write markdown into any txt file, whether it supports markdown or not. Obsidian doesn’t fully support any extension except md, but there is a plugin which shows you the syntax in action.
Some markdown editors fully support txt as an extension.

#76

It’s a bit difficult to recollect the exact sequence of actions for me now. Following with a grain of salt. If there is somewhere log-data I can provide, I’ll gladly share that. To answer the question: I think it did. I was fiddling with the Markdown syntax (new for me) and wanted to see it through the TextEditor. Closed Obsidian (proper quit) and opened the file with the TextEditor to see how it looks without rendering. Closed the file and reopened Obsidian. Continued writing the file when at some point the warning popped up. I thought this would resolve itself at some point and continued writing. Closed Obsidian some time after. After reopening it, the file was wiped. 0 KB.

As I said, switching to light theme was the only change I made to Obsidian. For the files I made a folder locally.

#77

I had a similar problem 2 months ago but it might have been a one-off — I haven’t seen it since.