Sticky notes disappeared with no accidental deletion

[ascari-fsvq]

Expected behaviour

I was going to add something to my notes and noticed that they had disappeared. I've had one note for roughly three months and the other one for a couple of weeks.

Actual behaviour

Both locked sticky notes that had previously been on my computer randomly disappeared.

My notes are not in the file. Apperantly all notes are saved within a single .xml file. /home/username/.config/mate/stickynotes-applet.xml

How would I attempt to recover my notes? Shouldn't there be a backup?

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

None. The notes was not either accidentally deleted, since they were locked and I have not seen the delete confirmation window. Both notes were quite long though but that really should not be a issue given that I had no prior errors or warnings.

When and if the MATE Sticky notes applet fails, is it written in the code to delete the previous .xml file and re-create a new one? If that is the case then I'm screwed, and other users too in similar situations.

MATE general version

MATE 1.22.1

Package version

Don't know how to find out.

Linux Distribution

Solus OS 4.0 64-bit Kernel Linux 5.2.9-125.current x86_64

[j-muiruri]

Still no answer, This just happened to me too

Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (Focal Fossa) 64-bit Kernel Linux 5.4.0-42-generic x86_64 MATE 1.24.0

[ascari-fsvq]

No one should use this app for any important note taking. It's been a year with no update, you're better off using a regular .TXT file which I'm currently using with Dropbox backups.

[sleepykitten]

3.16.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.16.51-3 (2017-12-13) i686 GNU/Linux Sticky Notes 1.8.1 / MATE Desktop Environment 1.8.1

Same here. Once in a while (once or twice a year?) my notes disappear, no idea why.

I use this bash script to make regular backups of my notes - I have set it to execute every time I log into my account. Based on my most recent copy that has 0 bytes it seems that the content of the XML file somehow entirely vanishes.

#!/bin/bash

echo "-backing up notes"
echo

config_paths=('/home/xxx/.config/mate/stickynotes-applet.xml')

backup_file(){
    date_str=`date '+%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S'`
    new_file_path="$1.$date_str"

    echo "copying $1 to $new_file_path"
    cp $1 $new_file_path
}

for item in "${config_paths[@]}"; do
    backup_file $item
done

[sleepykitten]

Here are some error messages from my /var/log/user.log file:

Apr 9 18:45:12 xxx org.mate.panel.applet.StickyNotesAppletFactory[3953]: /home/xxx/.config/mate/stickynotes-applet.xml:1: parser error : Document is empty Apr 9 18:45:12 xxx org.mate.panel.applet.StickyNotesAppletFactory[3953]: ^ Apr 9 18:45:12 xxx org.mate.panel.applet.StickyNotesAppletFactory[3953]: /home/xxx/.config/mate/stickynotes-applet.xml:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found Apr 9 18:45:12 xxx org.mate.panel.applet.StickyNotesAppletFactory[3953]: ^

Maybe something wrong is going on during the login/logout phase? Wasn't able to find anything else interesting in the logs.