Buggy Software (resolved)

[socalezrider]

Anyone having a problem of scheduling a show (musical) only to NOT have it run. When you look at the control panel status window it show next shows 12:00:00 AM? I go back into the schedule editor and the show is missing completely, as if I never scheduled it. The show (.lss) file exists, it is just gone from the scheduler.

Someone please help! This is really frustrating.

Thia has been a horrible year for me with the software issues.

[LightORamaDan]

socalezrider wrote:

Anyone having a problem of scheduling a show (musical) only to NOT have it run. When you look at the control panel status window it show next shows 12:00:00 AM? I go back into the schedule editor and the show is missing completely, as if I never scheduled it. The show (.lss) file exists, it is just gone from the scheduler.

Someone please help! This is really frustrating.

Thia has been a horrible year for me with the software issues.

When I see a topic like "buggy software" I want to understand what our bug is so we can fix it. With your help explain the steps that you have taken we can attempt to understand the esoteric cause of this. Obviously with untold thousands of schedules working properly we will have to understand what lead to this issue.

Lets start with the simple... If you go into the Sechedule Editor now and put in an entry, then click save do you get any error of any kind?

If not click the Revert Button and see if your changes stay. When you click Revert it re-reads from disk so you can be sure that your changes have been saved.

[socalezrider]

Dan, Frustration, I apologize for being short, but I am tired and losing all of the fun out of this...

After posting and sending you a private PM, I noticed two *.lsc files (weeksched and yearsched) under the sequence directory, both 1 kb in size. I open them in notepad and they are empty. I deleted them and took the following steps.

Windows XP, LOR 1.6.9

1.) Launch schedule editor
2.) Add new show (everyday of week, 4PM - 10PM, choose *.lss file)
3.) Save
4.) Notice files weeksched and yearsched reapear in sequence directory, again both 1kb in size and empty.
5.) open schedule editor again, nothing scheduled
6.) Reboot machine
7.) Repeat steps 1-3 again, result same as 4-7 - Einsteins definition of insanity is starting to come into play...

Please help, anyone!

[socalezrider]

Dan,

Can you send me a LSC file for just a musical show containing 4-5 LSS files and I will manually create the LSC file in emacs or notepad. My thinking is that if the file contains the data (xml?) that the schedule editor software references when launching, this should be a quick work around.

Ya - Nay?

[LightORamaDan]

When you SAVE are you clicking the Save button in the Scheduler or saving on Exit.

[socalezrider]

i am using the save button, not saving on exit, tried both just to make sure, error message pops up when exiting w/o saving. So saving using save button in top left corner is only way.

I blew away a previous show that I had that was working fine because I tried to change the show for one night and it kept reverting back to the orginal show that was scheduled. Since rebooting3x, reverting is not an option.

i think the LSC file is getting created but not written.

[socalezrider]

Also, everytime I hit save, the date modified on the weeksched.lsc and yearsched.lsc file are updated with the correct date/time, yet the files remain 1 kb in size and empty.

[Tim Fischer]

socal,

As for your workaround, check out http://lightorama.mywowbb.com/view_topic.php?id=15087&forum_id=7, in which a few of us attempted to reverse engineer the schedule format. If the file not getting written out is your only problem, that might work for now...

I also seem to recall other people having this problem, and running the LOR "registry wipe" program fixed it...

-Tim

[LightORamaDan]

If you send me the times you want your show I will setup a sequence. The file format is not all that friendly.

Tim's suggestion of the regwipe working may be helpful but in the cases where we give a suggestion that it be used, the problem was that they were trying to save the file in a non-existant location due to registery issues.

In this case it appears that the file is being created and even modified but no data is being written. We have not changed the schedule editor since the 1.5.x versions of software so I am not really sure why this would happen.

[socalezrider]

Thanks for the link to the other thread.

I stumbled across the following observation late last night. I have absolutely no idea why this is happening or how to fix it since the schedule editor only has a "Save" button and no "Save As" feature that allows you to choose the directory. Therefore, the directory/path must be hard coded into the code running the schedule editor...

The problem:

It appears that the scheduler editor is saving the weeksched.lsc file in the LightORama/Sequences directory instead of the LightORama parent directory where all of the other executables are located (e.g. sequence editor, show editor, schedule editor, etc.) and therefore does not have a file to reference when opening the sequence editor.

My work around:

Using the schedule editor, I created and saved a show. It update the weeksched.lsc file in the C:/Program Files/LightORama/Sequences directory (as I noted above).

I closed the schedule editor.

I copied the recently updated weeksched.lsc file from C:/Program Files/LightORama/Sequences to C:/Program Files/LightORama (one directory up, where the LOR executables reside).

I opened the schedule editor and it now displays graphically the scheduled shows as they were saved from the previous session.

Again, I do not know why this is happening or how to correct it, but this work-around seems to have given me the desired result for now. However, I am hoping that the LOR team figures the cause of this problem out because it was not a very easy or intuitive fix to locate.

Thanks for you quick responses Dan. I hope this might help others who may be having the same issue.

Sean

[Tim Fischer]

The path isi stored in the registry. It's the path you enter when running LOR the first time (when it prompts you for the directory to place your sequences in).

