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1.7 Beta freezes my Mac


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The crash with AP Beta 1.7 has reoccurred.  The freeze happened, while I was performing several extensive cloning operations (I guesstimate about 10) in order to fine-tune a cloned area on an image.  In my case, there was an annoying green sign in the middle of my image that I wanted to remove and I was creating / blending a background to fill-in behind the sign’s former location.  I know that is a clone brush issue, because the clone brush was the only tool that I had been using after opening 1.7.

When the freeze-up occurred, I lost the ability to accomplish a mouse click.  The screen cursor still responded, but I was unable to get a left-click to function.  I never received a crash report, the click button on the mouse just stopped responding. I was able to shut down with the button on the front of my Mac.

After I shutting down and restarting, I went back to Capture One and then sent the image to CS6 in order to accomplish the desired modificationsto the image.  While using PS, I performed a greater number of cloning operations and did not experience a freeze.  I was using the Beta 1.7 because I needed some straight-line clones. Later-on I played with 1.6.7 to see if I could make it crash, I did not experience any freeze with AP 1.6.7 although there were no straight-line clones involved with 1.6.7.

I am not experiencing freezes with any of my other S/W.  The crash only occurs while I am using AP Beta 1.7 and seems strongly correlated to cloning.

My OS is Mojave 10.14.2

Hardware Overview:

  Model Identifier:                             MacPro5,1

  Processor Name:                           Quad-Core Intel Xeon

  Processor Speed:                          2.8 GHz

  Number of Processors:                 1

  Total Number of Cores:                4

  L2 Cache (per Core):                    256 KB

  L3 Cache:                                       8 MB

  Memory:                                          10 GB

  Boot ROM Version:                       138.0.0.0.0

  SMC Version (system):                 1.39f11

  SMC Version (processor tray):    1.39f11

  Hardware UUID:                            43319449-4687-5D53-BF04-9CB74406D57C

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I posted the problem on DPreview and received the following responses (my response to his questions are in italics):

1.  Apart from kernel panics (which are clearly distinguishable), Macs 'freezing up' in the OS X/macOS era seem to follow a very similar pattern with only small variations.

It almost always starts with the computer stopping to react to mouse clicks (including scrolling) and in-app keyboard commands (incl. cmd-tab). The severity of the freeze can be gleaned from a handful of indicators:

·  Can you still move the cursor?  (Yes, I was still able to move the cursor)
In my experience, most of the times you still can.

·  Is the clock in the menu bar still 'ticking'? (Did not notice)
Easy to see if yours is set to show seconds. 

·  Can the app force-quitting window still be summoned (esc-alt-cmd)? (No, esc-opt-cmd did not work)
If it can, it frequently might only react to keyboard commands but not to mouse clicks. 

·  Do systemwide shortcuts (usually enabled by third-party apps) still work? (No information)
This might correlate strongly with the previous point. I use this to launch Terminal, in which I can still issue command via the keyboard but not via the mouse. 

If the cursor stops moving, it's usually game over (forced shutdown via the power button is the only option). The menu bar clock seems to be more of a wildcard, though if it is still ticking, things tend to be less serious.

If esc-opt-cmd still works, you can get lucky and force-quitting the front most app solves the issue (this might correlate with the force-quit window showing an app as unresponsive). The same applies to quitting the app via the Terminal. Most of the times though, having access to the Terminal is only of limited help in that you can initiate a forced logging out of the user login* or a forced shutdown** (while better than a forced shutdown via the power button, it still force-quits most processes).

Also, sometimes the freeze is progressive in that it starts with mouse clicks & keyboard commands unresponsiveness with systemwide shortcuts still working for a few minutes.

=====

Does this chime with your observations? Do you think one could roughly classify these situations into these three categories?

Complete freeze, even the cursor is stuck. (Not me)

Almost complete freeze, cursor still moving but no reaction to systemwide shortcuts. (Yes)

'Userland freeze' where systemwide shortcuts and Terminal commands still work but at least a forced logout out of the user account is necessary. 

