Snapshot crashing Actinic

[Tama^chan]

All of a sudden Actinic has started crashing when I try and do a site snapshot. I've tried compacting the database, restarting the computer about 6 times and nothing seems to change it - it gets about 10 seconds into the snapshot and then I get a windows error saying:

Catalog - Internet Sales Application has encountered a problem and needs to close.

I am running 8.5.1.0.0.0.HERA on an WinXP machine. It's driving me nuts because I add items to the catalog on this machine and then do snapshots to take it to the machine that handles orders and uploads - my website just went live yesterday so I am feeling particularly anxious! Everything was fine a few days ago, the only changes I have made have been:

- Added some products and duplicates
- Added two extra sections and some fragments
- Added a shipping class
- Edited email templates

If anyone has any ideas what to do to solve this problem I would appreciate it. I searched the forum and it sounds like a few ppl have had this same trouble, but all of the threads peter out without a solution given.

In the meantime if anyone can also advise an alternate way of transferring the data to my other computer without a snapshot that will relieve my anxiety a bit! Will copying over the Site1 folder be enough, or does a snapshot hold more information than that?

Thank you!

[wjcampbe]

In the short term, copying the site1 folder may serve your needs, but also may result in both computers becoming unusable, so back up the existing site1 on the 2nd computer BEFORE you overwrite it with the files from the 1st computer.

Can you import a snapshot from before you did your recent work, and redo the work, taking more frequent snapshots as you go?

Long term, you need to download and install 8.5.1 HFUA - this was issued to correct errors in the 8.5.1 HERA release.

[Tama^chan]

Thanks for that Bill - knowing that I can simply copy the Site1 folder makes me quite relieved!

Unfortunately my website is quite large and each time I take a snapshot it takes about 45-50 minutes (is this normal? I heard that it can be slow, but this seems a bit extreme....), so if I want to actually get anything done rather than just watch Actinic spin I am usually limited to only one or two snapshots a day. Copying over the Site1 folder actually sounds like a much quicker option, it's 750mb but surely wouldn't take as long as that to copy.

I'll instal HFUA once I've backed everything up - I have been a bit scared to in case I lost my layout changes but I'm feeling a bit more confident today after reading jont's technique for doing it.

[leehack]

it's 750mb

Unless you have about 15,000 products, you need to take a serious look at your setup. Unless of course you have videos or alike included.

Sounds like a whole host of poorly optimised images to me.

For example 10,000 product website i manage, 100's of sections, 1000's of extended information image popups, snapshot size - 289MB. Snapshot takes 25 minutes.

[Tama^chan]

Hi Lee

I've just been copying over the Site1 folder on the upload machine, and the Site1 folder on there is only about 360mb which is a bit more reasonable. The snapshot comes to around 125mb. (I forgot that because the laptop is my primary "work-in-progress" machine I store a lot of the raw images that I am still editing in the Site1 folder for convenience so I don't have to be doing a multitude of clicks to save stuff when I am working on it in Adobe - a bad idea?).

There are around 9000 products all with images and popups, and about 2000 duplicates, but admittedly the laptop is probably a bit underpowered so is probably contributing to the processing time. 25 minutes is ok but when you can watch an entire episode of Law and Order while you are waiting for the backup to finish it seems a bit much....

Copying the Site1 folder only takes about 5 minutes, so is all the extra chugging time when you take a snapshot because of doing the compression and making the overwrittensite.zip?

[leehack]

(I forgot that because the laptop is my primary "work-in-progress" machine I store a lot of the raw images that I am still editing in the Site1 folder for convenience so I don't have to be doing a multitude of clicks to save stuff when I am working on it in Adobe - a bad idea?).

I would say bad idea personally, use 'My Pictures' for raw images and actinic for finished photos. When you open and save an image with photoshop, the next one you do, remembers where you went previously, so it is just a case of repetitive clicks of 'return', no need to locate folders each time. Besides a batch process can speed this up even quicker. If you gave me 1000 images and asked me to save them all as 200x150 into a certain folder and have them as optimised jpegs, i could do that in less than 10 minutes. Perhaps your software could help you more than currently?

