Crashes tonight... a bunch of em - probably an underlying plugin activation issue

Cantabile
1

Tonight I’ve had another set of crashes, and can’t seem to get out of it. I always reload the last set list on startup, and I bet there’s something in there that is causing the issue (some plug is not activated I bet).

I tried the /dontstartengine flag, but it still crashes.

How can I reset the startup settings if the app crashes on startup every time? Hopefully I can this fixed before the gig tomorrow.

@brad Sent crash dump reports through the app.

Thanks in advance -
Pat

2

When it starts up after a crash and the crashed last time dialog box comes up uncheck the start engine box and see if it will boot. If so then change startup settings in options.

3

Hi @PatAzzMusic

It’s Zenology, the crash is in the plugin.

When Cantabile loads a plugin it first asks the plugin to save itself - that saved state is used as the initial state for new pseudo presets. It’s when Cantabile asks the plugin to save, it crashes… in the plugin.

Brad

4

This is Roland? Didn’t you once state that you’ve had to do many a workaround for Roland’s poor programming?

5

@dave_dore The error reporting dialog comes up, I enter the info (no checkbox on this dialog). When I start C4 again, the “start choices” dialog doesn’t come up, it tries to open the last song and crashes again. I’m assuming that this is since the crash is in the plug in.

@brad I see - the plugin is failing and then crashing C4 without a return of the error or anything that let’s you trap it.

Is there way to “force” the startup screen that Dave talks about? Resetting a file or something? Or does this happen well before the actual C4 UX is displayed?

@easteelreath Beyond what I believe are activation/authorization issues, I like the plug ins a lot. I’m starting to think Roland promoted the people who wrote their english manuals in the 1980’s to software developers on the authorization code. :frowning: IYKYK

Reached out to Roland support. More to come.

Pat

6

It is supposed to appear on the next start after a crash. I’m not sure why it isn’t appearing. The settings file can be edited to stop the cycle as well. If you post the settings file I can edit it for you so it doesn’t load the setlist automatically…

7

@dave_dore I think it may be because the crash is happening inside Zenology and it’s pulling C4 down before it has a chance to flag itself (C4) as having failed.

Happy to post the settings file, but can’t seem to find it (Documents and my actual Cantabile folder with the songs, sets, etc).

8

go to C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Local\Topten Software\Cantabile 4.0 (x64)

YOURNAME is a placeholder for whatever your PC’s account’s name is. The settings file is in this folder.

9

Renamed to Settings.CantabileRAck to beat the filters (it won’t accept JSON for upload from my machine).

settings.cantabilerack (49.1 KB)

10

OK, rename it when you put it back and try starting again. It should skip the set list loading.

settings.cantabilerack (49.1 KB)

11

Thanks Dave - you are a C4 hero (and there are really no slouches here to be honest). I’m going to keep this in my pocket as simultaneously I was dealing with Roland and it seems to be resolved.

So… for those that want to know how sausage is made…

Roland Cloud requires (recommends?) that you set your Windows Settings to automatically sync with a time server on the Internet. This seems pretty OK to me, depending on the variance allowed (e.g., 1 minute? 1 day? 1 Month?). If the app tries to sync and the variance is too far out from what it should be (they didn’t say this - this is what I observed), it won’t authenticate, and may not launch the UX and underlying functionality.

For Brad, this has to be frustrating (sorry mate) as it’s not his fault, but probably causing a long list of issues that he has to deal with over time so that he doesn’t need to keep answering support issues from users.

Here’s hoping for a pain-free gig tonight.

Now back to nursing Kelly (the wife) who had knee surgery yesterday… She’s very knee-dy today. :slight_smile:

1 Like
12

Off Topic

My least favorite chain in Win 11. Many nights of headaches and blurry eyes. Thank you Microsoft… :rage:

May the bird of paradise…(profanity)

2 Likes
13

The word you are looking for is defecate…

1 Like
14

@PatAzzMusic sounds like you’re up and running again.

I’m not sure what was causing Cantabile to fail to start or fail to show the crash recovery dialog, but a crashing plugin on load shouldn’t prevent it.

It works like this:

  1. When Cantabile first starts it checks for a file “pid.txt” in the settings folder.
  2. If the file exists it means Cantabile fails to close cleanly on the last run and displays the crash recovery dialog.
  3. Otherwise pid.txt file is created
  4. On clean shutdown the pid.txt file is deleted

If this happens again you could check for the existence of the pid.txt file. If that file exists and you’re not getting the crash recovery dialog, then perhaps you’ve turned it off? Tools → Options → Diagnostics → Check for Clean Shutdown.

1 Like
15

Thanks @brad . Always appreciate seeing into the program more so I can make appropriate decisions, and more importantly help figure out why things happen.

If this happens again (and now that I think I have a way to repro it but don’t want to screw with a working system again) I’ll look for the PID file and provide more clarity for you.

Bottom Line: The underlying issue (Roland Cloud authorization) seems to be resolved, and it’s likely that that underlying cause can be avoided by some regular system “maintenance” (e.g., manually syncing to the internet clock).

Always appreciate your help and the inside look at the underlying process.

1 Like