Frequent crashes

panx has begun to crash so frequently that i cant continue to use it.

crashes occur while procedures are running, but also nearly every time i close a window.

i’m running os 10.12.1 on a macpro5,1, quad-core intel xeon, 2.8 ghz.
i just replaced the hard drive, which was failing, and all the ram (8 gb).
the drive is 1 tb, c. 45% used.
the crashes are actually worse since the hardware upgrades.

i reinstalled the os about 3 weeks ago; i reinstalled panx today.
no help.

re memory usage, kernel_task uses c. 750 mb, which may or may not be kind of high. opinion is divided.
panx with no files open uses c. 75 mb.
it may be relevant that i always have a file open that has virtually no data but is full of procedures that are farcalled by other files and that initializes several global variables. this file, c. 1.4 mb, used to be an autoload in the halcyon days of pan6. it is essential to my operation. with just this file open, panx uses c. 105 mb.

i stepped up conversion to panx because pan6 performance was suffering under os 10.12. it wasnt easy, but i was managing. however the frequency of crashes spiked yesterday and has become insufferable today.

i’d be happy to entertain any suggestions. i have to make this work.

As I think I’ve mentioned before, Panorama X logs crashes to our servers. There’s no data logged, just the fact that a crash occurred. So I checked the logs, and over the past 24 hours, @samrutherford has crashed at over 60 times the rate of other users. In fact, during that period you have more than twice as many crashes as all other Panorama X users combined. No wonder you are frustrated!! That fact in itself doesn’t help you, but it does indicate that there is something going on that is somewhat unique to your system. Whether it is something about your hardware, your OS, or the way you are using Panorama, I don’t know.

A while ago @BruceDeB reported crashes when closing a window, but last time I checked with him the problem had gone away. I have not been able to duplicate this problem on 10.9.5, 10.10.5, or 10.12.2 systems. I do not have a 10.12.1 system to test on, but it is possible that there is an Apple bug in that version that might be causing this. Apple has not officially released 10.12.2, but you might want to consider installing the beta.

panx uses c. 105 mb

I’m not sure what “c.” means, but 105 mb usage is quite lite.

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Is there any way I can look up my own crash history? There are days when I am either crashing or hanging to the extent that I just give up for the day. Not quite ready to abandon it entirely.

Actually, I had gone away, not the problem. But we had determined that it was not a system problem, but an account problem.

C. probably means circa.

Crash logs are usually available in Console.

I am still away from home and have not had the opportunity to test anything. I will return tomorrow but may not be able to look at anything for a while.

I’ve been having continual crashes. Seems to happen when I have two databases open at the same time. When one crashes, the other database also freezes and I need to force quit. Most of the time I’ll need to restart the computer in order to have panoX working again, though if I open both files again, pano usually crashes again fairly soon.

What OS are you using Eric? There have been lots of problems with Sierra 10.12.1.

I’m using 10.11.5

Then it’s not the OS.

Is there always a common database when two opened ones crash or does it happen with any two databases?

So far these are the only two databases that I’ve converted.

Do they both have a .Initialize procedure? if so send them (or one if only one) to the forum.

Try the following:
Create a new PanX database. Open d/b A of your pair. Does PanX crash?

Repeat with d/b B of your pair.

Try importing another d/b from Pan6 and repeat the above.

What does that mean? Databases don’t crash, applications do. I don’t understand what it would mean that “one database crashes”. If there is a crash, the whole program stops.

Also, it sounds like you are experiencing some sort of freeze rather than a crash per-se. Have you looked at Activity Monitor? Is Panorama X using a lot of CPU usage?

Most of the time I’ll need to restart the computer in order to have panoX working again

Wow – I’ve never heard of any reports of having to restart the computer to get Panorama X working again. In 4 years of using it myself for thousands of hours, that has never happened once. OS X really isolates applications from the OS and each other so restarting should almost never be necessary. I often go weeks without a restart, even though I am doing software development on the machine (that was definitely not true back in the MacOS 9 days and before).

