2.0.4 Beta 5 Bug Report Thread
- Thread starter mikelove
- Start date
- Status
2.04 B5 (obviously) Palm Tapcis is crashing every time I try and do a flashcard session and needs a reset. Happens on every flashcard set I've tried and after each reset, go directly to the new flashcards session button. I tried it on a group of maybe 40 cards...
So, I went through all the flashcard settings screens, and then through all the preferences screens. I chose "upgrade database" which started the little clock rotating, and then the clock just froze... In about a minute, the Palm turned itself off
Going BACK to preferences for flashcards, I no longer have the option to upgrade database...
Continuing with looking through all preferences, I also selected "Compact ... databases". which ran for about a minute, and then crashed also!
I didn't try these things on b4
Any suggestions on what to do next?
So, I went through all the flashcard settings screens, and then through all the preferences screens. I chose "upgrade database" which started the little clock rotating, and then the clock just froze... In about a minute, the Palm turned itself off
Going BACK to preferences for flashcards, I no longer have the option to upgrade database...
Continuing with looking through all preferences, I also selected "Compact ... databases". which ran for about a minute, and then crashed also!
I didn't try these things on b4
Any suggestions on what to do next?
Hmm... doesn't seem to be quite so bad on a Palm here, though it is crashing a fair amount... very odd. If this turns out to have a clear / correctable cause we'll certainly try to fix it, but if it's a case of Palms not really having enough memory to do this stuff well we may have to label 2.0.4 on Palm as "experimental" and keep the official Palm release at 2.0.3 - we were able to avoid that after some very painstaking work on 2.0.0, but it's not really feasible to put that same sort of work in to further reduce memory / hardware requirements for 2.0.4 on Palm.
As far as your problem - did you back up your database before the upgrade? If so, restore it and try upgrading again. Also, if you're running low on internal memory (not too likely on a 128 MB Zodiac, but you never know) free up some more.
As far as your problem - did you back up your database before the upgrade? If so, restore it and try upgrading again. Also, if you're running low on internal memory (not too likely on a 128 MB Zodiac, but you never know) free up some more.
stephanhodges - are you using the "limit unlearned" feature in flashcards? If so, if you go into Advanced Settings / Cards and set "Prioritize" for it to "Random," does that stop the crashes when beginning sessions? The other problems I'm prepared to attribute to memory and/or database corruption issues, but this one I am able to reproduce here and it seems to involve a particular type of sorting on flashcard lists which is setting off some sort of obscure bug in Palm's ARM code system.
No didn't have that set.
Is there a way to send you all the settings in a file?
Card selection : Repetition spaced
Points per day 300
Biggest "possible" item might be that I didn't do anything for about a year and several months with the cards. Is it possible that it's trying to calculate something and just getting a "big" number? :shock:
I haven't done the restore yet. Been pretty busy... Hopefully will get to it sometime today.
Is there a way to send you all the settings in a file?
Card selection : Repetition spaced
Points per day 300
Biggest "possible" item might be that I didn't do anything for about a year and several months with the cards. Is it possible that it's trying to calculate something and just getting a "big" number? :shock:
I haven't done the restore yet. Been pretty busy... Hopefully will get to it sometime today.
Could be a big-number thing, I suppose, but no bigger than a brand new review with thousands of never-reviewed-before cards in some sense. However, the same bug that affected limit-unlearned could also affect repetition-spaced tests in general in some cases, so here's an experimental Palm-only release for you to try:
http://www.pleco.com/beta/pd204b5a-palm.zip
This likely won't do much for database compacting / upgrading, but it should at least let you start a session without crashing once you've restored your old database.
http://www.pleco.com/beta/pd204b5a-palm.zip
This likely won't do much for database compacting / upgrading, but it should at least let you start a session without crashing once you've restored your old database.
I should be able to try it out within an hour
So far, all I am getting when I click on flashcards is
I've done the reset and tried again, same result.
Will try some other things.
I've done the reset and tried again, same result.
Will try some other things.
OK,
I went in to Pleco mover and discovered that it didn't think I had any databases. Under restore, there were two sets of databases. One from today (12th May) and one from 2 days go (10th May).
A bit counter intuitive, I think, but the 12th May were the older ones. I guess it had 12th because I just reloaded them (via Install Tool)?
Anyway, after doing that, I was able to get into the flashcard session. Strangely, the "limit flashcards" was checked (although I had specifically checked and then unchecked it before). Perhaps the crash left the database settings to checked...
Also, I had to delete about 5 or 6 temp databases. I guess Pleco doesn't clean those up on a restart. Would help to get a message about it, so I could manually inspect and delete them, I suppose.
So, things are working. I was able to successfully review some cards. Now, if you could "fix" my memory so that I recognized all those cards from 2 years ago! :shock:
I'll try out compact and upgrade database as two different steps after backing up again.
I went in to Pleco mover and discovered that it didn't think I had any databases. Under restore, there were two sets of databases. One from today (12th May) and one from 2 days go (10th May).
