Silently crashing when a file can't be written in a jiffy #40063

New Issue

Fluffy Rabbit · 2014-05-07T10:28:22+02:00

Fluffy Rabbit commented

2014-05-07 10:28:22 +02:00

System Information
Windows with external portable hard drive (NTFS)

Blender Version
Broken: 2.68 on up

Short description of error
Drive takes a nap, Blender tries to save a frame, Blender disappears. Seems to be that Blender can't deal with any kind of drive latency, and furthermore when Blender can't write a file, it just dies.

Exact steps for others to reproduce the error

Set Blender up to render a really hefty frame sequence (like 2 minutes per frame).
Specify your portable drive with safety-locking mechanism as output destination.
Watch as Blender refuses to wait 5 seconds for the drive to wake up and opts to kill itself instead. This may happen at any time, especially when you are doing other things in the background that cause the render to take longer (giving the drive time to fall asleep). I have not seen any error message when Blender crashes while failing to write a file. It should also be noted that the file usually seems to get written after all, but when Blender goes to check if it exists (I'm guessing that's what's happening) it crashes. The drive in question is capable of caching files in a solid state chip before writing them, so they likely don't touch the disk until after Blender crashes.

**System Information** Windows with external portable hard drive (NTFS) **Blender Version** Broken: 2.68 on up **Short description of error** Drive takes a nap, Blender tries to save a frame, Blender disappears. Seems to be that Blender can't deal with any kind of drive latency, and furthermore when Blender can't write a file, it just dies. **Exact steps for others to reproduce the error** 1. Set Blender up to render a really hefty frame sequence (like 2 minutes per frame). 2. Specify your portable drive with safety-locking mechanism as output destination. 3. Watch as Blender refuses to wait 5 seconds for the drive to wake up and opts to kill itself instead. This may happen at any time, especially when you are doing other things in the background that cause the render to take longer (giving the drive time to fall asleep). I have not seen any error message when Blender crashes while failing to write a file. It should also be noted that the file usually seems to get written after all, but when Blender goes to check if it exists (I'm guessing that's what's happening) it crashes. The drive in question is capable of caching files in a solid state chip before writing them, so they likely don't touch the disk until after Blender crashes.

Fluffy Rabbit commented

2014-05-07 10:28:22 +02:00

Changed status to: 'Open'

Fluffy Rabbit commented

2014-05-07 10:28:22 +02:00

Added subscriber: @fluffrabbit

Fluffy Rabbit commented

2014-05-07 10:35:42 +02:00

From here: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/9176/frequent-crashes-when-rendering-frame-sequence-to-external-hard-drive

Campbell Barton commented

2014-05-08 23:58:51 +02:00

Added subscriber: @ideasman42

Campbell Barton commented

2014-05-08 23:58:51 +02:00

Can you upload a test file which crashes on animation render?

Campbell Barton commented

2014-05-09 00:11:05 +02:00

Note, I tried to redo this bug on Linux

rendering to a mounted FTP site, via curlftpfs
rendering with simulated disk errors with fiu-run

And couldn't get any crashes while rendering an animation, so perhaps this is a windows-only problem.

Note, I tried to redo this bug on Linux - rendering to a mounted FTP site, via `curlftpfs` - rendering with simulated disk errors with `fiu-run ` And couldn't get any crashes while rendering an animation, so perhaps this is a windows-only problem.

Campbell Barton commented

2014-05-09 00:26:02 +02:00

@fluffrabbit

Could you try the following.

Run blender from a terminal, (cmd.exe) and see if any messages are printed on crashing.
Try some alternative slow media, like a very slow network filesystem (mounted FTP or similar).

I looked into simulating slow disk performance in windows but couldn't find good tools for that.

@fluffrabbit Could you try the following. - Run blender from a terminal, (cmd.exe) and see if any messages are printed on crashing. - Try some alternative slow media, like a very slow network filesystem (mounted FTP or similar). I looked into simulating slow disk performance in windows but couldn't find good tools for that.

Fluffy Rabbit commented

2014-05-09 03:53:18 +02:00

Well, shit. I can't reproduce this bug in 2.70a. I don't know what that means.

Campbell Barton commented

2014-05-09 12:39:40 +02:00

Changed status from 'Open' to: 'Resolved'

Campbell Barton closed this issue

2014-05-09 12:39:40 +02:00

Campbell Barton self-assigned this 2014-05-09 12:39:40 +02:00

Campbell Barton commented

2014-05-09 12:39:40 +02:00

closing, we can reopen if you manage to redo on a recent build.

please always try a recent build before reporting bugs, it saves us time.

closing, we can reopen if you manage to redo on a recent build. please always try a recent build before reporting bugs, it saves us time.

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Silently crashing when a file can't be written in a jiffy #40063