Crashes, crashes, crashes…. more crashes and problems

DEVONthink Tips
1

I wonder what makes software useful software.
Shouldn’t that be saving the users time and letting them concentrate on content instead of the technical aspects of their work?

DEVONthink does not do that. It merely seems to consume the time and energy of too many users trying to use it because other people told them: “it’s professional”.

I’ve had DTP Office and DT to Go for several years now and being honest I have to say that there is no other software that required so much time and effort to be administered or to be set up to running than this piece of software.

There is ALWAYS something wrong with DTP.

To name a few:
Syncing via WebDav does simply not work. It may work for some guys with certain server or whatever configuration but for the majority of users it simply doesn’t.
Ok, well. Lets switch to Dropbox then. Good idea with a fairly large DB that requires me to upgrade my Dropbox account. Anyway, works for a while then starts crashing the app on the Mac Book Pro.
No solution in sight. Next step: trying to use the local network based sync. Lets see if that works.
Syncing with DT to Go causes duplicate entries of almost ALL files in the DB making the whole DB useless after several unsuccessful attemptts of syncing with DTTG.
I have given up using and syncing DT to Go. Its stye worst piece of app I’ve ever had on my iPad(s)/iPhone(s). Far away from being useful.

I’ve had corrupt databases, thousands of duplicates from wherever they came from, disappeared files and many more errors and problems which I cannot even remember all.

I would never trust anymore the much-praised AI since I would probably end up with a completely messed DB.
Before each change in my DB I have to make sure to create a 1:1 copy as a backup.

So I have reduced my expectations and just use DTP Office as an archive for all my files (Bookmarks, PDFs, spreadsheets, pages docs etc.). But hey! For that there is cheaper software that works more reliably and even looks nicer and has an up-to-date user interface.

And before some smart guys tell me to try with different databases or different devices:

I’ve done that many times. Independent devices, new and older ones, many of them. Independent different databases on different devices. It’s all the same……

I like the company because it’s a small company and they’re independent.
I do like DTP, that’s why I’ve dealt with all the problems for such a long time.
But this software is stealing my energy and is of no use for anything. At least not in the professional way. For archiving my files there are better and cheaper solutions.

2

Actually, the much greater number of our Users are not so consumed.

Is our software perfect? Nope - but we are always working on it.

Is it better with every release? Though some may say ‘No’, we say ‘Definitely’.

Do people sometimes have problems when running our software? Sure - but they do with tons of other apps too.

Software is a precision product applied to imprecise machines. One machine is NOT another machine. You installed this software, someone else installed that software. You have 1000 free fonts loading on startup, she has only the base system fonts still. You are on a spotty satellite network connection, he is on a dedicated T1 line. That hard drive you love is about to crash and destroy all your data. All those little utilities “you must have” are not quitting completely and rogue threads are eating up all your memory and keeping network connections open and… I could go on (but won’t).

We are open to criticism and want to make things better but there are things that we can’t reproduce, specific to a machine or an environment, and yes, even a User’s habits that make troubleshooting some issues more difficult.

3

If you have an issue, I beg you – with tears in my eyes – to open a support ticket. I don’t know about issues, and can’t diagnose them, unless they’re reported.

The overwhelming majority of issues with WebDAV, for instance, are with hosts that use either IIS, which double-escapes certain characters in filenames by default, or Apache’s mod_rewrite module, which fails to rewrite HTTP destination headers.

If you’re experiencing crashes of any kind, tell me about it so I can fix it!

4

I switched to DTPO from Evernote, as DTPO seemed (and seems) to be a much more professional software, and i like it a lot, although it took me a lot of time to handle bugs.

But it is sure that i am not really trusting in its reliability right now. I had data lost while sync, this was when i synced hourly with last version of DTPO, and two machines tried to sync in the same time.

What i didn’t understand: this had to be crystal clear that if you allow only hourly sync on Dropbox at full hour, there must be collisions beetween two machines, as every machine will sync exactly at the same moment. I wondered if this feature has ever been tested before release?

Now you have fixed this in the lat release by allowing an offset, everything was fine until we understand that we have no memory any more on any machine(DTPO uses 5 GB Memory and 41 GB of swapfiles because of a memory leak…) OK, this can happen and we will workaround by syncing manually (as you say that the hourly sync opens the leak) , while we are waiting for a bug fix.

But what i don’t understand, why the software didn’t and doesn’t warn when a sync goes wrong (because the database needs Verify and Repair or whatever).

This is something that should have been crystal clear, too : if something goes wrong, the soft must inform the user. If incoherences make necessary “V&R” and stop Sync, the soft should not only warn that Sync wasn’t possible, but also warn that V&R is necessary, this is an evidence for me.
Instead of this, DTPO stays silent and continues Business as Usual…

Besides these items (and some little other details), i think that this is a great software.
I switched from Evernote to DTPO, i hope (and i am pretty sure) that i will not regret this.

Of course, when the soft will be fully reliable, there is a last need in order to replace Evernote, perhaps we will have this one day : Cloud Sync. Right now, the only way to access to your database from outsides is to run your own server. We do this with a MAcMiniServer at home, but this is not a reliable solution, as we don’t have the security systems here like a “real” cloud provider.

Dropboxsync doesn’t allow to access easily to the database, so it is not a solution. I even thought about renting a Mac mini-Server from a CloudProvider and run DTPO on it, but this is quit expensive compared to 45 Dollars a year that i paid to Evernote. And there, i had access to all my docs, every time. And every note written on the iPhone was CloudSynced and Geotagged at once, and backupd on several Evernote Servers in the US (and the NSA-Servers certainly too, but i don’t mind :wink:)

So if one day we can CloudSYnc with DTPO-Servers (or you find a way to make this possible with another cloud provider, this would definitively replace Evernote…

Thanks for your work that you did in past and that you do in the future :slight_smile:

5

There’s a lockfile; one client puts a special file on the server with some information in it. As long as that file exists, no other client will try to sync (i.e. it will notice the presence of the file and throw an error).

If you’ve lost data, of course, that is a bug and should be reported; but so far, I haven’t had any issues with the lockfile’s reliability reported since the plugin was in private beta – well over a year ago.

The offset isn’t to fix this issue or any other – just make syncing hourly from multiple machines easier and cleaner.

I’ve received as many complaints asking me to be less obtrusive in the case of errors as I have to be more obtrusive. If you’re curious about whether a scheduled sync succeeded or failed, select Menu > Window > Log. DEVONthink has a convention for non-fatal errors and Sync adheres to it. Sync errors should bring the activity log to the front if you haven’t disabled this; if it doesn’t, that’s a bug and should be reported.

6

The activity Log, even open, stays never in Front, i have to reactivate it in any case via the menu !

Best regards

7

Okay, I’ll let Criss know.

EDIT: Actually, reviewing the relevant code, it was only coming to the front on certain errors (e.g. failing database verification). This should be fixed in the next release. I’m terribly sorry for the aggravation.

8

I downloaded the new version and i am crossing fingers :slight_smile:

Thank you for the fast release !

9

Ha! Not quite that fast, unfortunately. But soon.

10

I can’t submit a ticket, “submit” is greyed out and all fields are completed. I need a competitor program as I travel and this information is critical in business.

11

That’s an old post, and looks like an old link-try this link to open a support ticket.