Crashes in 1.7.449

[EmanueleDM]

Often when processing full resolution images from my canon 100D (5184 x 3456) StarTools crashes
I've had several crashes processing full resolution images from my canon 100D (5184x3456). Here are some examples of crash circumstances:
- repeatedly clicking "zoom out" quickly in the mask editor for the wipe module
- during wipe itself
- yesterday in the super structure module, clicking the "isolate" preset
- during final noise reduction

I suspect this has more to do with the limited power of my laptop than with the program itself, because I cannot remember any of this happening on binned images. Now that I have a better lens I would like to take advantage of the full resolution of the image though.

I am running Fedora 33 on a laptop that has an Intel i5 8250U, 8GB of RAM and Intel integrated graphics.

[admin]

Hi,

Unfortunately you (and me!) are the victim of the very poor Intel iGPU driver support on Linux.
I and @alacant have the exact same problem on our Linux distros.

I have had some success stabilising my machine by switching acceleration from SNA to the ancient UXA method (see here), but that is giving me other headaches (choppy video for example).

If you run into this issue, I have no other solution than to run the non-GPU accelerate version, which may not perform that much worse than the GPU accelerated version; the Intel iGPUs are rather underpowered to begin with.

If you are observing the same instabilities on the non-GPU accelerated version, please do let me know however!

[EmanueleDM]

I forgot to mention that I've encountered this behaviour in the regular version of ST, not the GPU accelerated one!

[admin]

I forgot to mention that I've encountered this behaviour in the regular version of ST, not the GPU accelerated one!

Eek!

That's not good! (and not something that's been reported before). Is there anything in the kernel ring buffer when the crashes happen?
Have you got sufficient memory virtual memory allocated and have you got sufficient disk space in your /tmp/ folder?

Do other CPU-heavy applications show similar instabilities?

[EmanueleDM]

Eek!

That's not good! (and not something that's been reported before). Is there anything in the kernel ring buffer when the crashes happen?
Have you got sufficient memory virtual memory allocated and have you got sufficient disk space in your /tmp/ folder?

Do other CPU-heavy applications show similar instabilities?

Nothing relevant to startools shows up in dmesg. Virtual memory and the /tmp/ folder should be fine. Any other information I can provide? Two crashes I have been able to replicate consistently this morning:
- rapidly zooming out in the mask editor in the wipe module
- launching the super structure module and setting it to "Isolate", the indicator spins for a few minutes and then the program crashes

The only other CPU-heavy software I use is Wolfram Mathematica, I haven't experienced any crashes when stress testing with heavy number crunching.

Crashes aside processing with this machine is sleep inducing, I am thinking of upgrading to a more powerful laptop to save time. What should I be looking for? For sure a dedicated GPU (something like a gtx 1050?), would I also benefit from more RAM and an i7 over an i5?

As a cheaper alternative to a new laptop, would a cloud desktop service like shadow work fine for startools?

Thank you

[admin]

Nothing relevant to startools shows up in dmesg. Virtual memory and the /tmp/ folder should be fine. Any other information I can provide? Two crashes I have been able to replicate consistently this morning:
- rapidly zooming out in the mask editor in the wipe module
- launching the super structure module and setting it to "Isolate", the indicator spins for a few minutes and then the program crashes

I'm not having any luck reproducing this. However, I just noticed that this topic is about crashes in 1.7.449 (which is a beta version), while the final 1.7 release was 1.7.455 with two maintenance release since. Beta versions are - for obvious reasons - not supported.

Could you please see if any of the release versions exhibit the same sort of behavior? (and kindly make sure you update all files and not just the executables)

I am thinking of upgrading to a more powerful laptop to save time. What should I be looking for? For sure a dedicated GPU (something like a gtx 1050?), would I also benefit from more RAM and an i7 over an i5?
As a cheaper alternative to a new laptop, would a cloud desktop service like shadow work fine for startools?

If portability and budget are a consideration, now is a fairly good time to purchase a "gaming" laptop based on a Ryzen 4000 series processor (the 5000 series is being launched) and a GTX 16xx based GPU (the RTX 3000 series is being launched). These 6 and 8-core machines are very capable and are now being discontinued - you should hopefully be able to find them at discounted prices from various manufacturers (places like the official Dell Outlet sometimes has great deals). I would not recommend Intel CPUs at the moment due to poor performance and thermals, and high prices. 16GB RAM would be the minimum I'd recommend.

I have never tried a cloud desktop service with StarTools; there should be no reason StarTools would not work over a remote connection however.

Hope this helps!

[EmanueleDM]

I'm not having any luck reproducing this. However, I just noticed that this topic is about crashes in 1.7.449 (which is a beta version), while the final 1.7 release was 1.7.455 with two maintenance release since. Beta versions are - for obvious reasons - not supported.

Could you please see if any of the release versions exhibit the same sort of behavior? (and kindly make sure you update all files and not just the executables)

I downloaded 1.7.455 and I can replicate the "wipe mask crash": launch the wipe module, click on "mask", click "invert" and zoom out. I don't know if it's useful but here is what's recorded by journalctl.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OkugUc ... sp=sharing

If portability and budget are a consideration, now is a fairly good time to purchase a "gaming" laptop based on a Ryzen 4000 series processor (the 5000 series is being launched) and a GTX 16xx based GPU (the RTX 3000 series is being launched). These 6 and 8-core machines are very capable and are now being discontinued - you should hopefully be able to find them at discounted prices from various manufacturers (places like the official Dell Outlet sometimes has great deals). I would not recommend Intel CPUs at the moment due to poor performance and thermals, and high prices. 16GB RAM would be the minimum I'd recommend.

I have never tried a cloud desktop service with StarTools; there should be no reason StarTools would not work over a remote connection however.

Hope this helps!

Useful information, thank you.

[admin]

Thank you. Try as I might, I cannot replicate the crash (or any of the other crashes) on any of my Linux machines.
Given it only happens on large datasets and your system only comes with 8GB of physical memory, at first glance it appears to be related to memory usage.
What does the 'free' command output?

[EmanueleDM]

The output of free is:

Screenshot from 2021-02-18 22-07-38.png (8.76 KiB) Viewed 6554 times

Tomorrow I will try it on another linux machine and see if I can replicate, but as you say I suspect that it has to do with my laptop.

[admin]

The output of free is:
Screenshot from 2021-02-18 22-07-38.png

Tomorrow I will try it on another linux machine and see if I can replicate, but as you say I suspect that it has to do with my laptop.

Thank you, please let me know the results.

However, from the very helpful screenshot you attached, it appears your machine makes heavy use of the swap memory, while the configured 11GB is really rather low. In modern distros, you should be able to configure your system so that it allocates disk space dynamically as needed (much like Windows does). Have a look at setting up a utility called "swapspace".