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Numerous, regular crashes (v9.5.7)


Stuart Robertson

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Not sure what is causing this, but I've had Accordance crash on me numerous times in the last 2 days, with 7 crashes so far this evening. I haven't taken the time to post about this in the last 2 days, but tonight's spate of crashes is exceptionally frustrating (enough to push me to take the precious time and report the crashes).

 

Crashes occur most often when I apply a highlight to text. I've had 3 crashes while highlighting text in the ESV, and 4 crashes while highlighting text in Douglas Moo's Pillar NT commentary on James.

 

Not every crash shows the "Accordance quit unexpectedly" dialog box -- sometimes Accordance hangs for a second or two (a "spinning pizza" shows up) and then silently vanishes.

 

I've now taken to saving (tedious as it is) a named session and regularly saving (overwriting the same session file) so that Accordance remembers where I was, etc... otherwise after reopening after a crash the session is not properly restored.

 

Not sure if it's any help but I've attached the crash report (from a recent crash that occurred while highlighting).

 

I cannot recall exactly when this started, but I think it was either after upgrading to v9.5.6 or v9.5.7.

Accordance crash - 20120316.0858.txt

post-31282-0-59097600-1332040522_thumb.png

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Thanks for the report. I think that your highlight file may be corrupt. Can you try going to a backup from before this started? You would lose your intervening work, but please try and see if that stops the crashes. Any file that gets written to may get corrupted.

 

You will find the actual files in user/Documents/Accordance files/Highlights.

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What causes a highlight file to become "corrupted"? The crashes are intermittent (that is, I can add highlights for quite a while before Accordance will crash)...

 

I have a fairly regular Time Machine backup and could revert to an older copy of my highlights. But I'd rather not, for two reasons.

 

Firstly, I would lose valuable markups

Secondly, reverting is not a permanent solution -- what assurance do I have that something will not become "corrupted" in future? How do I even know that something is corrupted, given the intermittent nature of the crashes? How do I know which highlights are the problem?

 

This discussion does raise a concern, however. One of the primary reasons why I switched Logos to Accordance was that Logos on numerous occasions lost my highlighting and user notes. While Accordance is vastly superior to Logos in terms of stability, speed, etc it will be a great blow if the same "I can't trust this program with my data" feeling has to be borne daily with Accordance too. I ultimately gave up on Logos because of that "I can't trust this program to work" feeling.

 

Is there a better solution to this than simply "go back to a backup"? Does Accordance tech staff have any tools that can "verify" the correctness of (and detect "corruptions" in) highlighting files? If so, can these tools be made available, or can I upload my highlights file/s to be checked. If not, what assurance can be given that I'm not wasting my time highlighting within Accordance (vs instead highlighting manually in a printed Bible)?

 

Thanks for any info that can be provided.

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Bumping this thread in the hope of a (more satisfying) answer. :-)

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Stuart:

 

There is never a guarantee that a file will not be corrupted. It doesn't happen often, and therefore we have not developed tools for specifically diagnosing and fixing such files. It's always best to keep regular serial backups of any file which preserves your work, so that you can go back to an earlier version if needed.

 

If you have more than one Highlight file, you can check them out separately. Only one is loaded at any particular time. If you only have one, or you identify one which is corrupt, you are welcome to zip it and email it to me, and I will try to get a busy developer to look at it for you.

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In any case, I recommend trying a backup to see if your crashes are related to the Highlight file, since if they are not, we definitely need to investigate further.

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Part of the difficulty here is know how far to go back in my backups. Because the crash is intermittent (usually as or shortly after applying a highlight, but not the first time I apply a highlight... sometimes many highlights are applied without a crash, then suddenly a crash as I apply a highlight.

 

So, if I roll back highlights to a previous backup, how do I know when (or even if) I've fixed the problem?

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You reported the problem as lasting for 2 days, on the 17th, so I would try going back to the 13th. And keep a copy of the current file so you can restore it if it proves not to be the problem.

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Sure - I will try reverting to a backup from the 13th and see let you know what mileage I get.

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