Empty locked node

[DBaciu]

Hello everybody.

I've encountered something very troubling.
I've had a few locked nodes (basically nulls) holding some pieces of geometry in a hip file.
And now that I've opened the file after a while the nulls are still there but their content is zero.
Basically the nulls lost their locked content.
If this is a bug I think it's very serious.
I need the locked geometry as an example input geo for various stuff.
It is a bug or what?
Can I do something to bring back the geometry?

[LaidlawFX]

This will happen when a scene file crashes, and you open it again. The crash file only save the info that is in the system memory, not stuff like geometry. 

Once the locked node Geo is gone it can not come back. It is more like a short term temporary buffer. Great for performance testing, or for sharing files on odforce.

Generally speaking you should only lock nodes temporarily. For long term use you should use a file cache node or something similar. This is the same as other software systems, albeit it may not be as obvious. 

[DBaciu]

Yeah, it kind of makes sense but in the event of a crash shouldn't Houdini just write a crashed file in the Houdini temp directory and leave the original file intact on disk??? I mean (if I think about it) it would mean that a scene crash it would affect the files stored on disk which is kind of absurd.

[LaidlawFX]

The file on disk should not be affected, your right. If it crashed while saving then it could. I take it you have not recovered the files from $TEMP? That is what I was imagining happensed, as that is the most likely scenario. Another possibility did you change major versions? Could be something with how they changed geometry storage.