Cura shows "what's new" every startup, won't save settings

[PCLoadPLA 0]

I'm running Cura 5.6.0 on Linux Mint. Every time I open it, it shows  me the "what's new in this version" advertisement. Also, certain settings refuse to be saved, for example I have to enable tree supports by going into the advanced menu and enabling them every single time I restart Cura. 

 

Cura also doesn't remember my home directory and forces me to navigate my entire filesystem when I open every single print, which was noted elsewhere and may or may not be related to this problem of not being able to remember defaults or settings. 

[Slashee_the_Cow 438]

Is it saving its configuration file? It should be in ~/.local/share/cura/5.6 called cura.cfg

[PCLoadPLA 0]

How can I check that? If it's not, how can I fix it?

[Slashee_the_Cow 438]

Open an instance of.. I can't remember what Cinnamon's file manager is called, and I should, because I forced my mum to use LMDE after Windows XP EoL... go to your home directory and turn on View > Show Hidden Files. By default on Unix-like systems anything that starts with a . is hidden, that should show the .local folder.

[PCLoadPLA 0]

I can find the file, but I don't know how to tell if Cura is using it...it seems evident that it's not...

 

According to the mod time, the cura.cfg file has not been modified since April 8...probably when I switched from 4.6. This problem did not exist in 4.6. 

 

 

 

chaz@NUC11:~/.local/share/cura/5.6$ ls -ltr
total 8688
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 Oct  1  2022 themes
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 Oct  1  2022 setting_visibility
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 Oct  1  2022 scripts
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 Oct  1  2022 quality
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 Oct  1  2022 intent
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 Oct  1  2022 variants
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 Oct  1  2022 meshes
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 Oct  1  2022 definitions
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 Apr  4 07:47 images
-rw-rw-rw- 1 chaz chaz   13011 Apr  8 15:32 cura.cfg
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 Apr 20 04:55 materials
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 Apr 20 04:55 definition_changes
drwxrwxr-x 8 chaz chaz    4096 Apr 24 00:05 plugins
-rw-rw-r-- 1 chaz chaz    7749 Apr 24 00:05 packages.json
-rw-rw-r-- 1 chaz chaz 5242819 May  3 07:07 cura.log.1
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz   12288 May  5 21:07 quality_changes
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 May  5 21:07 extruders
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 May  5 21:07 machine_instances
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz    4096 May  6 12:29 user
-rw-rw-r-- 1 chaz chaz 3552337 May  6 12:29 cura.log
chaz@NUC11:~/.local/share/cura/5.6$ 

 

Now if there's a way to tell if Cura is READING the config file, I could at least manually edit it....such as manually add tree supports to "visible settings"...but I don't know if Cura is even reading it. 

 

 

Edited May 6 by PCLoadPLA

[Slashee_the_Cow 438]

You can open cura.cfg in a text editor (a regular one, doesn't have to be in the terminal). It even writes the latest version to use the file:

You could try renaming the file (it doesn't really matter what to) and see if Cura generates a new one it can read/write to.

 

If not, since it seems it can write to its log file, so just open Cura, change a setting, close it, open it, change it back, close it (just so the relevant stuff is easy to find) and reply with the Cura log file attached.

[PCLoadPLA 0]

Sure enough:

 

[general]
camera_perspective_mode = orthographic
window_left = 106
accepted_user_agreement = True
window_top = 95
version = 6
last_run_version = 4.6.0

 

I moved cura.cfg to cura.cfg.bu and restarted cura. No startup hints displayed!

 

What's weird is that cura did NOT regenerate the cura.cfg file...there is no cura.cfg at all now; just my cura.cfg.bu. That's very strange to me; but it seems to be working...my printer profile and slicing profiles are still there...

 

I still have to navigate to my 3D printer folder every time I open anything, even if I open 3 different files from the same directory, I have to navigate to that directory from my home folder every single time. Apparently this bug is not related to the configuration file...

 

 

Edited May 7 by PCLoadPLA

[Slashee_the_Cow 438]

Now I'm even more interested to see the cura.log file. It'd be awesome if you could post it.

[PCLoadPLA 0]

Still no cura.cfg file has appeared. I attached the log and log.1 files. 

cura.log cura.log.1.log

[Slashee_the_Cow 438]

I can see in the log that it found cura.cfg.bu and tried to upgrade that. I didn't think it ever looked for any file other than "cura.cfg". Try closing Cura, then either moving to a completely different location (like your home directory) or deleting the cura.cfg.bu file, then load Cura again and see if it generates a new config file. If it doesn't, close it, open it, close it (just to make sure the log file is full of whatever happens when it tries to find its config file) and post the log file.

[PCLoadPLA 0]

There is still no cura.cfg file. I did what you said and uploaded the log. 

cura.log

[Slashee_the_Cow 438]

For reasons I've never understood, Cura creates folders at both ~/.local/share/cura and ~/.config/cura

Why it has a folder in .config I've never understood because it always seems to load the configuration from .local

Maybe see if there's a cura.cfg in ~/.config/cura/5.6 and if so move it somewhere else on the computer (move instead of delete in case it messes things up completely, you can move it back) and see if it'll generate a new config file in one or both folders.

