Author Topic: Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-(  (Read 21659 times)

scphillipp1

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Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-(
« on: July 09, 2016, 01:09:46 AM »
I just upgraded to beta of Sierra for Mac, but looks like I gotta uninstall it as weather cat keeps loading and crashing, loading and crashing.
I tried reinstalling the usb drivers, but beyond that I don?t know what to do. I wanted to send you crash reports but the forum page
That tells how to do it is a broken link.

Weather cat first says it can?t find the weather station, then the station communications window opens, the port doesn?t look right

/dev/cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port

But I can?t find instructions on how to change it, and rescanning ports doesn?t do anything, so I click done.
Then the testing starts, after about a minute weather cat seems to open normally with all my gauges and windows, then about a minute
Later it crashes and all starts over.

Please advise - I?ve already spent about 2 hours on this - I?ve given up on Sierra for now, as my online weather underground station is gonna be emailing me soon.

Thanks for any info you can give.

Steve Phillippy

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Re: Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-(
« Reply #1 on: July 09, 2016, 02:18:40 AM »
Steve:

Just upload the crash log as an attachment to your reply to this post. Also, can you tell us where the broken link is referenced from so one of the mods can fix it?
Blick


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Re: Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-(
« Reply #2 on: July 09, 2016, 10:19:02 AM »
I'm hoping that's a localized problem since Stu hasn't mentioned running into any issues in the development sections of the forum. I presume he's been testing the releases provided through the Apple Developer Program.

skonick

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Re: Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-(
« Reply #3 on: July 09, 2016, 04:54:30 PM »
Looks like I can join the club. The Sierra beta doesn't seem to recognize the USB to UART bridge to allow my Vantage Vue console to talk to my iMac. I can't see it in my Network system preferences anymore, so it doesn't come up in my Comms port in WeatherCat as an option. The only option is /dev/cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port. Rescan Ports doesn't find it.  :-\

Might have to go back to the old system software (if I can...)

Steve Konick

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Too early (Re: Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-( )
« Reply #4 on: July 09, 2016, 11:19:04 PM »
Dear Steve, Blick, Felix, Steve, and WeatherCat troubleshooters,

Definitely not the best of circumstances, but welcome to the WeatherCat forum both Steves!

I just upgraded to beta of Sierra for Mac, but looks like I gotta uninstall it as weather cat keeps loading and crashing, loading and crashing.
I tried reinstalling the usb drivers, but beyond that I don?t know what to do.

Sorry but I'm a bit confused.  What weather station are using with WeatherCat?  You list WS-2813, is it this station?

https://www.lacrossetechnology.com/2813/

I didn't know that WeatherCat supported this station.

Where did you get these USB drivers?  Perhaps they haven't been updated for Sierra yet.  There appears to be a problem with hardware manufacturers keeping up with Apple OS updates.

I wanted to send you crash reports but the forum page  That tells how to do it is a broken link.

Sorry about that.  I found another page:

http://www.qsatoolworks.com/faqs/6/crashlog.html

I've updated the forum page to point to this page.

Looks like I can join the club. The Sierra beta doesn't seem to recognize the USB to UART bridge to allow my Vantage Vue console to talk to my iMac.

The Silicon Labs driver doesn't even officially support El Capitan, so I can't say I'm surprised Davis stations won't run under Sierra.

Unfortunately, it is usually a mistake to try to run WeatherCat on a new version of macOS until Stu gives the "all clear."  If you want to participate in the beta program is probably not wise to use your Mac that connects to your station because OS bugs are likely to reduce system stability which could lead to data outages.

If possible by all means revert back to an older version of OS X.

Cheers, Edouard

skonick

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Re: Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-(
« Reply #5 on: July 11, 2016, 12:31:57 AM »
Hi Edouard,

Oh well, too late for me. I saw the monstrously involved process to drop down to El Capitan and it was fraught with issues, so I'm sticking with the Sierra beta. I think there's no question that the problem is in the driver as it doesn't appear to show in my Mac's Network Preferences anymore. Sigh. Fortunately, my daughter's computer is still on El Capitan, so I just moved the weather station over to her computer. It's not optimal, but the site is back up and running again.

I wonder how one can get in touch with SiLabs about updating their driver to work with Sierra, or are there other drivers that are out there that do the same thing?

Thanks for your input, though!

