Ver. 1.15 loosing data

[edenorchestra]

I am having constant drop outs since upgrading to 1.15, using the Davis WeatherLinkIP.  Data sent to various weather stations such as WeatherUG appear to be getting the data fine, but I have constant problems with the WeatherCat software.  Also WeatherCat is consistently causing my hard drive to run for hours, how long should a backup really take? .  Attached is a screen capture of my current situation.

[WCDev]

Hi edenorchestra.

The only change in 1.1.5 was for a potential crash in CWOP, nothing that could cause the issue you're seeing there. Check with WeatherCat's log window (Tools->Log) for any messages that might indicate what the problem might be - also run disk utility over your disk just to give it a checkout. Looking back through the posts, this seems very similar to the issue you had back in October (see: http://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=474.msg4162#msg4162) - what was the issue then?

Cheers,
Stu.

[edenorchestra]

Yea you are right, this happened before, I am thinking the computer into sleep mode, I turned that off AGAIN, and will watch the data.  The hard drive issue is bewildering, I often come into my office and hear the HD running for long periods, when I shut down WCat, it stops.  Did a disk utility a couple times since to no avail.  Here's dump form my console, I'll keep an eye on this.  Can you look at WCat logs older than 24 hours?

5/21/13 3:17:20.687 PM WeatherCat[22938]: ***Hardware comms fail (stale data)***
5/21/13 3:17:22.021 PM WeatherCat[22938]: ***Hardware comms restored***
5/21/13 3:17:24.959 PM WeatherCat[22938]: DM: Want 109 historical minutes.
5/21/13 3:17:26.064 PM WeatherCat[22938]: DM 0: Initialising sample cache
5/21/13 3:17:27.297 PM WeatherCat[22938]: DM 0: Sample cache initialised. Took 1.23 seconds
5/21/13 3:17:27.297 PM WeatherCat[22938]: Loading current month...
5/21/13 4:23:45.902 PM WeatherCat[22938]: ***Hardware comms fail (stale data)***
5/21/13 4:23:47.111 PM WeatherCat[22938]: ***Hardware comms restored***
5/21/13 4:23:51.053 PM WeatherCat[22938]: Loading current month...
5/21/13 4:23:52.604 PM WeatherCat[22938]: DM: Want 66 historical minutes.
5/21/13 4:23:53.449 PM WeatherCat[22938]: DM 0: Initialising sample cache
5/21/13 4:23:53.483 PM WeatherCat[22938]: DM 0: Sample cache initialised. Took 0.03 seconds
5/21/13 4:23:53.483 PM WeatherCat[22938]: Loading current month...
5/21/13 4:24:29.055 PM WeatherCat[22938]: Loading current month...
5/21/13 5:11:12.344 PM WeatherCat[419]: Checking System Version is 10.5 or later...
5/21/13 5:11:12.345 PM WeatherCat[419]: System Version Check OK, running...
5/21/13 5:11:12.388 PM WeatherCat[419]: Main Controller initialised.
5/21/13 5:11:12.389 PM WeatherCat[419]: WeatherCat is Running...
5/21/13 5:11:12.391 PM WeatherCat[419]: NSPanel does not support NSUnifiedTitleAndToolbarWindowMask in a utility window
5/21/13 5:11:13.958 PM WeatherCat[419]: DM 0: ***Hello!***
5/21/13 5:11:13.960 PM WeatherCat[419]: DM 0: Initialising sample cache
5/21/13 5:11:14.010 PM WeatherCat[419]: DM 0: Sample cache initialised. Took 0.05 seconds
5/21/13 5:11:14.011 PM WeatherCat[419]: Loading current month...
5/21/13 5:11:26.871 PM WeatherCat[419]: StatsInit took 9.584342 seconds to process
5/21/13 5:11:26.996 PM WeatherCat[419]: Stats(0) took 0.121904 seconds to parse
5/21/13 5:11:27.383 PM WeatherCat[419]: WeatherCatPlugInManager: Examining /Applications/WeatherCat/WeatherCat.app/Contents/Resources//IntegratedPlugins/CurrentConditionsCalculator.bundle.
5/21/13 5:11:27.385 PM WeatherCat[419]: WeatherCatPlugInManager: Loaded Current Conditions Calculator.
5/21/13 5:11:27.387 PM WeatherCat[419]: WeatherCatPlugInManager: Examining /Applications/WeatherCat/WeatherCat.app/Contents/Resources//IntegratedPlugins/WCStatus.bundle.
5/21/13 5:11:27.395 PM WeatherCat[419]: WeatherCatPlugInManager: Loaded Live Data View.
5/21/13 5:11:27.398 PM WeatherCat[419]: WeatherCatPlugInManager: Examining /Applications/WeatherCat/WeatherCatPlugIns/AppPlugIns/BannerGenerator.bundle.
5/21/13 5:11:27.521 PM WeatherCat[419]: WeatherCatPlugInManager: Loaded Banner Generator.
5/21/13 5:11:29.785 PM WeatherCat[419]: Vantage rain collector is set to 0.01 inch
5/21/13 5:11:37.212 PM WeatherCat[419]: Trying to bind to network port
5/21/13 5:11:37.212 PM WeatherCat[419]: Got network port
5/21/13 5:11:37.243 PM WeatherCat[419]: getFTPPassword failed with code -25300
5/21/13 5:11:37.266 PM WeatherCat[419]: CustomWebGetFTPPassword failed with code -25300
5/21/13 5:11:50.309 PM WeatherCat[419]: Loading current month...
5/21/13 8:39:19.113 PM WeatherCat[1290]: NSPanel does not support NSUnifiedTitleAndToolbarWindowMask in a utility window
5/21/13 8:39:19.154 PM WeatherCat[1290]: Checking System Version is 10.5 or later...
5/21/13 8:39:19.154 PM WeatherCat[1290]: System Version Check OK, running...
5/21/13 8:39:19.199 PM WeatherCat[1290]: Main Controller initialised.
5/21/13 8:39:19.199 PM WeatherCat[1290]: WeatherCat is Running...
5/21/13 8:39:23.733 PM WeatherCat[1290]: DM 0: ***Hello!***
5/21/13 8:39:23.741 PM WeatherCat[1290]: DM 0: Initialising sample cache
5/21/13 8:39:23.888 PM WeatherCat[1290]: DM 0: Sample cache initialised. Took 0.15 seconds
5/21/13 8:39:23.889 PM WeatherCat[1290]: Loading current month...
5/21/13 8:39:34.451 PM WeatherCat[1290]: StatsInit took 7.925650 seconds to process
5/21/13 8:39:34.555 PM WeatherCat[1290]: Stats(0) took 0.101841 seconds to parse
5/21/13 8:39:35.151 PM WeatherCat[1290]: WeatherCatPlugInManager: Examining /Applications/WeatherCat/WeatherCat.app/Contents/Resources//IntegratedPlugins/CurrentConditionsCalculator.bundle.
5/21/13 8:39:35.153 PM WeatherCat[1290]: WeatherCatPlugInManager: Loaded Current Conditions Calculator.
5/21/13 8:39:35.157 PM WeatherCat[1290]: WeatherCatPlugInManager: Examining /Applications/WeatherCat/WeatherCat.app/Contents/Resources//IntegratedPlugins/WCStatus.bundle.
5/21/13 8:39:35.162 PM WeatherCat[1290]: WeatherCatPlugInManager: Loaded Live Data View.
5/21/13 8:39:35.174 PM WeatherCat[1290]: WeatherCatPlugInManager: Examining /Applications/WeatherCat/WeatherCatPlugIns/AppPlugIns/BannerGenerator.bundle.
5/21/13 8:39:35.238 PM WeatherCat[1290]: WeatherCatPlugInManager: Loaded Banner Generator.
5/21/13 8:39:37.629 PM WeatherCat[1290]: Vantage rain collector is set to 0.01 inch
5/21/13 8:39:51.251 PM WeatherCat[1290]: Trying to bind to network port
5/21/13 8:39:51.251 PM WeatherCat[1290]: Got network port
5/21/13 8:39:51.281 PM WeatherCat[1290]: getFTPPassword failed with code -25300
5/21/13 8:39:51.306 PM WeatherCat[1290]: CustomWebGetFTPPassword failed with code -25300
5/21/13 8:40:04.420 PM WeatherCat[1290]: Loading current month...

