Corrupted config file

[oltreseba]

We have been using conf with an electron* for a while with encryption enabled.

Somehow it's happening to something like 1 out of 100-300 users that the config.json file gets corrupted. We are noticing this happening more to Windows users with also Avast antivirus installed (maybe it's messing with the read/write, or maybe is just a coincidence)

The error we are getting is

SyntaxError: Unxpected Token in JSON at position 0

That is the classical error when JSON.parse fails.

Notes:

• *We already developed our own ipc system before this was added to electron-store, so no renderer is writing the file, and only one process (main) is writing the file

Did this ever happen to anybody?
Is there a way to prevent it?
Is it possible that if the app is killed/quitted while writing then the file is messed up? (I see that atomically is being used, so this shouldn't the case).

[sindresorhus]

the config.json file gets corrupted

Corrupted in what way? Empty file? Invalid JSON?

[sindresorhus]

From past experience, issues like these are often connected to anti-virus software.

[oltreseba]

It's hard to tell how it was corrupted as the file was encrypted and even losing one byte will result in a completely meaningless file.

There is an error in the json decode because the content does not start with a standard json (not with a { i guess) i can't tell more than this at the current time.

In which way antivirus is messing up with our files? is there a way we can go around this?

[oltreseba]

Would it make sense to backup the file at the end of each write, so either the default file or the backup should be fine? (maybe 1 save behind, but at least not corrupted?)

[sindresorhus]

It's hard to say what the correct fix would be without being able to reliably reproduce the issue.

[sindresorhus]

You could try to replace this call:

conf/source/index.ts

Line 466 in 57bd2a2

atomically.writeFileSync(this.path, data);

with:

fs.writeFileSync(this.path, data);

To see if the problem is with the atomic writing.