I have almost comleted my migration from TheSkyX using a long USB cable extension to mount -> to a much cleaner setup with Ekos/INDI with a miniPC running INDIWebServer / Pegasus Pocket Powerbox on mount.

I ran into a problem that almost made me give up after multiple days of ftrustration and crashing - and thought I would post here in case other new users have seen this issue.

A summary of the problem is that for some reason on macOS, KStars/Ekos modal dialogs are appearing behind all other windows - without the user even knowing that there is a modal or non-modal dialog that has been opened. It might be related to the Ekos window always being top-most - but that is just a hunch.

Sometimes this is harmless - but in the case of setting up a completely new system, this can be disastrous - with tons of crashing and really weird behavior during the Ekos setup process.

The problem starts after using the Ekos Profile Wizard - when you have serial devices where the serial port needs to be selected. After running the wizard - and hitting the Start Ekos button, there is a "Port Selector" window that pops up requesting you to choose the serial ports for serial port connected equipment (i.e., EQMOD and Moonlite focuser). The problem is that this window/dialog appears behind all other windows (including Ekos and Kstars) - and it is actually possible to continue using Ekos without knowing that this window is open. Things are really weird though, as you can't edit Optical trains, and trying to do anything with your equipment will most likely cause the program to hard crash.

It took me 2 days to figure out what was going on - but once I noticed this very important dialog / window and selected the correct serial ports, everything connected up and all crashes stopped.

There are other dialogs where I have seen this behavior as well - for example, with Kstars window open + Ekos window open, if you select "Data->Manage DSO Catalogs" - it appears that nothing happens - but actually the DSO Catalog Manasger window hs been opened behind all other windows.

Here is the offending window that causes all hell to break loose if the user doesn't notice it was opened:

Veteran users will probably never run into this issue as they have already defined appropriate serial ports in their INDI configuration and won't see this little dialog.

The port selection step is obviously extremely important - and there needs to be a way to let the user know that Ekos / INDI has not finished its setup - and another action is required - in addition to fixing the issue of the windows popping up behind all other windows.

If this is not a known issue, I can create an issue in the repository.

macOS Monterey 12.6.1
KStars macOS 3.6.2 Stable (btw - just noticed this also happens to the KStars about dialog if the Ekos window is open when you chose "About Kstars"

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