Actinic crashes when moving sections

[Steve G Griggs]

Hi.
Has anyone else had this happen with V9 Business-single user.
It's only intermittent but very annoying.
When moving catalogue sections (both cut & paste or drag & drop methods, actinic will occasionally crash & lose the section data.
Once or twice I have had the report that "Actinic tried to access an unamed file of ZERO length past it's end"...... what sort of error report is that? Its on the lines of "I met a man upon the stair who was'nt there" surely????
Confused.

[itc]

Hi.
Has anyone else had this happen with V9 Business-single user.
It's only intermittent but very annoying.
When moving catalogue sections (both cut & paste or drag & drop methods, actinic will occasionally crash & lose the section data.
Once or twice I have had the report that "Actinic tried to access an unamed file of ZERO length past it's end"...... what sort of error report is that? Its on the lines of "I met a man upon the stair who was'nt there" surely????
Confused.

I'm not sure if they are the same issues steve but yes.

See my posts here and towards the bottom of the thread here

[Steve G Griggs]

Cut & Paste crashes

Hi Rebecca.
Thanks for the quick reply.
It may be I have not looked in the DB yet, but it's a strange one, seems random, and can be just a section with one product with no permutations, choices or attributes-just a straightforward duplicate product. Not had any trouble with snapshots at all. I will look into the Database tho' as I have had problems there in the past. Watch this space I will post if I find a definite problem.
A nice job for a hot sunny day.....
Steve.

[itc]

Hi Rebecca.
Thanks for the quick reply.
It may be I have not looked in the DB yet, but it's a strange one, seems random, and can be just a section with one product with no permutations, choices or attributes-just a straightforward duplicate product. Not had any trouble with snapshots at all. I will look into the Database tho' as I have had problems there in the past. Watch this space I will post if I find a definite problem.

No problem Steve, I'm sure theres something fishy with copying stuff around - we have had it crash without the db problems too, but that was when we were running multi-user. Doesn't seem to be consistent and I guess they are some of the hardest issues to track down.

A nice job for a hot sunny day.....

Its just not fair is it!

[Steve G Griggs]

Not fair

No never does seem to be (fair)!
I have wondered whether it could be that info is being left in the cut & paste memory (cache not being cleared properly etc) as it's not seemingly tied to anything specific, and only occurs after about 20 - 30 cut & paste operations if at all.
Grrr. Think I'll go down the beach & forget actinic (I wish!)

[GamesLore]

Happens Regularly

This happens almost every time I create a new section and have to reorganise, normally just means I have to do a new reimport process, still that only takes the best part of 30 minutes each time!!

[Steve G Griggs]

Another thing...

Hi all
Another little bug I have seen (what would you call a little bug, buglet, bugling, bugette?) is if you cut & paste with the preview window closed, once you have "cut" the section tree loses the "focus" and you have to click somewhere in the actinic window to get the tree back again.
OOPS!

[nileshpa]

Steve / Rebecca,

I've got the same issues here as well & possibly more. The product I'm using is a Single user V9.0.2 Business edition.

Now, whether its drag&drop or cut&paste, the product will still crash but, it is intermmitent. Whatever that was to be moved is lost and has to be recreated. I've defined my products as one per section & therefore losing it should not be a problem, This is in theory, but, as they relate to pairs of shoes, each section contain one main product & upto 6 to 8 size-related individual products that are hidden. To reinstate the lost part, I have to recreate all the products, recreate the master product & then redefine all the components, choices, permutations, etc. Annoying, frustrating or whatever you want to call it but that is the reality I'm facing with Actinic at the moment.

I did raise this as a call to Support about two weeks ago and also provided a site snapshot. I have been told its a known problem & will be cleared in 9.0.3. In the meantime, I should take a backup before I move anything. The backup itself takes just over of an hour, which I now tend to do about 2 or 3 times a day. Page preview is only used as & when I need to, otherwise it just hangs. It may or may not come back, we can never be certain. The site preview and publish-to-web takes over 2 hours as it spends most of its time checking the HTML pages. Therefore, I only publish once a day. By the way, I compact the database everytime I close down.

Support have not found anything wrong on the database & have asked me to wait for 9.0.3.

I am new to Actinic & have only been using it for just over 13 months now. Agree, my site is not brilliant but it is constantly evolving as I am trying to improve it. Which is why I need to move the products around a bit more frequently. Hopefully, I'll get it right one of these days but V9.0.2 is not the right product/version to work with. It is possibly the worst I have come across.

Please note that I am not complaining about the product at all. How can I as I'm trying to justify my investment of £800+vat for the product & then approx £330 pa for support, this been my second year. If Actinic believe that these are the kind of problems acceptable for their users, then I'm sure the cost of Actinic & its Support is really worth it.

Any regrets from my end.... Noooooo !! ... I'm sure Actinic is the best on the market.... Its been going on for years. Then again, what do I know - i'm new in eCommerce anyway.

Regards
Nilesh

BTW- It crashed 4 times today.

[djferros]

Steve / Rebecca,

I've got the same issues here as well & possibly more. The product I'm using is a Single user V9.0.2 Business edition.

Now, whether its drag&drop or cut&paste, the product will still crash but, it is intermmitent. Whatever that was to be moved is lost and has to be recreated.

Yep. EXACTLY the same here. The worst thing about it getting lost is that all my hidden products that are there get lost as well.

BTW- It crashed 6 times today, it doesn't like me looking at my orders either
________
Chrysler Phaeton Specifications

[jont]

I disable the MOTO function in v9 as this has proved troublesome with uploading in the past.. which is a shame as the MOTO form is the main advantage over v8

[Jan]

One or two people have been using my sorting tool to get around this, with this, you can define a custom variable (called order for example) and put a number in there that represents the position in the tree, then when you have completed your editing, close Actinic and run the sorting tool, select the parent of the sections you want to reorder, choose to sort by the custom var you created and click the sort button.

It has a 30 free trial so you should be able to use it without cost while you wait for 9.0.3 (that doesn't mean that I'm saying that 9.0.3 will be out within 30 days - I don't know when it will be out).

You can find more details and the free trial here :

http://www.mole-end.biz/acatalog/Cat...ting_Tool.html

Regards,

[nileshpa]

Jont / Jan - Thanks for your suggestions.

I've just disabled the MOTO form. We will see how it goes when I publish to the web this evening. Later on today, I will look into the Sort tool. Hopefully, the combination willl improve things. Will update in the next day or so.

Regards
Nilesh

[Darren B]

Have you tried holding the shift button then dragging the sections to were you want, better than cutting and pasting.

But i have had it in the past, linked to a DB problem

[itc]

Have you tried holding the shift button then dragging the sections to were you want, better than cutting and pasting.

But i have had it in the past, linked to a DB problem

Isn't this still a drag and drop operation though Darren?

[nileshpa]

Just a quick update.

Having taken on-board the advice given by Jonty, Jan & Darren, I believe we may have made progress.

MOTO form has been switched off,Mole-ends' Catalog sorting tool has been installed on trial basis and when sections are moved, Shift button is now used with drag&drop. This moves the section as a sibling & not a child.

Moved around several sections (albeit, one at a time) and haven't experienced any crashes/hangups to-date. However, backups still take over two hours and therefore have resorted to simply copying the entire site1 folder onto a secure area. This takes a few minutes but not sure if its going to cause any problems if I need to regress back. Think we can live like this until 9.0.3 is released. Haven't published yet, so can't update on that.

So many thanks to Jonty, Jan & Darren for the advice as its helped a lot.

Regards
Nilesh