Crashing in macOS X High Sierra Beta v.5 (update: fixed in beta v.6)

I am saddened to report that my Gradebook written from the ground up in PanX, a beautiful piece of work and LARGE due to all the “beautiful” graphics (almost 650MB when running) is STILL CRASHING every time I try to open the spreadsheet view… it also crashes when I call statements like FIELD DUMMY FILL “”. I’m running macOS X High Sierra Beta v.5 (with HFS+ not APFS) alongside the latest version of PanX.

No one seems to know why it crashes. I’ve been sending crash reports to Apple, which I assume are forwarded to Provue, since this behavior first began a few months ago with the release of High Sierra. Still, no joy… Which is a shame because I’ve enjoyed creating my One Gradebook to Rule Them All, and I was “this close” to finishing it. Until I hear that there’s a fix… or at least some explanation… I’m done.

I’m retired, and I was creating this last iteration of my Gradebook just to amuse myself and keep my mind sharp. Now I’ll just stick to taking care of the dogs and trying to avoid political discussions. I figure that senility may be just around the corner, but the good news is that my PanX subscription only has 1 month left on it anyway… no need to renew it if I can’t get the damn thing to run the Gradebook I designed. Let me know if you come up with an answer.

Apple does not forward reports to ProVUE, or any other developer, as far as I know.

Panorama does collect crash reports on it’s own. Our database shows that you have experienced 7 crashes this month, the most recent being tonight at 8PM California time. The crash dump does show that the crash occurred when opening the data sheet, as you reported.

In the past month you have apparently used six different versions of High Sierra, I guess you are regularly updating to beta versions as soon as they come out. Perhaps not the best way to have a stable, reliable system.

If you are willing to send me this file, I would be happy to try it and see if I can duplicate the problem. Crash reports are great but it is usually impossible to actually fix a problem from just a crash report. But if there is a reliable way to cause a crash, which it sounds like there is, then it is often possible to track down the problem.

I’ll be happy to send you a copy of my Gradebook, and the fonts that it uses that may not be installed on your Mac.

Is there an email address you’d like it sent to…?

You can send it to the support address on the provue.com web site.

  1. Your gradebook runs fine on my desktop running Sierra 10.12.6.
  2. It seems to run ok on my laptop running High Sierra 10.13.1; I worried for a while because after playing with it a bit I closed the file without saving changes and it took a long while to close; spinning rainbow wheel for maybe 5 minutes. But eventually it did close. I had no trouble opening the data sheet. I didn’t try the Field Dummy Fill statement yet.

So I’d say from my own experience that there is indeed something introduced in High Sierra that’s causing a bit of a problem; none of my DB’s seem to have similar problems under High Sierra, but they’re not nearly as involved as yours…

As I mentioned, the problem appeared with High Sierra beta 3… it was fine before that.

What I want is for Apple or ProVUE or both to be aware of the conflict and fix it… for everyone’s sake, before it turns up in the next macOS update and screws people over.

:innocent:

By the way, thanks for all your efforts… I appreciate your help.

GOOD NEWS!

For some reason, my GradeBook database and PanX are now—once again—doing what they’re supposed to. I always check after Apple releases a new beta update for macOS High Sierra. And to my delight, after updating to Beta 6 today, everything is working as Rhea intended.

So, while the cause, remains undetermined, the problem is solved. Now I can get back to work on the One GradeBook to Rule Them All…

Funny story: you know the popup that encouraged me to update my subscription because I only had one month left that appeared automatically when I quit PanX…? When I clicked on the button to re-up, PanX crashed, so maybe not quite EVERYTHING is fixed… I had to do it the hard way, but I did pay for another year of Fun with PanoramaX.

If you want a stable experience, perhaps you might consider not installing every macOS beta that comes along, unless you have a special reason for doing so. The whole reason why beta versions are not automatically offered to everyone is because they might contain more than their share of unexpected problems.