[jaysenodell 18]

So... in the old school days, local was a generic fall back for non-standard installed stuff. /bin, /sbin for core OS, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin for system level "add ons" and "user space" stuff. We used /usr/local for third party and self rolled things. There would typically be all the standard directories in there (/etc, /bin, /sbin, etc). Then pure user space files lived in $HOME (because on nis/nix plus, home were often fun things like /users/j/jo/jodell which then mapped to /net/jodell and/or /home/jodell or, my favorite way to torture the not so innocent developer, /net/srv/$HOST/export/$USER/home/insecure/shared (where they had to know which host we happened to create use for their workgroup)(moral .. don't fork with your sysadmins by pretending you know how to directly access raw devices len... otherwise your home direcory gets hard to find and your pasward expires every 8 minutes). 

 

Move that into modern *nix and you get a mishmash of file standards about how to properly store user space configs. The POSIX (and I think SYSV) methods would be that software should look in 

1. $HOME/.<app>/<vers>/etc
2. $HOME/.<app>/<vers>/local/etc
3. $HOME/.<app>/<vers>/
4. $HOME/.<app>/etc
5. $HOME/.<app>/local/etc
6. $HOME/.<app>
7. $HOME/etc/<app>/<vrs>
8. $HOME/etc/<app>
9. $HOME/local/etc/<app>/<vrs>
10. $HOME/local/<app>
11. $HOME/<app>
12. /usr/local/<app>/etc/
13. /usr/local/etc/<app>
14. /usr/local/<app>
15. /etc/<app>/<vers>
16. /etc/<app>

I may have missed a directory or ordering in there, but there are standards that "should be" implemented. I'm not going to fuss over it, but linux development is notorious for "we do it our way" which is why I'm not a fan of app impage and prefer building from source when I can. 

 

Or just using Mac. 

[PCLoadPLA 0]

I will try the other suggestions above later when I get back to my system. 

 

Appimage as the only way I'm familiar with to get Cura...also my first time ever using Appimage. Is there a better way and does anyone have good luck compiling Cura from source? 

[jaysenodell 18]

38 minutes ago, PCLoadPLA said:

compiling Cura from source? 

If you’re asking that question, don’t try it. App image is the official method for cura use in Linux. Just use that. 
 

Keep in mind I’m a nerd who plays with systems for fun (and a paycheck). Cura is not a trivial code base. Make sure you understand how general code building tool chains work before tackling cura. Then be prepared to read, build, fail, troubleshoot, reread, build, fail, troubleshoot, repeat. Patience and asking questions the right way will get you there. 
 

not sure it’s worth the effort though. 

[PCLoadPLA 0]

@NUC11:~/.config/cura/5.6$ ls -lta
total 36
drwxr-xr-x 3 chaz chaz  4096 May  8 14:20 .
-rw------- 1 chaz chaz 17312 May  8 14:20 cura.cfg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 chaz chaz    51 May  8 14:20 plugins.json
drwxrwxr-x 4 chaz chaz  4096 Apr  4 07:42 ..
drwxrwxr-x 2 chaz chaz  4096 Oct  1  2022 scripts
chaz@NUC11:~/.config/cura/5.6

 

There was a cura.cfg in .config. I moved it away and restarted cura, but when Cura started, it went to a blank slate, and was asking me to setup my machines and everything from scratch. This scared me so I copied it back, and restarted and everything is back to normal. Is this what was expected?

 

 

 

[Slashee_the_Cow 438]

3 hours ago, PCLoadPLA said:

There was a cura.cfg in .config. I moved it away and restarted cura, but when Cura started, it went to a blank slate, and was asking me to setup my machines and everything from scratch. This scared me so I copied it back, and restarted and everything is back to normal. Is this what was expected?

Well it means we at least know where it's getting its cura.cfg from now. Maybe try moving (and if that just resets it again, copying) it to ~/.local/share/cura

 

7 hours ago, jaysenodell said:

not sure it’s worth the effort though. 

It's not.

[PCLoadPLA 0]

So, deleting the cura.cfg from ~/.local/share/cura actually already fixed my problems...it doesn't show the startup crawl anymore, and I don't have to re-enable tree supports every time anymore. I have no idea why deleting that file fixed it, but unless you want to keep troubleshooting, I don't need to do anything else at the moment. 

[Slashee_the_Cow 438]

17 minutes ago, PCLoadPLA said:

So, deleting the cura.cfg from ~/.local/share/cura actually already fixed my problems...it doesn't show the startup crawl anymore, and I don't have to re-enable tree supports every time anymore. I have no idea why deleting that file fixed it, but unless you want to keep troubleshooting, I don't need to do anything else at the moment. 

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if you just fixed it, don't break it again 🙂

 

If I want to do more testing, I'm sure I can break it on my computer.