Squeak kinda starts up - disaster recovery issue [Hobbyist]

Squeak List squeaklist at yahoo.com
Tue Jan 17 17:38:58 UTC 2006


Todd,
   
  Thanks for your response. I tried the alt (period) and nothing happens - opening a process viewer is probably not going to happen in that poor image:)
   
  If  "The unresponsive UI occurs when you execute such code as a doit (doit's are performed in the UI thread and so the Ui pauses until your action is completed).", then how about deleting all of the doits in the .changes back to before the problem started - and whatever other changes were made also. Gonna try that in a bit here - see what happens. 
   
  I think I am not clear on where damage actually happens... the .sources never seem to complain - I have heard the VM complain, but not in this case. The .image and the .changes: I guess that the damage is done in the .image where I made the mess. So the .changes is just a file that records everything I do in the .image - kept seperate for this reason (a disaster in the .image)? If so, deleting doits/whatnot in the .changes file won't actually change anything in the .image? Wow, those sound like some newbie questions::))
   
  I just tried starting the same image after taking the .changes and .sources out of the working directory just to see... and exact same thing. I thought I would maybe at least get the missing sources message. 
   
  I am just looking for a bit of clarity on this damage issue in general now. That image will rest in peace once I try a couple more things. 
   
  For me, this is one of those things I have to be in the middle of (instead of reading about) and getting some sort of explaination from a real person (instead of reading about it). 
   
  Fortunately, this is a very generous and helpful list:)
   
  Thanks,
   
  Ken
   
   
  
Todd Blanchard <tblanchard at mac.com> wrote:
  In my experience, slowdowns occur when you have runaway processing - infinite loops are kind of bad, infinite recursion is really bad.  Before long this will set the garbage collector and allocator to thrashing and this is probably part of your slowdown.  The unresponsive UI occurs when you execute such code as a doit (doit's are performed in the UI thread and so the Ui pauses until your action is completed).  

  Command or alt-period (depending on whether you are windows or mac) will halt the current task and pop up some debuggers.  The first debugger to open is the one you're interested in - I usually end up with 4 or more and have to keep closing them to get to the pertinent one.
  

  For your sick image, try cmd or alt period immediately and see if you can get debuggers to pop up.
  

  Another thing worth doing is to open a process viewer and look for runaway processes.  I've had such things when doing seaside apps that I needed to hunt down to restore performance.
  

  Good luck.  

  
    On Jan 16, 2006, at 7:14 PM, Squeak List wrote:

    Hello all,
   
  I was happily loading audio samples into Squeak... a few problems, a lot of looking at the sound classes.... but overall, being pleased that I was able to get the samples in and get them to play back as I wanted.
   
  Then, as sometimes happens when I do something incorrectly, (and in this case I don't recall exactly what I did: probably wrote some ugly workspace code to try playing back differently or something of that nature) Squeak slows down. By that, I mean that dragging windows, typing anything, etc., goes very slowly. This has happened other times and I am sure it is because of my own bad code. Usually, I do a manual garbage collection and just wait a bit: usually the problem just goes away within a minute. No debuggers or anything like that open or appear when this happens. And then everything is back to normal (well seems to be anyway).
   
  So, what happened w! as that I saved when Squeak was in that "slowed down" mode. I didn't try re-opening the image until the next day. What happens is this: I have the folder that holds all of my Squeak stuff maximized on the desktop (Win XP). I drop the questionable image onto the VM and then the frame/outline of the Squeak window shows up, but I still see the contents of the background maximized folder. I minimize both windows. When I maximize the Squeak window, the frame is there, but inside of it is nothing but a charming black color. Task manager shows Squeak using high 90% of cpu. This is 3.9 alpha - update 6704, as are the other images I use (other images work fine). The mouse takes the usual shape when in the window, but clicking anything does nothing. Clicking the X to close the window brings up the usual confirmation if I want to save before quitting (I think I have always hit NO). The window closes and that is that.
   
  Since I did have a decent amount of  "working/good" code in that image, I searched high and low for how to recover from disaster. I imagined that that mysterious .changes file would let me rollback whatever I had done to cause this problem. It didn't quite work that way, but I was able to use find the "Recent changes in file" from the file list to get most of what I wanted. Kinda tedious, but I did recover almost everything - enough to not write this until a week after this happened. At this point it is more of a curiosity if there is any way to actually get that image to "open all the way". Also, this has definitely changed my feeling about the certainty I used to feel when I saved what I was working on... Now I save a lot more often, and never save if Squeak is in one of my induced "slow down" modes.
   
  Otherwise, Squeak Rules:)
   
  Ken
  

  
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