P.S. If the bug does exist, what am I going to do to get my space back, and don't me I have to wipe and re-install, not a good answer.

P.S. If the bug does exist, what am I going to do to get my space back, and don't me I have to wipe and re-install, not a good answer.

Hi Hanto,

It looks like the autosave feature may not be deleting the temporary files it uses to ensure saves are not corrupted. That would fill up your hard drive after a while.

If you go into the puzzles folder, you should be able to find out where the errant files are. Once you do, if you could take a screenshot or tell us the filenames that would help out in figuring out what happened.

Default subfolders on some of my puzzles ( suspect the ones I'm currently working ) have grown to tremendous sizes, in one case to over 2 gigs. The are full of temp files, where the puzzles that I am not working seem to have ONLY decent file names that seem to be related to the Foldit program.

My puzzle directory for 588 (0000993072) is 1.6 GB and I have 13,543 files with names like autFFF7.tmp (107 Kb each) and 2,003 files with names like quiFFF0.tmp (also 107 Kb each). The four autosave files only add up to 427 Kb. If I close out any clients that are running puzzle 588 can I delete these *.tmp files?

In all honesty tho, Foldit admins should be writing a program to clean these temp files off our drives. We shouldn't have to do it manually.

In all honesty tho, Foldit admins should be writing a program to clean these temp files off our drives. We shouldn't have to do it manually.

I recovered over 9 gigs by just deleting the /default/*.tmp files on one of my clients. I'm gonna restart all my clients and see if they work, as I did not close them during this operation.

I've recovered my system, and all clients currently working. I did perform saves and recover from saves while performing this action, but to truthful when I deleted the .tmp files, I also deleted the default files that should have remained in the folder, that is why tmp files should be a TEMP folder and controlling files outside the TEMP folder.

I did keep my clients open while performing my deletes on the default subfolder, because I didn't want to risk deleting a file-in-use. everything is now working from the Credit Bests that I performed before deleting .tmp files, but on at least some of my default folders, I have lost the controlling files that should always be there. That's a easy fix tho, I'm a bit afraid that I might accidently create a credit best from one puzzle onto a puzzle it doesn't belong to...

like pauldunn said.

It is safe to delete the .tmp files, they should have been deleted automatically but you hit a bug where they are not. I've found the bug and I'll push out a fix for it as soon as possible.

Haha, no worries. Yes there are definitely some odd behaviors with the interface on the forums/feedback pages.

Done to Ongoing as this is NOT resolved in the field and when status is DONE it is not visible to people checking for this bug. I have thousands and thousands of files in my filesystem because of it.

Please change status to DONE only after:
1. There is a real bugfix and
2. That fix is actively being pushed and
3. The push and the bug are announced in the messages / blog on the foldit website.

This will corrupt data for other applications as well in case the disk runs full. People will not be aware of what is causing it. If you run this on a work related PC you're in trouble !

This workaround may save trouble: switch to clients in 'main' rather than 'devprev'. The currently existing tmp files will not be deleted, but no new ones should appear.

BP is absolutely correct, I came home from partying and found ALL of my clients done, ie. QUIT. When I looked at Foldit partition, I saw that it was AGAIN at 20 gigs of space, i.e there was NO MORE available for the clients in questions. I DON"T consider this to be DECENT behavior on the part of the client or for the programmers creating that clients, you create problem, NO-ONE goes home until problem is PROPERLY fixed, if the military behaved this way, there would be NO victories for the HOME team... Either you are dedicated or you are NOT. So simple, it sounds like idiocy, it's NOT, it is the truth. This is a programmer created issue, I EXPECT a programmer to fix it, BEFORE HE/SHE GOES HOME.. You don't like my attitude, get a different job.

**** How to switch to the main group: ****

1. STOP all running clients. There will be a software update after you change to the main group. For that, all clients must be stopped and exited.

2. find the foldit directory. Most windows PCs will have a foldit directory that contains specific files, you can use the windows explorer search function to locate those files.
Search for a file called "all.macro", this will get you to the foldit directory.

3. In the foldit directory, locate the file named "options.txt" and edit it in Notepad

4. Search for the line that startes with the text "update_group"
It will either have : "main" or : "devprev" following it on the same line.
If it has "main", you are done. You are not affected.
If you have "devprev", change it to "main" and save the options.txt file.