If you're fluent in regedit, you can search for the 'bad' path and change it. If not, the regwipe app might help you after all... But Dan could say for sure...

-Tim

[LightHouse]

Yes, I've had the same problem with 1.6.9. We had to go back to 1.6.1 which is what we used last year to get a stable system.

[LightORamaDan]

LightHouse wrote:

Yes, I've had the same problem with 1.6.9. We had to go back to 1.6.1 which is what we used last year to get a stable system.

One of the problems we are having with to move to version 1.6.3 and higher is that files are being moved around to new locations on the PC. To make the software Vista Friendly we needed to move files that are modified such as Schedule files, show files and sequence files to new locations.

So with the install, files are moved and registry entries are changed however it appears that in some cases that install does not go perfectly. Things appear to work correctly when we run things on test machines but we are missing something and in some configurations/setups the upgrade leaves things in a state where applications cannot find all of their files.

In most cases, the use of the Reg-Wipe program seems to clear things up. The Reg-Wipe program erases all of the LOR entries in the System Registry (where file locations are kept). If you run RegWipe and then run the LOR Control Panel (or most LOR programs for that matter), the program will rebuild the registery entries.

[Mesa Holiday Lights]

I had a very similar problem tonight. I upgraded my show PC to 1.6.9 last night and then I didn't notice until the show was suppose to start that it wasn't running. Well, I check the schedule and it was blank. I tried to add in an entry, but it would not save. I'm guessing that after reading this thread that because I installed the program to C:Light-O-Rama that might be part of the problem. I have checked the registry and all the paths are correctly pointing to the right directory. This is an XP machine, so there are no Vista security problems there. After trying for a few minutes to get it save anything I just reinstalled 1.6.1 and everything worked perfectly again, the schedule files were still intact and started to play.

I didn't have time to debug it more throughly, I needed the show to start, so I don't know where it was trying to save the files for the schedule to. I believe all I ran was the control panel and the schedule editor, I never started the editor. My Registry has the following entries:

AppPath = C:Light-O-Rama
AudioPath = C:Light-O-RamaAudio
NonAudioPath = C:Light-O-RamaSequences

Does 1.6.9 use the UserDataPath entry like LOR2 does? If that is the case then I probably needed to run the editor to make it put the entry in or do it manually, because the control panel and schedule editor didn't do it.

[Ken Robson]

I can't beleive this ,I have the exact same problem? Last year the program worked great -no problems. This year after getting all the lights up and i begin to work out the shows, this same problem occurs....yesterday while seeking an answer to the problem i find this post (by socalezrider) and it describes to the tee the same problem I am having, i can not get the show scheduler to run....doesn't save it.....Now the only difference between last year and this year is i have software version 1.5.0 and i tried to upgrade to a newer version 1.6.1 and half way thru the un-install process it stops,tells me it cannot finnish this, so now i try to install the upgrade and it tells me i do not have the full version and it will not install the upgrade, so i re-install from the disc , the original program, figuring i would be right back at last years original software.....but now i cannot build,save and run a show...after i save a show , the program status tells me its waiting on the next show at 12:00am sunday????? the only way i can get music and sequences to play, with lights flashing, is thru the sequence editor.... any help would "GREATLY" be appreciated- thanks, ken


Attached files

[Mesa Holiday Lights]

I've found that with LOR 1 installs, in order for the upgrade to detect the full version, you need to go through the setup wizard of the Sequence editor in 1.5 before 1.6 will install. That is what adds the registry entries that tell the installer it is installed. Then you have to go through the wizard again because 1.6 uses different keys that have to be set up.

I reinstalled 1.6.9 this morning and ran the sequence editor first. Then I checked my schedule and everything was there, however I still can not save any changes.

So I ran some debugging tools and found that when the schedule program opens the file, it only looks in C:Light-O-Rama for the two lsc files. Then when it saves, it saves them to the C:Light-O-RamaSequences directory. I tried removing the files in the C:Light-O-Rama directory, but it does not load the ones in the sequences directory. The same is true of the control panel. It continues to look only in the C:Light-O-Rama directory.

A temporary workaround is to copy the weeksched.lsc and yearsched.lsc files from the sequence directory into the program directory, but this is obviously a bug with how the schedule editor is working in 1.6.9. I don't have this problem with 1.6.1, but I can work with it until a fix becomes availible. I even tried removing the AppPath entry pointing to the C:Light-O-Rama directory, but that didn't make a difference.

[Mesa Holiday Lights]

Ok I don't know what I did, but now everything is working properly, it is saving to the same location as it is loading from, C:Light-O-Rama. The last thing I did was move the two .lsc files into the Light-O-Rama directory. I even tried copying the files back, but it didn't break. Very strange.

[Ken Robson]

Problem solved!!!! reg-wipe twice, reinstall usb drivers,used older version for xp, now everything works like a champ....show scheduler runs , starts and stops when it supose to, plays all seq. songs and shows, both animated and musical......
now for the million $ question since i have version 1.5.0 running good -should i risk up grading to a newer version....does it really matter? thanks Ken


Attached files

[Tim Fischer]

Ken Robson wrote:

now for the million $ question since i have version 1.5.0 running good -should i risk up grading to a newer version....does it really matter? thanks Ken

If it ain't broke...

-Tim