Hard to describe system crash

[dane]

Good morning

I'm running version 6.42 build 2148 and I've had a few crashes recently. After deleting a large number of listings from a group's tab, if I go to click the little "x" to close the tab, and time it just wrong, newsbin will crash. It seems to be related to the change in the size of the tab as the number of articles in parentheses retracts to zero. If between the time that I position my mouse and click, the tab changes size - nothing; I'm clicking on dead space. If I click before the tab retracts, the tab seems to close normally. But if I hit it just wrong (and I wish I could explain that better, but I can't) the system crashes.

Fortunately due to protections already built into newsbin, once I restart the program any downloads that had been interrupted (except header downloads) automatically start up and pick up where they left off. So, not a big deal, but annoying nonetheless.

DaDane

[Quade]

Thanks for the report. I'll look into it.

[mimauk]

That's been happening for quite a long time - I reported it months ago but it seems to have got forgotten.

After I get rid of a lot of posts in a group tab now, I tend to open another group tab and sort the posts out in that one and then close the previous tab so NB doesn't crash. I think it has something to do with having to wait for the data bases to update before closing the tab.

[Quade]

The only real solution is to pop up a progress bar and prevent you from closing the tab till it finishes adding the posts to the deletor thingy. What's happening isn't database access, (which happens elsewhere) but, the collection of the posts into a format the database thingy can process. It's happening in a background thread and closing the tab causes bad things to happen with this thread. I've been reluctant to stall out everything for the delete but, that's probably the correction solution.

if you right click "Delete all posts" the mechanism is different and closing the tab won't do anything. It's much harder to delete "some" than it is to delete "all"

[mimauk]

Thanks for the update.

You can't trust them thingies

[dane]

Thanks Quade - it's only a problem when I'm rushing (too often I'm afraid). I'll try the "delete all" strategy - sounds like it might be easier than highlighting and deleting the way I have been. Just to be clear though, delete all just deletes those posts which are currently visible, yes? and not those which may be older or simply filtered out.

Thanks,
DaDane

[Quade]

Well, ALL means ALL. So, they'd all get killed. If you're trying to be selective. You don't want to use it.

[dane]

Okay, so now how do I recover from having deleted "all" which included some headers from days past which I was warehousing?

[Quade]

Well, you'll have to re-download headers.

One thing you might want to consider is that the things you want to save, you can send to a "Custom List" and get them out of the groups altogether. Then you could delete "All" while maintaining a listing of posts you care about. The watch lists work this way too. They can pull the data into a custom group, then you can keep the regular groups cleaned out.

[dane]

Thanks for the response. While I await my downloading headers, can you give me a little detail on sending to a custom list and using watchlists. Though I've been a n/b user for some time, I usually post to the newbie forum 'cause there's so much I don't know.

thanks,
DaDane

[dexter]

To send to a Custom List, just right-click the post or posts of interest and select "Save Files to Custom List".

Information on using the new watch feature is discussed in this thread.

Since it is beta, you need to have your key entered into your forum profile to gain access to the above link about the new beta feature (which you do, I'm stating this for others that may stumble across this thread).

[dane]

Thanks Dexter and Quade. The custom lists seem to work fine and will be a big help in organizing listings that I'd like to keep, while keeping them out of the way of my groups.

The description of the watch lists sounds like it will be extremely useful, but I have a stupid question - the thread link to Quade's explanation of watch lists started with " Make a new watch item". After that it seems easy, but I don't know how to do that. I see the right-click option to add to watch list, but don't know how to create the watch list or where to find it. Sorry for being dense.

DaDane

[dexter]

If you aren't running 6.5 beta, you won't be able to do this.

[dane]

No. 6.42 build 2148. Guess I'll give 6.5 a try.

Thanks,
DaDane

[dane]

Ok, ok, so I upgraded to 6.5 and have tried watchlists - which are really cool. Two things though:

1) I created some test watchlists. If I just searched for a random key word, when I used the rescan function I'd get results like records 2500, matches 163. When I used a more targeted scan (of weekly events) and used the rescan function to test them out, I'd get records 0 and matches would remain blank (grayed out). However, on the groups tab next to that watchlist the new files column would show 1 (appropriately). And lo and behold, when I'd show posts, there'd be a record there. Somethin' wrong with your index seems to me.

2) I'm too much of a newb to know how to search for 2 things at once - or the syntax for and/or. I'd like to link events which fall on the same day into a single watchlist. Can you direct me to a simple explanation please.

Thanks,
DaDane

[Quade]

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=32870

I'd post to here about it. You can see how he's trying to do it.

Keep in mind that the watch lists weren't designed top capture all off the things you one in one section, rather the idea was multiple watch lists so, you can modify one without impacting any of the other ones.

As for the count thing, I don't believe it'll re-count something that's already in the DB.