McIDAS-V has closed unexpectedly

Errors and unexpected results
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bobc
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Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2010 5:57 pm

Re: McIDAS-V has closed unexpectedly

Post by bobc »

Hi again Kris,

Through some research online, I found that there are different "levels" of sleep that Mac machines can go to. From a Terminal window, could you please send us the output of this command:

pmset -g | grep hibernatemode

The value returned from this command will tell us if your machine is set to something different than the default sleep mode, which is what we've been testing with.

Thanks,
Bob
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kbedka1
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Joined: Wed Jan 28, 2009 7:27 pm

Re: McIDAS-V has closed unexpectedly

Post by kbedka1 »

hibernatemode 3

See attached for the crash I just encountered now. In this case I brought up the McIDAS windows, and the first thing I did was to put an existing display layer in the trash and the software crashed
Attachments
Screen Shot 2018-10-05 at 3.28.02 PM.png
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bobc
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Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2010 5:57 pm

Re: McIDAS-V has closed unexpectedly

Post by bobc »

Hi Kris,

Could you please let us know what OS version you are running? Looking back through this thread, it looks like you were running 10.11.6 back in June 2017, but it would be good to know if this has changed. Also, do you know approximately how old the machine itself is?

Could you also let us know (as specific as possible), what your process is at the end of the day and when you start up the next morning? This could let us know if it's something specific to your process, such as the order that things are done, that's triggering the problem. For example:

  1. With McIDAS-V up and displayed on my external monitor (which is my primary monitor), I minimize the Main Display window.
  2. I unplug the display cable between the laptop and the monitor.
  3. I close my laptop and bring it home.
  4. The next morning, I start up the laptop w/o the display cord plugged in yet.
  5. I attach the display cable to the external monitor.
  6. I bring up McV and see the crash.

Another thing we considered is which display is considered to be your "primary" display. Is your primary display your laptop's monitor, or your external monitor?

Thanks again for your patience with this.

Bob
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kbedka1
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Joined: Wed Jan 28, 2009 7:27 pm

Re: McIDAS-V has closed unexpectedly

Post by kbedka1 »

I still am running the same OS. The "about this Mac" menu choice in the upper left apple menu says "Retina 15 inch, mid-2015", though this laptop was first acquired here in late 2017. 1 TB solid state hard drive, 16 Gb RAM

I will report on the crash I encountered this morning.

1) My laptop screen is closed when connected to my large monitor. I never use the 2 displays together, so the external monitor would be considered the "primary display"
2) When I left for the evening yesterday, Mc-V was minimized. I had a couple layers displayed from a local netcdf and 1 display of a GOES-16 subset acquired via ADDE. The displays were very small in terms of memory usage (< 2 Gb)
3) When I leave, I open my laptop screen, unplug the monitor connection to get all the windows to display on the small laptop screen, then I close screen and pack my bag. I do this open laptop, then later close it procedure because I recall in with previous Macs the computer sometimes got confused about the status of the windows that were on the large display which could lead to the machine hanging.
4) I did not use my laptop at all overnight. I arrived in the morning and plugged in the primary display and power cords with the laptop closed.
5) I worked for about an hour with other programs, then I brought up my Mc-V session from yesterday. Mc-V does not immediately crash upon bringing up the window. It crashes when I first interact with the software, i.e. I clicked the color table button and then it crashed.
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jayh
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Re: McIDAS-V has closed unexpectedly

Post by jayh »

Hi Kris-

That sequence of events was very helpful. I was able to reproduce your error with regularity by doing these steps:

1. Laptop closed, using external monitor, start -V
2. Minimize -V session
3. Open laptop, then unplug external monitor (all windows go to laptop screen)
4. Close laptop, then plug in external monitor
5. Restore -V session, probe (middle mouse button) around a bit, and it crashes.

The programmers were able to find that it is a known java bug: https://bugs.java.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=8057830

In the meantime we did come up with a couple of workarounds that in my testing seem to prevent the -V session from crashing.

- When you return in the morning, open the laptop before plugging in the external monitor.
or
- Instead of minimizing your -V windows, leave them maximized and follow your same routine.

Presumably, either of these options avoids the problem where windows are being switched between the two monitors into a state that leads to the crash. Let us know if either of those work for you in lessening or eliminating the crashing you are seeing.

Thanks, Jay
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bobc
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Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2010 5:57 pm

Re: McIDAS-V has closed unexpectedly

Post by bobc »

Hi Kris,

Did you get a chance to try either of the workarounds that Jay mentioned in his post from 10/18? We're curious to see if this improved the crashing you were seeing.

Thanks,
Bob
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