Pmv 3.17 Blocks On Foc If Last Drive Used Is Unavailable, And sometimes even when it is! Options

[asavage]

I've noticed this in other versions, but it was really apparent today when I installed v3.71

The last time I used PMV, I was using a networked drive for opening files.

When I installed v3.71 today, the network drive was unavailable. Upon <Ctrl+O>, PMV nearly locks the system. I have three installations, and I thought it was PMV locking up, but it would seem to work right up until I opened the FOC.

The first box opened the FOC, and populated it with placeholder icon, but locked up when drawing the thumbnails. The other two wouldn't even draw the FOC; they just became zombied when <Ctrl+O> and the last drive was a non-available network drive. They would not immediately kill via the Tasklist, but given enough time, they did eventually die.

When I rebooted the server (the network resource for image files), and restarted each PMV, they seem to work OK.

I have noticed bad behaviour in the past WRT the FOC and networked drives, sometimes to the point of having to reboot the client box, and at one time this was bad enough that I just didn't use PMV on networked drives, but the last two years this has been less of a problem, though it would still become unresponsive when <Ctrl-O> on a network drive and I'd have to kill & restart it. In those cases, it would always lock up during populating the icons in the right pane; either it wouldn't draw all the placeholders, or it wouldn't finish creating the thumbnails.

I've put off posting about this bug for years, because it seemed like too much work to track down for what I perceived to be an OS/2 networking-related issue, but I have had it happen at least once on a WinXP SP3 box, just last week. I've no idea about how to approach fixing it, but I thought it would be a good idea to document that at least one user is having a problem WRT the FOC and networked drives.

I do 90% of my work with images on an OS/2 server. Lately, I've been doing a lot more than previously, so the frequency of problems is higher.

[later]
FOC locks up with 3/4 of the FOC saying "can't create thumbnail" and two icons saying "creating thumbnail". CPU at 100%, mouse moves but is showing an OS/2 clock cursor. I was able to grab a camera and take a picture, as it turns out the box had to be rebooted -- the screen remained unchanged for 30 minutes.

[later]
I just updated my WinXP box to v3.71, and saw some odd FOC behaviour too, noted in the second picture below: the left pane does not fully populate all of the mapped drives until about 45 seconds have elapsed.

Here's a couple of pics. If the links don't work, my broadband is down again.
Screenshot via camera: OS/2: box locked up at FOC

Screenshot via camera: WinXP: PMV locked for 45 seconds.

I'm off to backlevel to v3.70 (on the OS/2 boxes at least).

Sidebar for the Win version:
While I'm thinking of it: Win version: when I have a whole lot of files on a network drive and the FOC has generated thumbnails, and I dump a new file in that remote directory via another app, then bring up the FOC and refresh (F5), on the Win box there is no indication that the refresh is occurring.

For example, using PhotoShop, I just put those two pics above in a directory I was working on with PMV. I wanted to bring the PSD file in PMV. I opened the FOC and saw all the existing thumbnails. I pressed <F5>. The new PSD file has a filename which sorts it to the end. It took around ten seconds before the new placeholder icon (and eventually the thumbnail) appeared. During that 10 seconds, there is not user feedback that the refresh is occurring. I, as a long-time user of PMV, am used to this, but every so often I forget to "wait for it", and during this interval I'm thinking that something has gone wrong.

As an enhancement, some kind of visual indication that a refresh is in progress would be a good idea.

[asavage]

Your forum software does not let me edit the Subject, so I cannot fix it.

The Subject (Title) should be "PMV v3.71 blocks . . . ", not "3.17".

Also, the re-capitalization of the Subject words is not nice. That's not what I typed.

[Peter]

Your forum software does not let me edit the Subject, so I cannot fix it.

The Subject (Title) should be "PMV v3.71 blocks . . . ", not "3.17".

Also, the re-capitalization of the Subject words is not nice. That's not what I typed.

The forum is what it is. The re-capitalization has bugged me for years.

Did you notice the new "Thumbnail Provider" option in v3.71. You may want to set it to "PMView Only" if v3.71 appears slower than previous versions.

The implementation requires a well behaved system. If a drive blocks, then PMView will wait (as you have noticed). I will consider adding the standard windows file open dialog in the next version as a solution to the problem.

Thanks,
Peter

[asavage]

On my OS/2 box, it's doing it again right now. The FOC is populating the thumbnail icons, the CPU is at 100% and has been for over an hour. The system clock is still running, though it only updates every 4-6 seconds.

The directory that the FOC is loading contains only 50 image files. The directory is on a mapped remote network drive, and is available from other boxes. I can't tell if it's available to the problem box, because the system is unresponsive.

As I mentioned, this has been a problem for several versions. I generally just try to avoid using PMV to work with images on remote drives, but this is not really possible in my work environment anymore.

Is there a debug version that I can use to capture some data that can help you determine why the FOC is running the CPU up to 100% for an hour while processing thumbnails in a directory with only 50 files?

[Peter]

It sounds like you have overlooked a setting: Have you disabled the OS/2 specific PMView sub-directory scanning option: View->Scan subfolders (right click on the background of the tree)? It is on by default, but may need to be disabled on systems that have slow drives.

That said, exceptionally long processing times as you describe is a common indication that the system is doing heavy memory swapping. Do you have 4G RAM installed? Have you enabled OS/2 High Memory? (Check the System Info dialog in PMView - it will tell you).

[asavage]

I'll try that in a moment; I had given up on PMV recovering after 90 minutes, so I rebooted, and then tried navigating to the directory again, and PMV again locked up, so I'm rebooting again.

The drives (local & networked) are not particularly slow.

Scanning sub-folders sounds like something I'd want enabled, rather than disabled.

In any event, I've lost work twice today due to this problem.

[Peter]

Scanning sub-folders sounds like something I'd want enabled, rather than disabled.

It comes with a big penalty! This is why the option was added in the first place. Try it, and see if it makes a difference. I added the option because of feedback similar to yours 10 years ago...