5. restart your FIRST client. Do NOT start multiple clients yet, you will receive a software update.

6. let the program update itself and restart itself.

7. After it restarts, you may start new clients.

In due time the Foldit team will have to release a fix for the devprev version and a tool to remove the possibly thousands of .tmp files on your system.

Good luck, Bletchley park.

Sorry BP, I appreciate your response, it is ' good enough ' for most people, however Foldit admin has made this issue paramount. I will not be changing to Main for ANYBODY's sake. Fix the DevPrev and NEVER let it happen again. That is called QA. Your response it good enough for those that want to continue their runs, however it doesn't solve the REAL issues. I spent 20 hears in the Navy as a Team player, I expect the same from those that pretend to be interested in the results from Foldit.
Thank you BP.

What I've tended to do is go from open->done when the bug is fixed and checked in. I will try to mark feedback some other way if marking as done is causing problems

When the fix goes out to DevPrev it should go from done->resolved and then to closed once it has been regressed.

The fix has a flag added to the options.txt which will sweep the folders for the temporary files and delete them.

The bug came up because of the different code path that Windows has to take for autosave. Most of my testing is done in Linux where the bug didn't show up. When I tested the fix on a Windows machine, I didn't notice the temp file buildup. I didn't run through extensive quicksaves/autosaves which would cause a significant amount of the temp files to accumulate.

Again, sorry about all the autosave issues. The bug reports helped track down what exactly was happening quickly.

Bugs suck; however the reason that devpre exists is to help catch the bugs before the new code incorporated in Main. "Devpre" is part of the Q&A of Foldit. Those of us running Devpre are doing so to help vet the code and yes we will get eaten by bugs. We need to report the bugs but we shouldnt be surprised when we get hit by them that is the reason we are running Devpre.

I am concerned that on machines where many gigabytes of files have accumulated, the client may take several minutes to delete them, and may appear hung in the meantime. (I know deleting them manually through file manager takes a long time; idk if doing it programmatically will too). I wonder if the developers can test whether that will happen, and post a warning about it for people accepting the update when it comes out.

I am also dismayed that no notice about this bug and the need to switch to main until it's resolved has been added to the news or the front page, given how serious the consequences can be.

If you need to get rid of the files, and you don't to go through the file manager, there is a command line solution. Please note that you should NOT use this if you are unfamiliar with the windows command line, and there's the potential it may mess up your computer. If you choose to use this, I am not responsible for any problems it might cause. It would also be a good idea to stop all clients before running this.

1. Hit [Windows-Key]-R This will bring up the run dialog
2. Type cmd and hit enter
3. Navigate to the Foldit directory using the cd command. If you installed to the default directory (C:\Foldit\) then you can get there by typing cd \Foldit\puzzles\ . If this step fails, or you cant locate your Foldit installation, do not continue.
4. Now type del *.tmp /s

This should get rid of all the tmp files for all puzzles in all tracks.

When will the fix for this be released? An actual date would be nice, not just "... in the next 'devprev' release".

Update released: http://fold.it/portal/node/993109
Please re-open this if you still have issues in devprev.

Again, thanks to everyone who uses the devprev client to catch these bad bugs.
Without your thorough testing across all three platforms, these nasty bugs wouldn't get caught until they reached main!

We appreciate you all "taking it for the team" and apologize for how particularly nasty this bug turned out to be for many of you.

25 minutes of running multiple clients with NO added tmp files, i.e. my concern is fixed. Foldit partition back to 10 gigs and defragged. Should be fine for the duration, at least until next devprev release..

Thanks guys, all of you. But I am wondering what you did with the tmp files???

I am seeing reductions in free space and increases in used space, but will assume at least for the moment that what I am seeing might be quick saves. Assuming this behaves as it always has in the past, I should have no difficulty with it.

Over-night space used went from 2.28 gigs ( after complete clean-up of all .tmp files) to present value of 2.32 gigs. I'm pretty sure that .04 difference is around 40 MBs and a utterly huge improvement over the previous devprev which would have increased by nearly 2 gigs by this time.

Over-night space used went from 2.28 gigs ( after complete clean-up of all .tmp files) to present value of 2.32 gigs. I'm pretty sure that .04 difference is around 40 MBs and a utterly huge improvement over the previous devprev which would have increased by nearly 2 gigs by this time.