Vitamin D Agent quit unexpectedly

[classicshotokan]

I am getting the "Vitamin D Agent quit unexpectedly" warning about once a day now. Started a few days ago after a couple of weeks of never seeing that error.

New Mac mini, OS is up to date. 3 Axis cams plus internal iSight, if that matters.

Is this something I can ignore?
Is Vitamin D still running while this warning is on the screen, or does it stop until I acknowledge it? (Security system runs unattended, and so I'm asking if this error shuts it down until I return.)

[classicshotokan]

More information:

I got another of these crashes today. It seemed to happen soon after I walked into the building, perhaps detecting me is what initiated the crash?

Instead of acknowledging it, I tested all cameras. All notification functions stopped working. There was no saving of files and no actions taken at all.

Restarting VitaminD didn't change anything.

In the past I've restarted the Mac and everything came back up for a while. I will do that after making this post.

Needless to say, this renders Vitamin D unreliable and I hope there is a fix soon.

I am on a new, stock Mac mini that was purchased solely to run this security system. I run SSH and Safari, too. Nothing that should be crashing it.

[classicshotokan]

This crash is now happening multiple times per day. I'd like to try re-install VitD.

I assume just delete VitD from my app folder. Are there any other places that files are kept? Path and name?

Is there a prefs file I can try to salvage that will save my rules and other settings? Where is that and what's it called?

Thanks.

[ryan]

Hi classicshotokan,

Before you remove everything (or you can wait until after you re-install to see if it is still happening), you might want to go to the "Help" menu and choose "Report a Problem". This will send us some logs that might help us better troubleshoot your problem.

On OSX the data storage directory is: /Users/<your user name>/Library/Application Support/Vitamin D Video/

Deleting this directory is somewhat close to re-installing (assuming the .app file itself wasn't somehow corrupted) as we don't store information within the .app file.

Gui Prefs.pkl and backEndPrefs hold application preferences, camdb holds information about your configured cameras. The rules directory holds information about your configured rules, and the videos directory holds all of the cache, clips, and object information. If you want to maintain a backup somewhere of your current configuration, saving Gui Prefs.pkl, backEndPrefs, camdb, and the rules directory should do it.

Hope this helps, sorry that you're having problems currently,
- ryan

[doug]

Sorry this is happening. It is not something that we've seen outside of development builds, so we'd definitely like to know what's going wrong so we can fix it. As Ryan said, the "report a bug" may provide some insight. However, in this particular case, the crash is happening in a bit of the lower level code, so "report a bug" might not be enough.

If possible, we'd also love to get files related to Vitamin D from Apple's Crash Reporter. I believe you can find files here:
~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter

...where "~" is your home folder.

Those would also help give us an idea of what is going on.


Also: do you know if this is associated with the Axis cameras, or the iSight?

Thanks!

-Doug

[classicshotokan]

I just did the "report a problem" thing.

Where do I send these files to?

[classicshotokan]

I just figured out how to copy the apple crash report. (You gotta "select all" then right click on it to find a "copy" option. The menu is grayed out.) The file is not where you said. Maybe it's invisible, but nothing is there, even right after a crash. (I tried using transmit and "show invisible files, still nothing.)

anyway, I just sent it in via the report a bug system.

[classicshotokan]

> On OSX the data storage directory is: /Users/<your user name>/Library/Application Support/Vitamin D Video/
Can I just rename this folder?

I am currently running both VitD and SecuritySpy. Each uses different cameras. I'm starting V with just the iSight. I'll add cameras after demonstrating stability.

Cameras I'm not running in V are simply turned off in V (both camera and rules). Should I delete them?

I have not reinstalled yet.

Possible cause: I'm illuminating a small dance hall at night with a single 23 W (100W equivalent) fluorescent bulb. I've gotten "slow frame rate" warnings before at night. There's a fair amount of clutter, it's a work site. Solution might be to increase illumination?

Edit: not all crashes happened at night.

[classicshotokan]

Update: I reduced the number of cameras and V is stable again.

I plan to add cameras slowly. I also will increase illumination at night. Long term I may need a bigger computer than a Mac mini so I can run 6-8 cameras.

[ryan]

> On OSX the data storage directory is: /Users/<your user name>/Library/Application Support/Vitamin D Video/
Can I just rename this folder?

You can rename and later restore this folder to save the state of Vitamin D, though this isn't officially supported as a few things can go wrong if not done correctly. Please make sure that when copying/renaming this folder or attempting to restore that VDV is closed and there are no Vitamin D processes listed in the task manager/activity monitor. Also note that when restoring this way CPU usage will likely be high for a while when next running the app. This is because the cache that existed when you made the backup is now likely more than 24 hours old (or whatever you have changed the cache duration to) and so the application must now go through and delete/make clips from a large amount of data rather than the normal small bit at a time it normally encounters.

Cameras I'm not running in V are simply turned off in V (both camera and rules). Should I delete them?

If you'd like to re-enable them at some point in the future it might be useful to leave them configured in Vitamin D Video. If you no longer want those cameras or their video on the machine then go ahead and delete them.

Update: I reduced the number of cameras and V is stable again.

I plan to add cameras slowly. I also will increase illumination at night.

Glad things have been working for you! The error you submitted certainly looked like it might be with a specific camera's stream/configuration, so as you add cameras again if a particular one causes the crashes again let us know and we can troubleshoot further.