ST keeps crashing

[decay]

Hi Dick,

as a last resort (after having excluded all the other points Ivo mentioned), you could try to run ST inside of a virtual Linux machine.

I did this recently in order to do a side-by-side comparison of ST8 and ST9 SVDecon modules and it worked surprisingly good, even on my low-end Windows notebook. I guess on your high-end system performance would be more than sufficient.

This idea may sound strange, but if this is an issue of odd driver or other software constellations, the VM would be an abstraction layer between ST and your Windows system. Plus, you would use the Linux version of ST which uses different underlying OS API functions.

It's quite easy to install for example Oracle VM Virtualbox. As VM guest OS you could download a ready-to-play VM linux image for example from osboxes.org. No need to install guest OS by yourself. Depending on how familiar you are with such things it may not be to much effort at all and worth a try.

Best regards, Dietmar.

[sjako65]

Well, I spent Xmas holidays trying to sort out the weird problem.

Installed ST on an old laptop, runs perfectly, never a hang up..

I reinstalled my windows 10 Pro, removed all startup programs, and until now it runs as smooth as it always did in the past.

No clue to whatever was the cause of this. A bad update in Win10, unknown behavior of a startup program like acronis Image. I don't know but it runs again!

I can now go back to ST and leave PI for what it is..

[admin]

Great to hear you got it sorted! Hope you had a good Christmas regardless.

[Melty]

Hi,

I thought of posting here, rather than creating a new thread.

I also seem to be suffering from random crashes to desktop since I switched to 1.9. Mostly seems to be with large files.

I've a stretched 1.3GB Mosaic TIFF i'd like to work on, but it is to the most part unworkable with ST.

I can reverse stretch, Bin 50% and enable Tracking, but cannot Crop, Wipe or do anything else meaningful without ST failing.

Anything else I can do?

ST v1.9.536

AMD 5700x
48GB DDR4
GTX 1050

Thanks

[admin]

Hi,

I thought of posting here, rather than creating a new thread.

I also seem to be suffering from random crashes to desktop since I switched to 1.9. Mostly seems to be with large files.

I've a stretched 1.3GB Mosaic TIFF i'd like to work on, but it is to the most part unworkable with ST.

I can reverse stretch, Bin 50% and enable Tracking, but cannot Crop, Wipe or do anything else meaningful without ST failing.

Anything else I can do?

ST v1.9.536

AMD 5700x
48GB DDR4
GTX 1050

Thanks

Hi, you are very likely running into the VRAM limitations of your GPU. The GTX 1050 almost exclusively comes with 2GB of VRAM, which will not nearly be enough to process a large mosaic.

I would recommend switching to the CPU-only version and see if that resolves the issues.

Do let us know how you go!

[Melty]

Hi Ivo,

Well I just reverted back to the old non-GPU version and when I attempted to mask out the irregular gaps around the edge of my mosaic (it's not rectangular) in the Wipe module, the app still crashed.

Here's the log up to that point:

-----------------------------------------------------------
StarTools 1.9.536alpha
Sat Jan 14 11:28:29 2023
-----------------------------------------------------------
File loaded [B:\MOSAIC\2nd TRY\New folder\Combined_All.tif].
Image size is 16319 x 14338
---
Type of Data: Non-linear sRGB source
--- RoI Optimized Develop
Parameter [Ignore Fine Detail <] set to [6.0 px]
Parameter [Outside RoI Influence] set to [15 %]
Parameter [RoI X1] set to [0 px]
Parameter [RoI Y1] set to [0 px]
Parameter [RoI X2] set to [16319 px (-0)]
Parameter [RoI Y2] set to [14338 px (-0)]
Parameter [Detector Gamma] set to [1.00]
Parameter [Shadow Linearity] set to [50 %]
--- Crop
Parameter [X1] set to [1800 px]
Parameter [Y1] set to [14250 px]
Parameter [X2] set to [13701 px (-2618)]
Parameter [Y2] set to [1 px (-14337)]
Image size is 11901 x 14251
--- Bin
Parameter [Mode] set to [Integer Mean]
Parameter [Scale] set to [Scale 50.00% / +2.00 bits / +1.00x SNR Improvement]
Image size is 5950 x 7125

Regards

[admin]

Hi Ivo,

Well I just reverted back to the old non-GPU version and when I attempted to mask out the irregular gaps around the edge of my mosaic (it's not rectangular) in the Wipe module, the app still crashed.

