Re: autosave

[Richard Stallman]

    The ~/.emacs.d/auto-save-list/ directory is used for the `.saves-*' files 
    where Emacs saves session information (used by "M-x recover-session").  
    (See startup.el:auto-save-list-file-prefix.)

    These are not the normal auto-save files, but they do resemble them 
    because Emacs saves session info periodically, like it does with 
    auto-saving.  Perhaps the problem was with those files, not with autosave 
    files.

I looked at that code.  If Emacs can't open that file,
it simply does not write that file.  It does not retry.