=====

* sudo pkill loginwindow
** sudo shutdown -h now

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. Anytime macOS locks up, hangs or crashes it is generally the fault of the OS, hardware or configuration. Except for kernel extensions, a user-mode app should never be able to destabilize, lock up, or crash the OS.

Each app exists in a totally isolated address space -- the very purpose of a protected-memory OS.

If it only happens with one app, that app is hitting something in the API "surface" which found a defect in the underlying system layer.  It really should be reported to Apple -- they are responsible for macOS reliability.

If the app is leaking memory, the OS can slow down but unless you run out of paging file space (which is a config issue), you should be able to kill the app with either Activity Monitor or terminal. If you can't kill it with terminal, that's usually the system's fault and can only be broadly corrected at the system level.

I'd suggest asking Serif do they have any other reports of this? Every support call they get should be logged, indexed and searchable by all support reps.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope you will be able to resolve this before release of the final version.

Thank you

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This appears to be a bug in the operating system, or possibly a driver.

Serif can't fix that.

If Serif can figure out what is triggering the bug, they might be able to patch around it by not doing whatever is triggering it.

If this is a bug in a driver for hardware that Serif does not have, for example, there might be nothing they can do to reproduce much less fix the problem.

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  • Staff

I can get the spinning pinwheel pretty easily on a very complex file with lots of adjustments and filters but I can always Force Quit it. If I hide these adjustments and filters, it seems fine.

Cloning on a small JPEG file seems fine too.

Can you attach your document or are you able to reproduce this on a smaller, single image? 

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Just froze again, additional observations:

1 I was performing a series of straight line clones.  I was not counting, but I believe it froze on the fourth. I had previously tried to freeze it with regular cloning operations (not straight line) and the Mac did not freeze. In order to see if I could make it freeze, I performed 100 regular clones with no adverse effects.

2. During the freeze, the clock stopped advancing.

3. Waited 5 minutes and then finally pushed the button to shut-down.

4. After coming back on-line, the clock advance to the correct time displayed.

5. I continued cloning and there were delays while I was attempting to perform regular clones (no straight line clones).  The were delays between clicking and the clone appearing.  The delays were as short as a split second and as long as several seconds with the beach ball spinning.

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I am still trying to isolate the specific actions that trigger the freeze that I am experiencing with 1.7.  I am unable to identify a specific set of iterations to cause the freeze, however, at this point I know that the freeze is correlated with straight line clones and some times I see short delays and some spinning  beach balls with regular clones.  I have tried everything that I can think of to freeze 1.6.7, and  I cannot get 1.6.7 to freeze.

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After de-selecting "Enable Metal Compute Acceleration", I tried 55 straight line clones and about 20 regular clones.  I am happy to report, there were no freezes.  I will continue to experiment with 1.7 and will let you know if the issues pop-up again.

Thank you very much!!

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Best to check if the machine actually freezes or if it's just the GUI. I keep remote logon enabled on my machines and if the system becomes unresponsive, I ssh in from another machine. In every single case I had it was just the GUI that did not respond anymore. Might be important to differentiate between the two when submitting bugs.

 

 

 

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20 hours ago, Big_Stan said:

After de-selecting "Enable Metal Compute Acceleration", I tried 55 straight line clones and about 20 regular clones.  I am happy to report, there were no freezes.  I will continue to experiment with 1.7 and will let you know if the issues pop-up again.

Thank you very much!!

We really want Metal compute to be working as there are many benefits of having it enabled. Let me do some investigating! I'll get back to you soon.

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Development have just released build 107 which hopefully contains the fix for this. Please install it and let me know how you get on when Metal is enabled:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/77549-affinity-photo-customer-beta-170107/

 

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I survived 24 hours of extensive cloning with the previous version of 1.7 (Metal deselected) without a freeze or a beach ball.  I just down loaded the most recent version and I have selected Metal enabled.  I will you a report immediately if a freeze occurs or if nothing bad happens, I'll let you know tomorrow.

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2 hours ago, Big_Stan said:

I know I said that I would report back tomorrow.  However, I am very happy to report that ...

Jeeze @Big_Stan, I felt my heart drop as soon as I saw you report back today but I am glad that it seems to be working. [smiley face emoticon]

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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