[WCDev]

Hi edenorchestra,
Yes, if you go to the Advanced Preferences tab of WeatherCat's preferences and tick 'Copy Log Entries To Console Log', that'll copy everythong to the console log, which you can view via Applications->Utilities-Console.app. It'll save everything.

I don't recommend allowing you Mac to sleep if running WeatherCat - we've seen instances, particularly in the last few months, where when asleep, the Mac wakes up periodically for a short period of time (I'm guessing to check for mail or software updates). This can lead to inconsistent data within WeatherCat (it get's woken up, starts downloading from the logger, but before it's finished the Mac goes back to sleep leaving it inconsistent when the Mac wakes up properly). Putting the display/screen to sleep is fine.

Cheers,
Stu.

[edenorchestra]

i"ll give that a try.  Thanks.

[edenorchestra]

WeatherCat is set to back up data a 8:00 each day.  According to Console, the backup started correctly:

5/30/13 8:00:44.759 PM WeatherCat[17166]: Backing up data to /Users/xxxxxx/Library/WeatherCatBackups//WeatherCatBackup_Thu_30_May_2013_2000.

As of 8:38, WC is still accessing the HD in a constant manner.  Attempting to quit WC results in the message:
"Waiting for backup to complete:
Sending a second "quit" command to WC causes the application to stop as well as the HD activity.

Attached is a screen dump of the WC folders created; while WC is backing up, I cannot do a "Get Info"  in regards to the folder size on any of the folders in "WeacherCatBackups".  Once I do the double "quit" I can then check the size, and they average around 3-4GB. Does this seem extremely large?

I have no idea what the additional folders such as "WeatherCatData_Backup_Fri_05_Apr_2013_1025V115B25" are.

[WCDev]

Hi edenorchestra,
By default, WeatherCat will keep 7 days worth of backups - these are the other folders you are seeing. The backups are run as a low priority background task at the time set - the time and number of backups maintained can be set in the Backup window (Tools->Backups...). The minimum number of backups it'll keep is 1.

Most of the data there is going to be imagery data, so if you're not using the imager, you can disable it and delete the imagery. This will make the data much smaller. Info. on the imagery can be found in the manual on page 37 of the current manual. The location of the imagery data is at ~/Library/WeatherCat/Location1/Imagery - in here are the imagery files as jpeg images. You can either thin them out, delete some old ones or delete all of them if you don't want them. Also be sure to turn the imagery off in WeatherCat's preferences (or reduce the capture rate).

[edenorchestra]

Thanks, I did realize this once I looked closer at the data and decided I had no real need for the imagery.  Had I looked before posting, I would have known this.  In the meantime, the drive activity has all but ceased.