Steve

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Re: Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-(
« Reply #6 on: July 11, 2016, 05:41:11 AM »
This may or may not work in the case of upgrading to Sierra, but with El Capitan, there were at least two of us, myself included, that were able to get the driver to work by connecting it to a USB hub rather than the computer's USB connection. Of course, the USB hub would have to be connected to the computer, but it somehow managed to translate the signals to something El Capitan could use. In my case, it was USB 2.0 and a cheap powered small hub from General Electric.
Herb

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Re: GM Sierra for Mac Fixes USB Port Issue
« Reply #7 on: September 09, 2016, 04:57:42 PM »
I was a beta user of Sierra.  As a beta user you receive the GrandMaster of Sierra in advance of its release date - I received it last night.   I just installed it (took almost 2 hrs) and my Vantage Pro Weather Station is now uploading to my web page through the USB port with no issues. [cheer] [snow]

Blicj11

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Re: Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-(
« Reply #8 on: September 09, 2016, 05:36:04 PM »
Good news. Thanks for posting. In my opinion, Grand Master of Sierra is better than Goldstar rating at WeatherUnderground.
Blick


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Re: Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-(
« Reply #9 on: September 10, 2016, 12:10:02 AM »
I am hoping that the upgrade for me goes smoothly.   I am interested in the revamped file system and I am more than sure there will be fixes and patches from the get go.
Perhaps the programmers can get ahead on it.


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elagache

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Which driver? (Re: GM Sierra for Mac Fixes USB Port Issue)
« Reply #10 on: September 10, 2016, 12:55:11 AM »
Dear Bob, Blick, Weatheraardvark, and WeatherCat station caregivers,

I was a beta user of Sierra.  As a beta user you receive the GrandMaster of Sierra in advance of its release date - I received it last night.   I just installed it (took almost 2 hrs) and my Vantage Pro Weather Station is now uploading to my web page through the USB port with no issues. [cheer] [snow]

Might I inquire as to which driver you are using?  the latest Silicon Labs driver?  Perhaps the reason why Silicon Labs never certified their driver for El Capitan had something to do within OS 10.11 itself.  It will be interesting to see what Silicon Labs does once Sierra "hits the streets."

Cheers, Edouard

bob2k2

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Re: Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-(
« Reply #11 on: September 12, 2016, 08:55:11 PM »
I am using version 4 of the Silicon Graphics driver. Since i have a pre-release Sierra GM I assume we won't see anything from them until after the official release date.


Regret to inform  [rainyluck] yesterday Weathercat crashed (It has been rock solid since the last update) once, but restarted and this again AM I was alerted it crashed overnight but restarted and then crashed this afternoon and did not restart.



Bob

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Re: Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-(
« Reply #12 on: September 12, 2016, 09:57:56 PM »
Stu's been strangely silent concerning the latest WC release compatibility with the versions of macOS Sierra the developers have been running. Hopefully he's been beavering away and the transition will be smooth. We're what, eight days away from the macOS Sierra rollout?


OTOH, Edouard's advice (to wait for an official OK before upgrading the primary computer running WC) is sage.


Apple hardware compatibility:


http://www.apple.com/macos/how-to-upgrade/#hardware-requirements

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For OS caution is the better part of valor (Re: Sierra breaks weathercat :-( )
« Reply #13 on: September 12, 2016, 11:40:12 PM »
Dear Bob, Felix, and WeatherCat "bleeding edgers," . . . .

OTOH, Edouard's advice (to wait for an official OK before upgrading the primary computer running WC) is sage.

I'm afraid everyone should show more caution than we have had to in the past.  Software engineers are under a lot of pressure to innovate and bugs are much more common even on application software.  Even software which I used to upgrade as a matter of practice because it was a good outfit are now burning me.

The operating system is a much more radical upgrade than any program.  If you break a problem, the rest of your computer still works.  Upgrade your OS and your computer might ever be the same.  Even if Sierra works perfectly well on Apple's own development computers, the problem is all that legacy software that is dragging around on your hard drive.  Apple hasn't tested Sierra with all of that.

I suppose we all should blast our hard drives clean and install only the software we really use from time to time.  However, if you are like me you use a lot of software.  It would take me months to get my computer running as I like if I had to start from scratch.  If you have to brave a incremental upgrade, the best policy is to let somebody else be the first victims.

Remember the old saying: "Learn from other people's mistakes, because you can't possibly make all those mistakes by yourself!"

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

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Re: Sierra for Mac - seems to break weathercat :-(
« Reply #14 on: September 12, 2016, 11:58:39 PM »
As always, I'd recommend waiting for at least the .1 update.

There will be bugs in the OS that may affect you. Last year it was 10.11.2 before things settled down - specifically there was a font bug which meant a crash on start-up (only for some people) and a file system bug which meant the OS was not closing files when it was told to, leading to WeatherCat shutting itself down when it could no longer open files.

These bugs won't affect everyone, but they will affect some people and sometimes a work around can be found and sometimes it's just a case of waiting for Apple to fix it. Either way, my advice would be to wait.

If you do have a problem with the released OS and WeatherCat, please log a bug in the bugs forum so we can look at it. Crash and/or hang reports and as much detail as possible are appreciated.

Finally, check any USB to serial drivers you need are compatible before upgrading - last year was a bit of a disaster as far as Silicon Labs is concerned :)