Anyone else has crashes when editing notes ?

[rob]

Rob, I have already submitted an error report on this.
The crash occurs when I use Manage Names and change the Case Matching from Ignore to Sensitive. Click save after that and it crashes. I have tested on topics with existing links and without and get the same result.
I had already made this change on many topics before this occurred, but now get the error with every attempt.
I can edit topics in all other ways and do not have the problem.

And, yes, I'm using build 204

I haven't been able to reproduce anything like this. There was a different bug that we fixed and that MIGHT have led to this problem, but I'm not sure. If this issue persists for you, I'll need you to send us your database and steps to reliably recreate the problem. There seems to be something odd going on here.

Another possibility that I just thought of is that your name index has somehow become corrupted. Since you don't state what the crash error is, I have no way of knowing here. In case that's the problem, go to the Manage tab and select the Rebuild Index option at the far right. Does that fix the problem?

 

[rob]

Hey Rob,

I too have had several crashes since the updates. When it crashes it asks if you want to send a report. It also gives you a window to give a brief description of what you were doing when it crashed. I generally do not do bug reports, just crash reports. I say what I was doing IE "I was navigating from a mechanical reference to a story book topic." Is this enough or do you need the bug report and even more information? For those of us who are code illiterate, what information do you need?


I had no idea what was causing my crashes, but thinking back I would agree that it appears to happen most when I am saving one topic and moving to another.

What we do with the crash reports is try to think of what might have led to the problem. Often times, we're at a complete loss, so it becomes a process of searching for a needle within a haystack, where the crash report gives us clues that help narrow the problem down, but it still leaves a LOT of haystack to search. Anything we're told in the crash report is helpful in narrowing down what might have caused the problem, so there's honestly no such thing as "too much" detail.

Quite often, something you had done many actions prior to the crash is what messed up, leaving a landmine that gets stepped on later. Here's an example of something I just fixed for this release. If you changed the parent of a topic that itself had children such that it was moved to a new depth in the hierarchy, subsequently editing one of those children (or creating a new sibling for one of those children) would cause a crash. So it was changing the parent that actually was the problem, although the crash would occur when operating on a child. That's not something users will necessarily include in the crash report (as your example demonstrates). So we'll take everything we can get!

 

[rob]

I've been having crashes whenever I try to delete an article, which means I can't move on with what I'm doing. I've sent some reports via the automatic reporting system, but here is what it says in the error:

C++ Exception: Invalid head sentinel - wiped? at line 658 in file utility.cpp

I'm also completely up to date.

This sounds like your name index is corrupted. Go to the Manage tab and select the Rebuild Index option at the far right. Does that fix the problem?

 

[rob]

At this point I’m fairly certain my crashes are related to hyperlinks. I can eliminate them by highlighting text, copy and paste special ‘unformatted text’… which will probably only take about a hundred hours to cleaned up…

We fixed a crash bug that sounds like your description. So hopefully you'll be good to go with the new release.

 

[Zakzahn]

This sounds like your name index is corrupted. Go to the Manage tab and select the Rebuild Index option at the far right. Does that fix the problem?

Yes, that does seem to have fixed it thanks

 

[rogue_jm]

The issue I had seems to have resolved with the latest update (build 205). I noticed the loading of the database showed "Rebuilding Index" for while (at least more than I have noticed before), so I am guessing the Index Rebuild Rob had mentioned was the resolution.

Spoke to soon. The issue continues. Have just lodged new error report. I have also tried rebuild of index and removal of preferences.xml, but to no avail. Error comment is "Wrapper objection found within list".

 

[rob]

The issue I had seems to have resolved with the latest update (build 205). I noticed the loading of the database showed "Rebuilding Index" for while (at least more than I have noticed before), so I am guessing the Index Rebuild Rob had mentioned was the resolution.

Spoke to soon. The issue continues. Have just lodged new error report. I have also tried rebuild of index and removal of preferences.xml, but to no avail. Error comment is "Wrapper objection found within list".

We had to force the index to be rebuilt since we changed the rules for names (minimum length of 2 and new characters treated as part of the name). So it appears the rebuild fixed that problem.

The issue with the "wrapper object not found" is completely different. We will investigate shortly. That issue should apply to a single topic, so you should be able to work within RW on everything else. Just avoid that topic for now. If you can't launch because that topic is active in a tab, see my suggestion up-thread for deleting local preferences. That should get you operational on everything else until we get the current issue resolved.

 

[Decapus]

The new update didn't solve my problem. I also selected the delete preferences, and RW still crashes. Please tell me that you can fix this problem, as i am beginning to get very nervous.

 

[Decapus]

The issue is that the one topic is messed up, as you've determined. We're adding a way to work around this type of problem in tonight's release. Once this release goes out, get it, then go to the Tools tab of the Launch Window. Select the new Delete Preferences option and choose the realm that's crashing. Then you can load the realm and avoid the problematic topic.

Of course, we've hopefully fixed this issue, so the topic will be fine. If not, the above will get you into your realm until we get the bug fixed.

The new update didn't solve my problem. I also selected the delete preferences, and RW still crashes. Please tell me that you can fix this problem, as i am beginning to get very nervous.

Note: I spoke too early. After this post i rebooted the computer and now i can get into my realm, but Realm Works still crashes when i try opening the corrupted topic.

