Report shows 303 files were "removed" when there is no evidence of removal

[drewdaviscap]

Hello,

I use Fixity to run reports on various file directories in our digital archives. In a recent report on one file directory, 303 files were shown as "removed" from the directory since the previous report on the same directory. I checked a sample of the files said to be missing, however, and found that each “removed” file was still in the directory. I also reached out to our IT department, who reported that no files were removed or copied to a different server.

Has anyone else encountered erroneous reports of "removed" or "changed" files? I'd be interested to hear from others or AVP.

One other thing to note: I recently updated the path before running the report (I received a new PC in November and had to update all paths). Having said that, I updated the path for several other directories before running reports and did not encounter this issue.

Thank you!

Drew

[pvizner]

Hi Drew,

Thank you for your post. Are you running the application on the same machine where the files are located or this is a remote connection? When Fixity fails to connect with a remote server, it reports files as missing. If this sounds like it could be your case, I would try running a manual scan on a few of the files that were reported as missing to see if it happens again. It is also possible that it's a file name length issue, some users have experienced problems with long file paths. If you could send us a screenshot of your directory structure or an example of your file path we could take a closer look at it.

I hope this is helpful, let me know if you have further questions.

Best, Pamela

[drewdaviscap]

Hi Pamela,

Thanks so much for the quick response and explanation. This is a remote connection, as the files are located on a shared network. Having said that, the fixity application also lives on the shared network (that just happens to be where I saved it, and I haven’t moved it because the reports populate and live there as well).

How does one run a fixity report on a single item, or a group of items? I only know how to run the reports on file directories.

Here is an example of a filepath for one of the removed files:

Z:\Affiliated and subsidiary organizations AS\CAP Foundation Collection AS\CAP Foundation Board of Directors records AS-0013\Agenda books and associated materials\1997\19971217 CAP Foundation Board of Directors minutes.pdf

I have run fixity reports on these directories for 2 years and have not encountered an issue like this before.

One other thing I did was re-run the report. The original report showed 3478 total files with 303 removed; the new report shows 3178 total files (with 3175 confirmed). The removed files are not appearing in the new report, but I can confirm that they still live in and are accessible in our file directory.

Thank you for your help!

Drew

From: Pamela Vizner notifications@github.com Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2019 7:55 AM To: WeAreAVP/fixity fixity@noreply.github.com Cc: Drew Davis (s) ddavis@cap.org; Author author@noreply.github.com Subject: Re: [WeAreAVP/fixity] Report shows 303 files were "removed" when there is no evidence of removal (#33)

Hi Drew,

Thank you for your post. Are you running the application on the same machine where the files are located or this is a remote connection? When Fixity fails to connect with a remote server, it reports files as missing. If this sounds like it could be your case, I would try running a manual scan on a few of the files that were reported as missing to see if it happens again. It is also possible that it's a file name length issue, some users have experienced problems with long file paths. If you could send us a screenshot of your directory structure or an example of your file path we could take a closer look at it.

I hope this is helpful, let me know if you have further questions.

Best, Pamela

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[pvizner]

Hi Drew,

To run a report on a single item or a small group of items you would have to create a new project, add these files to the project, and select the "Run Now" option.

Which version of Fixity are you running? Windows or Mac? If you could share with me a copy of the reports that show the issue I could do look into the details to see what is happening. You can send them to my email address if you wish: pamela@weareavp.com

Best, Pamela