Re:Unexpected shut down of KStars and Ekos, but not Indi server

I can trigger a Kstars crash by clicking the "toggle full screen" button, I haven't tried it for a while opting to use "default zoom" which doesn't cause the crash.

using NanoPC-T4 with Armbian Ubuntu Bionic

Ihoujin wrote: Clicking the zoom to fit button in the align module has often resulted in kstars crashing for me. It seems to happen mainly with large dslr frames, and if I click the button while the image is being solved.

Edit: Pi4, 4gb in Raspbian Buster

Same here, I usually crash when I click on the zoom buttons in the PA routine. INDI is still running but Kstars just shutdown and I have to launch it and then launch Ekos.

I am running StellarMate OS v1.4.4 for Raspberry Pi3B+ and DSLR

I can cause a crash by listing my regular gear and connecting to SM on Pi3 from a remote Windows machine, using phone as mobile hotspot; I use the regular profile, though no gear is connected- Setup, Scheduler, and Align modules appear in Ekos, and the former two are accessible, while the clicking on the Align module causes a crash. Setting profile to use CCD Simulator does not cause the crash. I realize this isn't priority, because I don't actually have devices connected, but it concerns me enough to list the purposeful crashing of KStars here. It would certainly be a problem when I do have devices attached and I'm trying to capture light.

I have the same problem running on pi3. I thought it was a memory problem but it happens still after I added 3Gb swap.
And the problem appears to happen more frequently when it's connected to the mount.

I also have that problema, using Stellarmate on a Raspberry pi 3b+.

While guiding and imaging, suddenly Kstars disappears but PHD2 continues guiding and Indi seems to remain connected.
After i restart Kstars and connect, a pop up window tells me that there is already an instance of Indi running. I chose to stop it and then Kstars can start workng again.

Greetings.

Looks to me this is a Raspberry Pi problem. It does not happen (or only very rarely) when I am running KStars on my Zotac mini-PC.
May be it running out of memory. I added 4 GB swap and that seems to have helped.

Yeah, If it happens on Raspberry PI and not on another computer, it probably is a memory issue. But if you can reliably produce a crash on different systems, we should see why it does crash.

NOTE: I wouldn't recommend a SWAP file on a raspberry pi due to issues with reading and writing of the SD card. You will wear it out. There is something much better called zram. Basically it takes the system ram, makes a compressed swap file for it, and puts the swap file in RAM instead of on the system disk. There is a slight performance hit since the system now has to do access compressed ram on a swap file in memory instead of just accessing memory. But the performance hit is worth the system not crashing. And it is also better than wearing out your SD card.

Hi Rob,

I can't "reliably" induce a crash of KStars, it seems to happen randomly to me, at least. The Zotac mini-PC I am using also has just 4 GB of RAM, but my Swap file there resides on the eMMC, not an SD card.
With respect to wearing out the SD card, I am less concerned about that. First, I had a swap file on my Pi3 and that was used extensively over the last year without any problem. The Swap file on the Pi4 so far appears to be used very sparingly (swappiness set at 20) and I put it only as a safeguard in case memory gets tight. Second, I don't know how to turn on zRAM in Ubuntu MATE on the Pi4. What is the procedure to do that? Third, microSD cards are really cheap now (I am using a 128 GB card from Samsung that costs $20 and it already last for over a year).
I actually ran my Pi4 without a hitch through the night 2 nights ago, but I did not use guiding. I have the suspicion that handing two cameras and other intensive tasks might be the problem. One of the crashes I had earlier occurred right during the meridian flip.

For Ubuntu MATE:

sudo apt -y install zram-config

It takes care of everything. If you currently have 4 GB of ram, this will give you close to 8 GB

Last night I tried my first session with my RP4 2gb running KStars on Raspbian.
Polar alignment ran perfectly and smooth (also in full screen).
Guiding ran so I started a small imaging session of 1x60s, 1x120, 1x180, 1x240 and 1x300s subs. During the 180 sub, I wanted to check the Stars on the 120 s and my messing about with the fits viewer, while guiding and taking a 180s sub, caused KStars to crash.
After restarting and reconnecting etc I tried the same imaging session again, this time leasing the poor fits viewer alone. This time no crash.
I then slewed to a New target, solved and synced and started a one hour session of 30s subs - no problems. Darks, Bias and flats afterwards without problems.
So I’ll just try not to push my 2GB RP4 too hard I did notice that my cooler fan was running pretty much all the way through my session.

Just wanted to inform that i have crashes here too. Running KStars on my ASUS VIVOBOOK with KDE Neon and Plasma.
I can sometimes trigger that by using the fitsviewer, and sometimes its just out of nothing...
But when a session is running, and i do not do too much clicking around its stable.

cheers
Niki

the.cakemaker wrote: Just wanted to inform that i have crashes here too. Running KStars on my ASUS VIVOBOOK with KDE Neon and Plasma.
I can sometimes trigger that by using the fitsviewer, and sometimes its just out of nothing...
But when a session is running, and i do not do too much clicking around its stable.

cheers
Niki

Same here. I don't remember crashing in another module, but most of the time if I play with the fits viewer, trying to zoom or touching the "default zoom" or anything related I crash 8 times out of 10. Very frustrating, so I try to do without using the zoom feature at all.