Custom Page Uploads Freeze at 07:00, 16:00, 19:00 and 00:00 Every Day

[rcportertd]

Hi All

I have recently upgraded the Mac that I use for my Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather station and the custom pages freeze at 07:00, 16:00, 19:00 and 00:00 every day.  I fix the problem by rebooting the Mac shortly after these times.  I have turned off and back on features that may interfere with the FTP upload (such as Twitter and Custom Gauges) but these do not appear to have any effect.

Has anyone else observed this behaviour and if so, do you know if there is a fix available?

The details of my rig are as follows:

- Site: https://weather.trearddurbay.org
- Mac:  Apple M1 chip with 8‑core CPU, 8‑core GPU and 16‑core Neural Engine, 16Gb memory
- Weathercat: Version Version 3.1.3 (the latest one)
- Data Logger: Every 1 minute
- Page Uploads: Every 1 minute
- Custom Gauge Uploads: Every 30 seconds
- Other Uploads: Twitter, Wunderground, CWOP and UK Met Office (WOW)

Thanks in anticipation of any help provided.

Richard

[xairbusdriver]

First, I see this is your first post! Welcome aboard Richard!!

Haven't upgraded to Monterey yet and don't know how usable that version of Console might be. However, you might try looking at the various logs for events around those times. I suspect WC will be writing problem/crash logs and those may help. But it also could be another app that is causing the problem.

It is strange that this is happening every three hours but doesn't start until 7:00. Does your Mac run 24/7 or does it shutdown at night and restart each day?

I assume the video is streamed from an offsite source (v.angelcam.com) rather than created by WC.
I also assume you have a very fast connection to the web if you are updating your site every minute. On the other hand, there are not many WC intensive operations as there are only a few Custom Graphs.

[rcportertd]

Hi xairbusdriver

Thanks for welcoming me to the forum.  Much appreciated.

The Mac runs all of the time but does do an automatic reboot once per day to clear down any leaks, etc..  I've scheduled the reboot to take place at 7:10am so that there are only a few minutes of downtime when that daily freeze occurs.

The video is indeed streamed from by Angelcam so goes nowhere near the Mac that runs the weather station.

I have had a look at the crash reports and I have copied an extract from the one that took place at 22:00 BST today below.  It looks like the code is trying to access data that is outside of its boundaries (such as a string or an array).  However, I am not sure how to diagnose the root cause of the problem so any further insights from the forum would be greatly appreciated.

I'll keep trying to explore potential conflicts in the meantime.

Thank you once again for your quick response earlier.

Best wishes

Richard

Process:               WeatherCat [569]
Path:                  /Applications/WeatherCat.app/Contents/MacOS/WeatherCat
Identifier:            com.trixology.weathercat
Version:               3.1.3 (3.1.3)
Code Type:             X86-64 (Translated)
Parent Process:        launchd [1]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2022-05-02 22:00:46.1432 +0100
OS Version:            macOS 12.3.1 (21E258)
Report Version:        12
Anonymous UUID:        6084B6E0-5580-FE2D-695E-097C61211492


Time Awake Since Boot: 18000 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread:        3

Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSRangeException', reason: '*** -[__NSCFString substringFromIndex:]: Index 9223372036854775807 out of bounds; string length 551'
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException
abort() called

[xairbusdriver]

Just realized I had the crash times misinterpreted, even after you make it so easy by using 'European'/'rest-of-the-world'/military/non-US nomenclature! The crash 'schedule' is even more strange: 0700 to 1600=9hrs, 1600 to 1900=3hrs, 1900 to 0000=5hrs, 0000 to 0700=7hrs of No known problems! So, what is happening every 9, 3 and 5 hours but not for at least another 7 hours?! Only thing I see is that it is a launchd action.

As I said, I'm not using Monterey, in fact, WC is running on a Mac mini that is still using Catalina! While I am using WC v 3.20 (build 220), I don't see any WC related LaunchAgents or Daemons in any HD/System/Library, HD/Library directories. My user Library does have a few LaunchAgents of my own creation, but not related to WC.

If your Monterey system is similar, I would still think the problem is with one or more of WC's .plist files(s). If you have a plain text editor (TextWrangler is a free version of BBEdit), you can at least look at all the WC .plist files and see if they look to be terminated properly; last two items should be "</dict>" followed by "</plist>". The first three lines should be:

Code: [Select]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">If you find a .plist that chokes ( ) TextWrangler, it may be the one that is corrupted!

Please give The Dev a bit of slack by not expecting a reply/fix in the next few hours or even days, WC is not his "day job"! And there may even be a forum viewer who has solved the problem already!

[rcportertd]

Thanks again for your continued support and advice.

I looked through all of the WeatherCat .plist files and found that the SylvesterTweets.plist file was corrupted, so I deleted the file, created a new one and configured that to do what I want it to do.

I was hopeful that this would fix things but alas no.  The system froze again at 16:00!  I checked the new version of the affected .plist file and it seems fine so no issues with that.  Interestingly, there was not a system crash report on console for the WeatherCat application.

I noticed that the WeatherCat application runs as an Intel process and was wondering it may be an issue with the Mac mini using the Apple chip.  Any thoughts on this being the potential issue?

In the meantime, I am continuing to look around the forum to see if there are any insights that can be gleaned from others' experiences.  I'll keep updating this thread with what I do and find out as well, just in case other people experience the same issue at some stage in the future.

[elagache]

Dear rcportertd, X-Air, and WeatherCat troubleshooters,

Sorry to hear about your strange problem with WeatherCat.

I looked through all of the WeatherCat .plist files and found that the SylvesterTweets.plist file was corrupted, so I deleted the file, created a new one and configured that to do what I want it to do.
. . . .

Did you also check the main WeatherCat application preference file?  It is with all the other application preferences in a separate directory.    The path (in UNIX notation) is:

~/Library/Preferences/com.trixology.weathercat.plist

The ~ refers to your home directory.  This preference file alas is vulnerable to corruption.  We have an article on the WeatherCat Wiki on how to make a backup and restore from that backup if needed:

https://wiki.trixology.com/index.php?title=How_to_create_and_use_a_backup_of_your_WeatherCat_preferences_file

I noticed that the WeatherCat application runs as an Intel process and was wondering it may be an issue with the Mac mini using the Apple chip.  Any thoughts on this being the potential issue?
. . . .

There is a thread were people have been reporting their experiences with the latest version of macOS and Apple processors:

https://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=3196.0

It is a long and old thread, but you'll find information on the M1 Macs later in the thread.  You can also simply search for M1 and see what other people are experiencing.  However at least in my recollection,  no other WeatherCat user is having experiences like yours.

Do keep us posted about what you discover.

Cheers, Edouard