In my experiences with Gimp, there are three primary ways that Gimp can "crash randomly"
1. Operating just fine until you perform some procedure that overloads the system, demands unavailable resources, or breaks some rule, and Gimp suddenly goes **poof** completely collapsing and taking with it any unsaved work.
2. Locking up, but not actually collapsing. All controls and menu selections become inoperative, and your most intuitive path of action is to close the application...at which point you get a pop-up reminding you that you will lose your work if you proceed. Sometimes in this scenario, other options might work better. Sometimes I've gotten lucky and been able to use task manager to kill a hung script-fu or Python fu, and restore Gimp to full functionality (a happy ending). FWIW, a problem with 32 bit G'MIC and QT being a very prominent (and recoverable) example of this. But sometimes you run out of ancillary processes to kill, and realize you're gonna have to kill Gimp too, and lose it all
3. But in a third crash scenario, Gimp does something truly extraordinary. Somehow on it's way down, it manages to capture a snapshot of your work at the most recent successful operation prior to the crash, and then when you reopen Gimp, it offers to restore the lost image?
Why/How can Gimp do this? What type of operation can it anticipate a looming crash, and know to take the snapshot, as well as to know to prompt you that the saved work is available the next time you start Gimp? This latter part has me especially curious if such a snapshot might be recoverable in the other types of crashes, provided we know where to look for it?
Is this possible, and if so where to look are my questions
I recall my most recent experience with #3 was when I stupidly began a text input by inserting a [tab] keystroke before entering the text, and not removing same before entering the text to the canvas. Gimp popped up a brief warning about an illegal operation, and then went bye-bye without further ado. But happily offered to restore my work on the very next start-up.
But yeah, is there a directory I could be looking at for a precrash snapshot, in these other crash instances?
1. Operating just fine until you perform some procedure that overloads the system, demands unavailable resources, or breaks some rule, and Gimp suddenly goes **poof** completely collapsing and taking with it any unsaved work.
2. Locking up, but not actually collapsing. All controls and menu selections become inoperative, and your most intuitive path of action is to close the application...at which point you get a pop-up reminding you that you will lose your work if you proceed. Sometimes in this scenario, other options might work better. Sometimes I've gotten lucky and been able to use task manager to kill a hung script-fu or Python fu, and restore Gimp to full functionality (a happy ending). FWIW, a problem with 32 bit G'MIC and QT being a very prominent (and recoverable) example of this. But sometimes you run out of ancillary processes to kill, and realize you're gonna have to kill Gimp too, and lose it all
3. But in a third crash scenario, Gimp does something truly extraordinary. Somehow on it's way down, it manages to capture a snapshot of your work at the most recent successful operation prior to the crash, and then when you reopen Gimp, it offers to restore the lost image?
Why/How can Gimp do this? What type of operation can it anticipate a looming crash, and know to take the snapshot, as well as to know to prompt you that the saved work is available the next time you start Gimp? This latter part has me especially curious if such a snapshot might be recoverable in the other types of crashes, provided we know where to look for it?
Is this possible, and if so where to look are my questions
I recall my most recent experience with #3 was when I stupidly began a text input by inserting a [tab] keystroke before entering the text, and not removing same before entering the text to the canvas. Gimp popped up a brief warning about an illegal operation, and then went bye-bye without further ado. But happily offered to restore my work on the very next start-up.
But yeah, is there a directory I could be looking at for a precrash snapshot, in these other crash instances?