 

[rob]

The new update didn't solve my problem. I also selected the delete preferences, and RW still crashes. Please tell me that you can fix this problem, as i am beginning to get very nervous.

Note: I spoke too early. After this post i rebooted the computer and now i can get into my realm, but Realm Works still crashes when i try opening the corrupted topic.

So we're down to a single topic that crashes when loaded, which is a marked improvement. As long as you've submitted the crash reports for this problem, we'll be investigating it and working to get it resolved.

 

[Decapus]

So we're down to a single topic that crashes when loaded, which is a marked improvement. As long as you've submitted the crash reports for this problem, we'll be investigating it and working to get it resolved.

I did submit a crash report

 

[Strategon]

Rob, do you guys look at the crash logs that get sent via email, or would you rather we post detailed information here on the boards? I've probably sent 50 or so with a note attached to each crash log.

 

[rob]

Rob, do you guys look at the crash logs that get sent via email, or would you rather we post detailed information here on the boards? I've probably sent 50 or so with a note attached to each crash log.

The crash reports are our primary diagnostic tool for fixing the bugs that users have uncovered. If you've included detailed notes with those reports, that's immensely helpful.

The crash reports all go to one person on this end. He goes through them and forwards them to the person whose code appears to be involved with the problem. I'm NOT that point person, so I don't know any details about bugs that get reported here but haven't been forwarded to me. I simply do my best to help out with the details provided here.

As I've outlined in other threads, we've prioritized bugs based on the number of users impacted thus far, along with the perceived severity of the bugs. We often can't tell whether a particular crash is stopping a user in his tracks on everything or affecting a single topic that can be worked around temporarily, so we take our best guess.

We're now focused on bugs that are impacting only a small number of users (typically only one or two). It's quite possible that some of these bugs are different manifestations of the same underlying issue that's affecting multiple users, but we can't divine that information from the crash reports. If User1 crashes at point #1 and User2 crashes at point #2, they will appear to us as completely different issues. This ties back to my post up-thread where I describe how some bugs leaves landmine that manifest as differing crashes later. So that reality doesn't help us at all with our prioritization.

As other developers here on the forums will attest, finding and fixing bugs is two parts Sherlockian detective, one part creative inspiration, four parts dogged determination (maybe six?), and one part blind luck. It's a VERY time consuming process, and we're working through them as quickly as possible. And the more details we're given in the crash reports (or here on the forums), the more clues we have to help with the detective and inspiration components.

I hope that all makes sense!

 

[ShadowChemosh]

As other developers here on the forums will attest, finding and fixing bugs is two parts Sherlockian detective, one part creative inspiration, four parts dogged determination (maybe six?), and one part blind luck. It's a VERY time consuming process, and we're working through them as quickly as possible. And the more details we're given in the crash reports (or here on the forums), the more clues we have to help with the detective and inspiration components.

And don't forget the fractured nature of the different operating systems that you have to deal with. People on here have every variation of windows from XP to 10 and that has to be causing additional problems.

I feel very bad you guys. At least all my applications run on a server with a single OS that I am in direct control of.

 

[Volrath]

I have updated to the current release (205) and had no crashes since then, so I did not create a bug report so far.
Since the update I had 2 game sessions including session preparation with my Pathfinder realm. I hope (?) that I can send you some useful reports when I continue entering content for my Shadowrun realm. If I am unable to produce any future crashes, that is fine too

 

[Asandir]

I've submitted a bunch of crash bugs tonight. All seem to be around linking to other topics that have either been previously created or were created via Ctrl Q process.

The big one that is affecting my other realm is it linked the entire paragraph and logging back in to it, automatically trying to save and crashes without giving me a chance to not link the item in the text.

 

[Lexin]

All seem to be around linking to other topics that have either been previously created or were created via Ctrl Q process.

I sent in a crash report around something similar. I'd been editing my realm, got to the end and then discovered that once I'd refused a link to its suggested topic, if I then tried to force a link to the proper topic it wouldn't have it and crashed. It did it repeatedly, but I only sent one crash report.

 

[cumber]

I'm getting a lot of crashes when link detection runs, to do with topics that contain the name of another topic. Like one topic about a character, another topic about a historical event centering Atkins that character (so their name appears in the event's title). Then when I write a timeline topic containing links to events in order, things get screwy unless I'm very careful.

I *think* what may be going on is to do with the underlying data storage inserting meta data around link text, identifying it as a link (or skid text that has already been ignored as a link). One of the failure modes I've seen is a lot of extra characters being inserted *around* the name-within-the-name, which looks like it could be such metadata.

So it seems like the presence of this extra data doesn't prevent link detection from finding the longer link, but does cause it to do something screwy. This often caused crashes when in later saved the topic.

So if the character's name was an auto accept link, the link is already there when the link detection dialog pops up for the longer name, and it either crashes our corrupts the link. If I "accept all instances" of an earlier detection of the character's name, same problem as if it was auto accept. If I've previously saved before the event topic existed (so the character's name is already linked and *possibly* even if I've ignored the character name link - less sure about the ignore car), same problem.

If I very carefully never have auto accept links and make sure only top save the event name text in the timeline article after I've saved the existence of the event topic, then I seem to be able to reliably avoid crashes or corrupted links. But it's easy to accidentally slip up.