[RC3] [OS X 10.8] Crash when closing image windows

[fhuet1]

Hi,
I prefer posting that here instead on the Bugs section, as I have a lot of them.

I'm running Pix on a iMac 10.8 Mountain Lion OSX, and it's completely unusable.
Every time I close an auxiliary window (star mask, cloned windows, etc) I have to cross fingers hoping the program is not crashing. Mainly if has been used in a PixelMath operation (addition or subtraction, no more).

I don't know what to do except going back to 1.7 release.

Thanks for your help,
Fernando

DP: I'm using Pixinsight 1.8 RC3:

* Scripting resources updated.
42 of 42 module(s) installed.

Processing script file: /Applications/PixInsight.app/Contents/MacOS/startup.scp

PixInsight Core 01.08.00.0963 RC3 Ripley (x86_64)
Copyright (C) 2003-2013 Pleiades Astrophoto
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to PixInsight. Started 2013-feb-16 11:44:14 J2456339.98906 UTC

* Parallel processing enabled: Using 2 logical processors.
* Thread CPU affinity control enabled.
* PSM AutoSave enabled. Auto-save period: 30 seconds.

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Fernando,

This is very strange to say the least. Somebody else has seen anything like this?

Something that you could try is resetting the whole PI configuration, although I doubt this would change the catastrophe you're describing. Anyway, this is PI's Ctrl backdoor: Select the PixInsight application by clicking with the mouse, right click, press the Ctrl key, and select Run. Answer yes to the confirmation dialog box.

I see you're running PI on a dual core processor, which is probably a Core i5. How much RAM does your machine have?

[fhuet1]

Hi Juan,
I have Pix installed on two Macs, both of them with OSX 10.8:
iMAc 2,8 ghz Core 2 duo - 4 Gb ram
Macbook Air i5 - 4 Gb ram

I have tried what you said. It erases the previous configuration. But on both computers I have the same issues.

For example:
For reducing star size:

We need a star contour mask:
- Clone the image we want to reduce stars size
- On the cloned image: HDR Multitransform: Layers:3, Overdrive:0.5
- Star Mask: Threshold:0.15; Scale:5; Growth y Small:0; Comp: 2; Smooth: 6; Midtones: 0.25 and CONTOURS activated

We apply the mask to the original image.
- MORPHOLOGICAL TRANSFORM. Morphological selection; Selection: 0.15; Circular 5 elements

Once reduced the size, if I close the cloned image, Pixinsight crashes. In both computers.

Doing the same thing on Pixinsight 1.7, there is no problem at all.

I don't know if it's a Ram or processor issue.
If you want to see the problem directly with Teamviewer, my computer is yours!!
Or indeed I can go to Pobla!! XDD
Fernando

[Alejandro Tombolini]

Hi Fernando and Juan. If it hepls, I can't reproduce it in Linux 64 - PI 1.8RC3
Saludos. Alejandro.

[Sean]

I'll try this on my iMac with OSX 10.8 in the next day or so and report back. So far no problems running Ripley but I haven't tried this exact sequence.

Sean

[Gary]

Hi all tried this on Windows 8 64bit  PI 1.8RC3 didnt crash.

Gary

[fhuet1]

Hi Juan,
I have just completely removed the Pixinsight application and all the other config and library files with "AppCleaner" (a MacOSX application for uninstalling programs).

I have downloaded again the Pix 1.8 application and installed with all the updates.

I made the same previously described actions, and has crashed again. This action is only an example, it happens a lot, always closing an auxiliary window, for example in PixelMath.

I attach the Apple Crash Report, if it's useful to you.

The most estrange thing is that it happens on both computers. Could it be related to the Spanish OSX language?
Maybe english users don't have the same issue?
Thx
Fernando

[Sean]

Yes, this causes a complete PI crash for me as well, following the same steps.

PI 1.8 RC3
Mac OSX 10.8.2
iMac with 12GB RAM

I'll try to narrow it down and see if I can isolate the crash further.

Sean

[Sean]

I can't seem to narrow this down any further - the crash seems to require all of the steps in Fernando's post, and it always happens on closing the cloned image. I tried leaving out the HDR transform, the Morphological Transform, the Star Mask, etc, but the only crash occurred with all 3, at least for me.

BTW, works fine in PI 1.7 on my iMac.

Sean

[fhuet1]

Thank you Sean!
At least I can discard a problem only on my computer.

I posted also another action that causes Pix to crash in a previous post.
Could you try it Sean? May be it's also useful to Juan and company.

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=5159.0

Thx again
Fernando

[Juan Conejero]

Definitely, this looks like a problem specific to Mac OS X 10.8.2. After hours of testing hard, I am unable to reproduce it on Mac OS X 10.6.8. Unfortunately, I won't have a Mountain Lion machine available before the first half of March (still waiting for a new machine to arrive, and I cannot touch our current Mac workstation now).

There's something that concerns me very especially:

Every time I close an auxiliary window (star mask, cloned windows, etc) I have to cross fingers hoping the program is not crashing.

Does this mean that PI crashes also when you close top-level tool windows, and not only image windows? Sean, does this happen also to you?

Despite that, I have made some changes in RC4 to improve robustness of the core application in aspects that could be related to this problem. Sean, could you post a crash report, just to see if we can find correlations with Fernando's report.

Fernando, I don't discard the possibility of a TeamViewer session. Thank you for the offer.

I hope this problem will be fixed in RC4. Fingers crossed...

[fhuet1]

Does this mean that PI crashes also when you close top-level tool windows, and not only image windows? Sean, does this happen also to you?

Hi Juan,

I have revised and tried to remember the crashes situations, and to be precise, the crashes are not on closing what you refer as "top-level tool windows". It happens on closing cloned images or Extracted Luminance images (I don't know if luminance is a tool or a image... )

I can produce a crash doing simply the next (very easy to reproduce for anyone):

For working on great structures, I use luminance previously and do some ATW and PixelMath actions, and after that a LRGB composition.

On an Image:
- Extract Luminance
- Clone Luminance.
- On the cloned luminance: ATW 6 wavelets, taking out R: That gives a stars only luminance.
- PixelMath (Luminance - Cloned Luminance) no rescaling, applied over original Luminance.
- Exponential Transformation, f.ex. +2.0.
- PixelMath (Luminance + Cloned Luminance) rescaling applied over original Luminance.

Now, if you close the Cloned Luminance window, Pix crashes.

Juan, I'm from Valencia, so if you ever want to see directly the process, let me know.
Thx
Fernando

[Josh Lake]

I just tried this exact routine on two images and got no crash. I'm on Mountain Lion, MBP Retina.

Fernando, does the crash happen immediately? Or does the 'Unsaved pixel data will be lost' dialog pop up?

[fhuet1]

It's after the 'Unsaved pixel data will be lost' dialog pop up.
It closes the desired window, and the cross cursor hangs, and Pix crashes.
If you want, I can upload a video to dropbox.
Fernando

[Josh Lake]

Hmm, so something happens in conjunction with the save box, then. Have you tried saving it? I assume you generally just close it without saving. A video might demonstrate the problem most clearly, but I'm beginning to suspect that it's something with your machine or preferences, not a program-wide issue.