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A Passwords file was in use by KeePassXC. After restart, file is gone.

Normal operation is: File is open and when system gets rebooted, it closes it safely (so far). Keepassxc always always autosaves. I've rarely seen "Save" available from the menu.

Could KeePass have mishandled the file so badly that it just disappears?? Is there some other possibility?

KeePass never screwed up a file before now.

idonteven
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  • Where was the file being stored? – ajgringo619 Aug 01 '20 at 22:24
  • A local, permanently attached storage directory with USER/USER permissions @ajgringo619 – idonteven Aug 01 '20 at 22:27
  • You might want to check the disk/partition for errors; normally this should not occur, unless the file was somehow placed in a temporary directory. – ajgringo619 Aug 01 '20 at 22:28
  • What filesystem – roaima Aug 01 '20 at 22:45
  • Can you please describe what happened in more detail? Was KeePassXC regularly closed before the reboot? Generally, a file can be deleted while in use, but the application using it is likely to 1) detect it and issue a warning; 2) be able to save it anew. Did the system crash? – fra-san Aug 01 '20 at 22:49
  • The filesystem where you had the file in question stored. – ajgringo619 Aug 01 '20 at 23:01
  • @fra-san I guess during the reboot, it may have not gone properly. I don't know which exact log to look in to check on this. Usually the file is open on reboot and the system tells keeppass to close, keepass closes the file by itself. No probs usually. – idonteven Aug 02 '20 at 23:23

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Unix, unlike Windows, allows files to be deleted while they are open and in use by an application. It is even more likely that KeePass has just read the file into memory, and is not holding the file open because the on-disk data is encrypted, so the contents are decrypted into memory and then the file is closed.

There may be any number of different reasons why the password file was deleted, independent of what the application was doing.

LustreOne
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  • OK I'm willing to accept this because I can't prove if it was deleted or not. I don't know how I could be so careless as to delete it tho. – idonteven Aug 02 '20 at 23:25
  • This is probably on the right track. KeePassXC re-creates the on-disk file each time it saves the database (look at the inode). It makes sense, being it encrypted. A crash happening after the the file is deleted, but before the new file is written, _may_ cause it to disappear (also depending on if and where the new file is written before it replaces the old one). Though IMO this should be considered a bug. – fra-san Aug 03 '20 at 00:01