Here's the log up to that point:

-----------------------------------------------------------
StarTools 1.9.536alpha
Sat Jan 14 11:28:29 2023
-----------------------------------------------------------
File loaded [B:\MOSAIC\2nd TRY\New folder\Combined_All.tif].
Image size is 16319 x 14338
---
Type of Data: Non-linear sRGB source
--- RoI Optimized Develop
Parameter [Ignore Fine Detail <] set to [6.0 px]
Parameter [Outside RoI Influence] set to [15 %]
Parameter [RoI X1] set to [0 px]
Parameter [RoI Y1] set to [0 px]
Parameter [RoI X2] set to [16319 px (-0)]
Parameter [RoI Y2] set to [14338 px (-0)]
Parameter [Detector Gamma] set to [1.00]
Parameter [Shadow Linearity] set to [50 %]
--- Crop
Parameter [X1] set to [1800 px]
Parameter [Y1] set to [14250 px]
Parameter [X2] set to [13701 px (-2618)]
Parameter [Y2] set to [1 px (-14337)]
Image size is 11901 x 14251
--- Bin
Parameter [Mode] set to [Integer Mean]
Parameter [Scale] set to [Scale 50.00% / +2.00 bits / +1.00x SNR Improvement]
Image size is 5950 x 7125

Regards

Taking it from there, and assuming a Windows OS, can you confirm you have sufficient virtual memory allocated? (at least 2xphysical, so 96GB in your case)

Are there any other memory-hungry applications running at the same time?

Are you running StarTools from a drive that is formatted as NTFS? (FAT32 may not allow StarTools to create large enough Tracking files).

Can you confirm the drive you are running StarTools from has sufficient free space available?

What is the nature of the crash - does StarTools just disappear, or is there some sort of dialog?

Thank you,

[Mike in Rancho]

I threw my biggest files at 536 to try to crash it but couldn't. Not nearly as good a PC either. But, I did get a module going for so long I finally had to just cancel it, which was sort of odd.

These were 3 JWST files of over 14k x 8k resolution, 500MB ea, so 1.5GB total, composited. Unsure if mono files act the same way as using one big RGB file though?

Things took a while, but worked. OptiDev, Crop, Bin to 50, Wipe. So I canceled and undid the Bin and continued again at full resolution. The distro folder really does swell up, I think I ended up with more than 10GB of tracking files in there, several over 1.5GB in size.

My lame GTX 745 only has 4GB, but the graphics memory never seemed to be pressured very much.

The CPU, 32GB RAM, and GPU were all variously hitting 100% at times, sometimes extended -- I thought the machine might start steaming. HDR cranked a long time at 100%.

Things taking long was expected though, and the monitors always showed things happening. Until Denoise. After hitting next on the first screen, it just sat there with the progress thing spinning and that small window open against a black screen, never the image. In fact I''m not sure it ever changed to creating grain map? Can't recall. But, the monitors showed very little being actively used - CPU 1%, GPU 2%, SSD about the same. I came back 45 minutes later and it was still the same, so I canceled it.

What might ST have been doing then - unraveling the noise tracking from all the modules I went through? If some performance monitor had been jacked up at least I would have felt like it was busy working hard.

Not that I'm likely to process files this size in real life...

[admin]

What might ST have been doing then - unraveling the noise tracking from all the modules I went through? If some performance monitor had been jacked up at least I would have felt like it was busy working hard.

It is possible (rather likely) that the OpenCL driver silently crashed, while ST is still waiting for it to return it the data. I have seen this happen on older/low powered cards mostly of the Kepler generation (though yours seems to be newer Maxwell).

[Mike in Rancho]

It is possible (rather likely) that the OpenCL driver silently crashed, while ST is still waiting for it to return it the data. I have seen this happen on older/low powered cards mostly of the Kepler generation (though yours seems to be newer Maxwell).

Thanks Ivo. It's kind of an old low powered card anyway, even with a mild OC in Afterburner. I'd have replaced it, with GPU prices being better and plenty on the used market, but the CPU is getting long in the tooth also.

First time I've seen that behavior. Unsure if it was random or would replicate, but I don't have much need to process things at 14000x9000.