There are around 9000 products all with images and popups, and about 2000 duplicates, but admittedly the laptop is probably a bit underpowered so is probably contributing to the processing time. 25 minutes is ok but when you can watch an entire episode of Law and Order while you are waiting for the backup to finish it seems a bit much....

Dude, site i launched last week, took 2hrs 10 mins to just check the sections of the catalog, before it even thought about an upload, you don't need to tell me about how frustrating it can be.

Copying the Site1 folder only takes about 5 minutes, so is all the extra chugging time when you take a snapshot because of doing the compression and making the overwrittensite.zip?

Honest answer is i do not know, but you could ask why you can write a 650MB cd in 3 minutes, yet a 300Mb snapshot takes 25 mins to write. It must be down to the file transfer or creation process. When snapshotting, there are lots of checks going on and it is creating an archive, rather than copying a file, that is what i see as the time consuming part. Bit like the difference between making a cake and eating a cake i guess.

[Tama^chan]

Dude, site i launched last week, took 2hrs 10 mins to just check the sections of the catalog, before it even thought about an upload, you don't need to tell me about how frustrating it can be.

Absolutely - I would hate to have several sites on the go like you developers, the patience needed would be too much for me! I guess that's what we pay you the moderately-sized bucks for
An upload of my site seems to take a little under two hours all up, I've learnt to just set it going last thing before I go to bed rather than waiting because the Watched Pot Syndrome is too much for me to take - of course I then have to hope and pray that Actinic doesn't stop the process halfway through to ask me to tick a box so it can continue....

Honest answer is i do not know, but you could ask why you can write a 650MB cd in 3 minutes, yet a 300Mb snapshot takes 25 mins to write. It must be down to the file transfer or creation process. When snapshotting, there are lots of checks going on and it is creating an archive, rather than copying a file, that is what i see as the time consuming part. Bit like the difference between making a cake and eating a cake i guess.

I guess that's why I was nervous that just copying the Site1 folder over would do the same thing as a shapshot does - with all the extra processing time I thought there must be some mystical registry-rewriting or something fundamental I would be missing by just doing a simple Copy.

Regarding Adobe, I'd love to be able to do a simple batch process but alas! - in order to make the thumbnails look as "pretty" as possible I have to select areas of the image to highlight rather than just doing a simple resize (http://www.tamarket.com.au/acatalog/Air_Gear.html - that will give you an idea of what I mean - any comments on the site are also welcome, although it's pretty basic in design!)

Thanks for your help - am going to try the upgrade to HFUA later today and hopefully it will fix up my snapshot issues *crosses fingers*

[leehack]

The site i mentioned is a 7hr 45 min refresh, it failed the first time while i went to bed, so the next night i sat through 4 hrs of it, until i could take no more, luckily it loaded the last 4 hours ok too after i'd gone to bed - not sure i will take on a site that big again to be honest, so limiting with how i like to work.

I know what you mean about selecting certain parts etc of images, this is where you need to learn 'actions' and start using the 'fixed aspect ratio' on the selection tool. What you are then doing is selecting a proportional selection, you then click the green arrow to run your 'action' and that will resize it (they will all end up the same as you are selecting the correct ratio before running the action) and then it will also optimise them and put them where you want them. This process lets you process 500 images in about an hour, so still very quick.

Batches and actions - look em up and get smiling lol!

[Tama^chan]

Bad news - I upgraded successfully to the new version of 8.5.1 with a complete reinstall, but I get exactly the same error with trying to take a snapshot....any further ideas?

[Duncan Rounding]

I would open a support request with Actinic - if you have cover then give them a call. I expect they will probably ask for a zipped up version of your database.

Or, as Bill suggested earlier, recover to an earlier snapshot and then gradually redo the work you did saving along the way - at least copying the the site folder. I often do this for small mods as it's so much quicker. I think of it as a full backup follwed by a differential backup - to recover you would install Actinic, import the latest snapshot then overwrite the whole directory with the copied backup. It might not be the recommended route but it's worked fine for me so far.