[ardour-users] corrupted session file?

[Jenny Bernard]

Hello all,

I am relatively new to Linux and Ardour, and have a major
problem.  After hours of work for my final project due this
afternoon, Ardour suddenly started telling me that it could
not save the state of my current session.  I exited the
program (chose "save and quit"), and now my project file will
not load anymore.  It tells me

[ERROR]: Could not understand ardour file
/home/jenny/foo/finalproject/finalproject.ardour
[ERROR]: Session"/home/jenny/foo/finalproject (snapshot
finalproject)" did not load successfully

I tried opening the backup file (finalproject.ardour.bak) and
get the same message.  Also, if I try to copy the backup file
to a file named *.ardour the same thing happens.  All of the
audio data from my session is in the folder, but the setup of
the project is very complex and I need this session file back!
 Any tips on what I could do to restore it?

I am running ardour 0.9beta27 on Mandrake 10.1, multimedia
kernel 2.6.10-1.mm.17mdk.

Thanks in advance,
Jenny