Crashing?

I just downloaded the demo (MacBook Pro, 1.83GHz Dual Core, 2GB SDRAM) and about every 3rd search it crashes to my desktop.

I’d love the product and want to make a purchase, but this is obviously a problem. Is this due to the demo version? The new Intel platform?, or what?

No, the demo isn’t limited in any way, and I’ve successfully run many DEVONagent searches on my MacBook Pro 2.0, 2 GB RAM – without any crashes at all.

Please use the Console.app to find your crash log for DEVONagent, copy the log to TextEdit, save and “zip” the file and attach it to a message to Support with a description of your problem. (In DEVONagent, just select Help > Support to trigger an email to us.)

As all crash reports have been either caused by Apple’s WebKit or Internet plugins so far, maybe disabling plugins (see menu “Web” or preferences) will fix this.

Hello,

I just would like to notice that on Internet Deepscan requests, and every request using more than 10 different plugins, DA crashes close to the end of the scan, but there is no crash alert and no crash report, just as if I had quit the app - but I did not :wink:

I use DA 2.0.1, working on PWBk G4 1,5 GHz, 1 Mo RAM, under Mas OS 10.4.6

Does anyone have an idea of the clue?

Friendly Yours

Bertrand

Bertrand,

has anything been logged to the system console (see /Applications/Utilities/Console.app)? In addition, there might be a crash report in the system library (/Library/Logs/CrashReporter).

Thanks for your reply.

There is actually no DA crashreport, but, in the console, I’ve seen that the problem deals with virtual memory allocation “can’t allocate region”.

About 8,3 Go remain free on my HD. That’s enough, isn’t it? Maybe not?

Bertrand

That should be enough but memory management is always a tricky issue as there are always minor leaks in every application (and heavy usage does of course increase the number of leaks).

Do you remember how many pages and megabytes DA scanned? Did you increase the maximal download size (see Preferences > Search)?

I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one. However, I’m not glad that this is happening. It becomes quite frustrating when there are deadlines to meet and I’m depending on DA to get my results for me. Only to find out that it has crashed and I have to start all over. Please post a resolution to this when it arrives. I have been in contact with DEVONtech about this, done what they said (disabled browser plug-ins, etc.) but still crashing.
Thanks.

Southpaw: I haven’t had any crashes when running large searches on my PowerMac dual core 2.3 with 5 GB RAM. But I did have some crashes some time ago when running big searches on a smaller-RAM Mac. Here’s what I did to get the job done:

[1] Turn off the preference choice to clear the cache on quit. As Christian suggested, set Preferences > Search for the maximum download size.

[2] Before running a big DA search clear the cache, then restart (to clear system cache and VM swap files).

[3] Run your search. If a crash occurs, run the search again. As you have a good deal of information already in the cache, the search will run much more quickly.

[4] If you still can’t finish the big search, select Tools > Edit Search sets and reduce the number of Results per plugin, e.g. from 100 to 25. Make sure the search set will filter items already archived. Make sure the set will only show new results, and will archive them on completion. Repeat (2) above for a clean start. Now run your search. As this will be friendlier to your existing memory/free drive space, odds are that it will run to completion and the results will be added to your Archive. Now run it again. The search should be a bit faster, and the new results will be archived. Keep running it until finished (no new results). (If 25 results per plugin is still too high, reduce it to 10 results per plugin. I’ve run big searches on a “small” Mac without crashes and in a reasonable length of time.

In effect, step [4] is running scheduled searches and incrementally adding new content to your Archive. If you wish, instead of manually running it over and over, you could set the set to run hourly (if your schedule permits).

Last fall, after the hurricanes that hit Louisiana, I was asked to do a big DA search to pull information useful for evaluating the effects on the state’s health care infrastructure. Using an iMac, I pulled down over 10,000 results, which were transfered to a DT Pro database for filtering and analysis. The results were useful, but I had to use a couple of the tricks noted above. My “big” PowerMac, however, had no trouble running the same searches in a single pass.

Bravo! and thanks. It appears as though you’ve tipped me off to the underlying issue. I have noticed that DA quits after repeating variations of the same search, all the while the cache is building up. It makes sense that it would spontaneously combust under the repeated pressure, without a cleaning. I guess that’s a bad habit that’s developed by just repeating Google searches ad nauseum.
Point noted.
I guess I should’ve mentioned before what I’m running:
PowerMac G5 QUAD 2.5 GHz (smmmmokin’)
2.5 GB DDR2 SDRAM (not so smmmmokin’)
The latest version of Tiger (what is it now…10.4.6?)

Thanks for the insight.

The same thing happened here. The first time I launched Devonagent, my Mac crashed but it never happened ever since. Go figure…

(G5 1.8GHz, Mac OS 10.4.6, 1GB RAM)

As all crash logs I’ve received were not related to DA’s own cache but to the WebKit, you might try if private browsing makes a difference. Private browsing doesn’t use the WebKit cache or history.

Hi,

I think I’ve found where the problem was : number of results per plugin was set to… 1000. :laughing:

Thanks fo your ideas and suggestions.

Bertrand

I don’t know if any of you are like me, but what I’ve discovered is that the information that I search/research is readily recognizable to me. Also, if what I’m looking for doesn’t show up in the first 10 or 15 responses, it’s not going to show up at all. So, I’ve been able to reduce my results per plugin to 10 and haven’t suffered any loss of accuracy, and I’m gaining time by only having to scan 10 or so results.

Setting this to 10 or 15 has resulted in NO MORE CRASHES! So far… :wink:

DA is incredibly unstable here. It quits every 5 minutes :confused:
What can I do?

Huh?? A Devonagent plug-in is in the Trash :confused:
Devonagent.CM plug-in, or something like that. Strange.

Hey Cheepnis,
I know that you’ve got to be frustrated by now. I think I may have spoken too soon as well. About 15 minutes after my previous post, I crashed. I think mine had to do with doing multiple variations of the same search repeatedly. I’m sure time will heal (provide the fixes) of all these wounds 8)
Good Luck

Well, since this plug-in ended up in the Trash, DA is stable (so far). It seems DA knew there was something wrong and decided the culprit had to be trashed 8)

Mine ended up in the Trash, too, and it won’t erase because the System says a plug-in with the same name is active.

Should I just change the old one’s name to get rid of it?

Here my Mac erased it with no questions asked. DA is now very stable.