I have recently (in the last 3-4 months) experienced an issue where the Command-View menu trick to open the ‘Window Location’ window does not work. The result of attempting to use the View menu to open an additional window only results in the immediate GoForm type of result of getting the current window replaced by the window that I am attempting to open additionally.

Only a restart of the computer fixes this. Quitting and Restarting Panorama does not fix this.

Robert Ameeti
(949) 422-6866

I have something similar with one form window which is long and thin (used as a simulated tool bar) that will cause the next window to open on top of it the same size. If it is a procedure window it will have half of the top of first line of code missing and it can not be scrolled or resized into full view. If I resize and close that procedure window and then reopen it from the View menu it will then appear full normal size without the decapitated first line of code. It seems to happen after moving the simulated tool bar window using zoomwindowrectangle.

Actually I meant the application freezes. some of the time when restarting the application, it’s still frozen so I’ve restarted the computer. With the one file open pans is using 32 KB, and stays the same with the second file open. Whoops, it just jumped to 556 KB, now 1.6 MB, just doing sorts, now 2.1 mb.

Let me add my experience. A couple of days ago Pan X froze (beach ball) and my entire computer locked up, utterly unresponsive as the ball spun, and I had to lean on the power button to shut it down. That exact situation is rare, but having to force quit Pan due to freeze happens many times a day, most days. No pattern; yesterday I just clicked on File > Open and that was the end, not asking for anything exotic and it never reached the dialog. Also having Pan just disappear (crash) is frequent. The lack of stability, with no clear reason, is troubling.

We manufacture and sell a range of equipment, and we redesigned a couple of our most popular products in June of 2015. After much rigorous testing, and “beta” testing by some of our customers, we released them to the world. And the world hated them, because they were unreliable in a whole range of ways. Ways we could never have encountered because we don’t use the product the way our customers do, we just engineer and test them according to long established standards. A year and a half later we finally have squashed all the bugs (knock wood). The point being, a developer’s testing environment is not the same as a user’s environment, and judgment as to workability remains incomplete. I would expect Jim’s intense work with Pan X would reveal most of the problems, but obviously not all of them.

I wish I had the magic solution to all this. But the fact is Pan X is very unstable in certain (unspecified) environments.

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This sounds like a Panorama 6 thing, not Panorama X, correct? I’m only mentioning since this is a Panorama X thread so it seemed like this should be clarified.

Sorry but yes, this has been a Pano 6 experience.

Robert Ameeti

I, too, have experienced spinning beachballs and application quits while using PanX. However, I have never had to restart my computer to bring up PanX again. Unfortunately, my experiences do not exactly match anything described above.

Here is something I have noticed recently on my computer that may be able to be replicated on other computers: I have gotten the spinning beachball numerous times, using widely different databases, while scrolling through the Automatic Form Construction instruction under the Help menu.

Do this: Open up any PanX database. Under the Help menu, select Panorama X Help. Then select “Automatic Form Construction” from the list of terms and topics. When the instruction is present, scroll down using your finger on the mouse (not the scroll bar). Sooner or later (probably later) the spinning beachball will appear.

This first occurred, while reading the instruction, with a newly imported database of 33,788 records open. I thought the number of records may be causing PanX to slow down while scrolling over the animated GIFs; but, this does not seem to be the case. I have gotten the spinning beachball to appear using six different databases of varying sizes.

The spinning beachball has also appeared with no databases open. This is the “No Windows” condition described elsewhere. Interestingly, the ball can easily be stopped by moving your cursor over the PanX icon in the dock.

In situations with a database open, the ball can usually be stopped by clicking - several times - on the desktop and/or the data sheet (if open). If that fails, a Force Quit may be necessary.

This all happened on an iMac running OS X Yosemite, version 10.10.5. with the latest version of Pan X.

I frequently get the beachball when scrolling through the Help file (which is where I spend most of my time lately). I move the mouse over the Dock, back over the file, the ball has gone and the scrolling action I initiated is carried out. Weird huh? I’d be interested to know if this works for other users in other files.

after i installed system 10.12.2 build 16C67, panx became moderately stable.
even better pan6 works just fine again.