StarTools 1.9 preview

[admin]

Hi Derek,

Thanks for the extra info and testing. I'm still not having any luck replicating the issue, and a thorough valgrind didn't turn up anything untoward either...

What does the following command yield?

Code: Select all

swapon -s

How much space is free on the drive where your /tmp/ folder is located?

Thank you,

[Dereksc]

Hi Derek,

Thanks for the extra info and testing. I'm still not having any luck replicating the issue, and a thorough valgrind didn't turn up anything untoward either...

What does the following command yield?

Code: Select all

swapon -s

How much space is free on the drive where your /tmp/ folder is located?

Thank you,

Hello Ivo,

Here is the information you requested for my machine:

Screenshot_20230604_073715.png (71.96 KiB) Viewed 30723 times

Here is screenshot of system resources when Startools alpha552 is running. The crash point happens about 2/3rds the way along when memory usage suddenly drops:

Screenshot_20230604_070548.png (235.37 KiB) Viewed 30723 times

I don't see the system resources being exhausted, 32G RAM, 64G swap, 1T disk drive. It's very strange that alpha551 is OK and alpha552 is not. Is there any other module in Startools that I can run which may shed some extra light on the potential problem?
I understand that you can't replicate the problem on your Linux setup so I understand if we just put this issue to one side for now assuming it is a system specific issue with my machine but I am willing to run any tests that you want if you feel inclined to go further.

Best Regards

Derek

[decay]

Hi Derek & Ivo,

don't know, if it's helpful (probably not): I tried to replicate this issue on my virtual linux machine. SV Decon started up, mask generation passed successfully. Then, while running it crashed with 'out of memory'. So probably not the problem Derek encountered?

2023-06-04 20_30_57-mint [wird ausgeführt] - Oracle VM VirtualBox.jpg (14.92 KiB) Viewed 30713 times

But if in Derek's case the crash happens before or during star mask generation (?), this would at least show that Derek's problem does not show up on my system.

Best regards, Dietmar.

[Dereksc]

Hi Derek & Ivo,

don't know, if it's helpful (probably not): I tried to replicate this issue on my virtual linux machine. SV Decon started up, mask generation passed successfully. Then, while running it crashed with 'out of memory'. So probably not the problem Derek encountered?

2023-06-04 20_30_57-mint [wird ausgeführt] - Oracle VM VirtualBox.jpg

But if in Derek's case the crash happens before or during star mask generation (?), this would at least show that Derek's problem does not show up on my system.

Best regards, Dietmar.

Hallo Dietmar,
Thank you for trying to replicate my issue, that was thoughtful of you. In my case the crash happens before it does in your case. In "SVDecon mode of operation" as soon as I press "Deap space (stars available)" the system crashes (i.e. within 1 second). I wish I had a more explicit error message for Ivo but I just see a Segfault error. As you said at least it shows that my issue does not occur on your VM. Also it does not occur on Ivo's Linux box so it must be the configuration on my machine but why is alpha551 OK and alpha552 not OK? Also I have never had a problem with the stable StarTools versions. Computers ....argh
Best Regards
Derek

[Dereksc]

Hi Derek,

Thanks for the extra info and testing. I'm still not having any luck replicating the issue, and a thorough valgrind didn't turn up anything untoward either...

Hello Ivo,
I have finally tracked this issue down (at least on my system). As I mentioned previously the only file I have changed in the distro is the config file which I edited for alpha551 and copied to alpha552. If I use the original distro config file everything works well!
If I use my modified config file (that works with alpha551) ANY Auto mask process will cause StarTools to crash immediately. I hope this information is useful. I have attached my edited config file (that causes alpha552 to crash) below. The edit was to just increase UI text size.
Best Regards
Derek

# StarTools config file
#
# please note that all keys (e.g. the characters before the equals sign) should be lowercase

[UI Settings]

# UI language (change to "english" for English, "deutsch" for German, "esp" for Spanish)
ui_language=english
# large UI ("true", "false")
ui_large=true
# high DPI display ("true", "false")
ui_highdpi=true
# reduce blinking in UI for people sensitive to blinking ("true", "false")
ui_reduceblink=false

[GPU Acceleration Settings]

# OpenCL force CPU for older macOS devices ("true", "false")
opencl_forcecpu=false
# OpenCL device index for multi-GPU systems ("default" or number)
opencl_deviceindex=default
# OpenCL platform index for multi-GPU-vendor systems ("default" or number)
opencl_platformindex=default

[Location Preferences]

[admin]

Thanks for your sleuthing guys! It is much appreciated.

I just released a new version with a couple of fixes that may (or may not) have caused instabilities.

@Dereksc, does this solve the issue for you?

[Dereksc]

Thanks for your sleuthing guys! It is much appreciated.

I just released a new version with a couple of fixes that may (or may not) have caused instabilities.

@Dereksc, does this solve the issue for you?

Hello Ivo,
Thank you for working on the new alpha release. I just downloaded and tried alpha554. Unfortunately I have the same issue as alpha552 i.e. large text UI causes Auto Mask to crash StarTools immediately. At least I can work around the problem by using the smaller text so it is not a show stopper for me.

Best Regards

Derek

[Mike in Rancho]

Nice job, Derek.

Now that we have a culprit, I can confirm the same in Windows, v552 GPU. I already run hidpi = true in my config, so just altered that to also add largeui = true and saved. Hit an Auto Mask (in Wipe, because that's where I was at the beginning, but likely of no matter) and crashed out within a second or two.

Re-edited config back to my normal largeui = false and an Auto Mask worked fine.

[Dereksc]

Nice job, Derek.

Now that we have a culprit, I can confirm the same in Windows, v552 GPU. I already run hidpi = true in my config, so just altered that to also add largeui = true and saved. Hit an Auto Mask (in Wipe, because that's where I was at the beginning, but likely of no matter) and crashed out within a second or two.

Re-edited config back to my normal largeui = false and an Auto Mask worked fine.

Hi Mike,
Thanks for trying out that setting on your machine and confirming the issue - different machine and operating system so hopefully Ivo can replicate it. I would imagine most people don't change that setting but I like the larger text since it can be a challenge for me reading the smaller text on my monitor. Anyway at least we know how to avoid the issue for now.

Still "June gloom" here and I still haven't imaged the SN in M101 catching up on my sleep though

Regards

Derek

[hixx]

Hi All,
I just tried to replicate Derek's crash on MacOs with Alpha 554, but was not successful. Both options LargeUI=true and highdpi=true worked well without crash and created a star mask when hitting the "AutoMask - "Stars option.
I have not tried both setting= true, though. Probably this does not help Derek, but might hint to what is different in the Linux & Windows versions....

Clear skies,
Jochen