A bit counter intuitive, I think, but the 12th May were the older ones. I guess it had 12th because I just reloaded them (via Install Tool)?
Anyway, after doing that, I was able to get into the flashcard session. Strangely, the "limit flashcards" was checked (although I had specifically checked and then unchecked it before). Perhaps the crash left the database settings to checked...
Also, I had to delete about 5 or 6 temp databases. I guess Pleco doesn't clean those up on a restart. Would help to get a message about it, so I could manually inspect and delete them, I suppose.
So, things are working. I was able to successfully review some cards. Now, if you could "fix" my memory so that I recognized all those cards from 2 years ago! :shock:
I'll try out compact and upgrade database as two different steps after backing up again.
Database compact reported success.
When I went to exit a couple seconds later (click Done), then I got a Fatal Exception, causing a reset, of course.
Going back into Pleco after the reset, flashcards are working. Any way to tell if the database has been compacted or not?
*** Edit ***
Looking at the backed up files, there are now two copies of the database. "PlecoCUserxxx.pdb" and "MFS-PlecoCUserxxx.pdb".
The MFS version is larger, so I am guessing that the compaction step worked, but the "Done" button is where the old databases are (normally) deleted. So, there is something in that step that caused a crash. Perhaps some "open" resource handle, etc? I was pretty quick to click on the Done button once it reported complete.
When I went to exit a couple seconds later (click Done), then I got a Fatal Exception, causing a reset, of course.
Going back into Pleco after the reset, flashcards are working. Any way to tell if the database has been compacted or not?
*** Edit ***
Looking at the backed up files, there are now two copies of the database. "PlecoCUserxxx.pdb" and "MFS-PlecoCUserxxx.pdb".
The MFS version is larger, so I am guessing that the compaction step worked, but the "Done" button is where the old databases are (normally) deleted. So, there is something in that step that caused a crash. Perhaps some "open" resource handle, etc? I was pretty quick to click on the Done button once it reported complete.
Minor item
When selecting the "Upgrade Database?" dialog (Palm), there's no scroll bar to read the entire text, so I don't know what it was supposed to say after:
When selecting the "Upgrade Database?" dialog (Palm), there's no scroll bar to read the entire text, so I don't know what it was supposed to say after:
?? :?
So far, all seems to be working. Haven't tried anything fancy, such as bulk export, etc. I've never been too successful at exporting all cards in one go....
Well, happy to report that exporting (4600+) worked without any issues at all. Took about 2+ minutes.
So, I've compacted and updated the database, and exported successfully. Other than the compact "reset", there have been no issues so far.
Well, happy to report that exporting (4600+) worked without any issues at all. Took about 2+ minutes.
So, I've compacted and updated the database, and exported successfully. Other than the compact "reset", there have been no issues so far.
Great! Sounds like this is probably stable enough to release, then - the crash after compacting isn't ideal, but since that's a rarely-used option and only seems to affect pre-NVFS Palms I'm willing to live with it; I'm more inclined to believe it has to do with some sort of system resource limit and/or a bug relating to deleting too many database pages at the same time, neither of which is likely to be an issue on a device that treats SQLite databases as regular file handles instead of having to break them up into PDB "records." Should be easy enough to fix that "upgrade database" prompt bug...
Thanks very much for checking on this - definitely wouldn't have wanted to release this with that crash-on-session-start bug still hanging around, even if it does only seem to affect Palms.
Thanks very much for checking on this - definitely wouldn't have wanted to release this with that crash-on-session-start bug still hanging around, even if it does only seem to affect Palms.
If you're still "in the dark", perhaps a general mailing (I know, I know), announcing a release candidate? Otherwise, just a last call for testers. Too bad you don't have two mailing lists, one's who only want new product and upgrade announcements, and those who also want beta and product development / consulting (survey) emails.
Would it be hard to send an email to all people who've registered in the beta forum?
Would it be hard to send an email to all people who've registered in the beta forum?
The beta has actually gotten quite a good number of downloads, just not a lot of comments, so I'm not too too worried - even after hawking Beta 4 in my last announcement email we didn't get a lot of comments about it. And anyway, unlike with iPhone, for our Palm/WM software, if we do find a bug post-release we can have a fix available to users within 5 minutes after we implement it
mikelove said:...a bug...we can have a fix available to users within 5 minutes after we implement it
Wow, it takes me longer to fix bugs than that after I "implement" them. 8)
<obvious joke>
There is a small bug with work-around when using Flashcards. It is reproducible.
Using free-answer mode, asking for headwords.
I backtrack to an answered card, then save. When I continue the session, and move to a new test card, I am unable to register an answer. The state of the new card is as if it were an already tested card - ie no more input. The clock keeps ticking on though.
To re-enable the new card, I have to save the session at the new card, and recommence the session again.
Using free-answer mode, asking for headwords.
I backtrack to an answered card, then save. When I continue the session, and move to a new test card, I am unable to register an answer. The state of the new card is as if it were an already tested card - ie no more input. The clock keeps ticking on though.
To re-enable the new card, I have to save the session at the new card, and recommence the session again.
- Status