Emergency save destroys config file

[Carsten Otto]

When causing an emergency save, e.g. by crashing inkscape with a huge .svg, the config file is emptied as a side effect of the crash. At the next start, inkscape complains about the config file and, obviously, does not remember any setting.

$ inkscape file.svg
Too many heap sections: Increase MAXHINCR or MAX_HEAP_SECTS

Emergency save activated!

$ inkscape
$HOME/.inkscape/preferences.xml:1: parser error : Document is empty

^
$HOME/.inkscape/preferences.xml:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found

^

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Could you provide information about you platform? From the path to your preferences file I conclude this crash happens with Inkscape 0.46. Would you be willing to test if it still happens with a recent prerelease build of Inkscape 0.47(pre4) from <http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape/files/inkscape/0.47pre4/>?

related:
Bug #167242 “WinXP2 Preferences.xml Crash”
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/167242>
Bug #226565: "Too many heap sections: Increase MAXHINCR or MAX_HEAP_SECTS"
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/226565>
Debian Bug report 503218 - inkscape: deadlock, empty preference files, segfault.
<http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=503218>

"[Tilesathome] [OSM-talk] t at h memory issues ? / Renderability":
<http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tilesathome/2008-February/001835.html>
| This error(-message) does originate not from Inkscape itself, but from
| the memory management it uses. Here, we are talking about Boehm's Garbage
| Collector (GC). There's nothing wrong with the GC. But it has to be
| compiled with --enable-large-config for a use case like t at h.
| So here's the problem: Debian comes with a package libgc1c2 which
| does not have the large config enabled.

 "[Tilesathome] Script for crashing Inkscape/tilesGen.pl"
<http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tilesathome/2009-July/005975.html>:
| tilesLoop
| - Deletes stopfile.txt on startup (Johan Ur Riise)
| - Inkscape preferences.xml cleared on each loop (Johan Ur Riise)
| - Added/fixed a few comments/values

Any chances that you use a similar script that deletes the contents of the preferences file repeatedly in a loop, and - when Inkscape unexpectedly breaks the loop - an empty, not a missing preferences file is left behind? A missing preferences file would be no problem, Inkscape then uses the default settings and creates a new one.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Sorry - my search for related bugs missed these:
Bug #168086 “crash at startup, possibly due to preferences.xml file”:
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/168086>
Bug #168922 “inkscape garbles own preferences.xml”:
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/168922>

This has been fixed for Inkscape 0.47 in SVN rev. 20781.

Linking this report as duplicate to bug #168086. Please add a comment and revert the duplicate status if you don't agree and think these are separate issues.