maemo.org - Talk - camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

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- - camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May) (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=70870)

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

YOu can attatch gdb: run camera-ui and then gdb attatch $pid
this will give you some backtrace

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

with regards to the blessn900 pixels difference, one thing that comes to my mind is the issue with the blue camera shutter sides and the chrome surround. i would expect that the very extreme edges of the sensor would be more subjectable to the issue.

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

Quote:

Originally Posted by marmistrz (Post 1441324)

YOu can attatch gdb: run camera-ui and then gdb attatch $pid
this will give you some backtrace

This is overcomplicated and not needed.

Estel (and the others), there is a very simple way to proviide useful information - install sp-rich-core along with syslog. It is my fault if I didn't say that earlier (though I think I did, but anyway). As soon as there is a crash, a coredump (and other useful things) is created and put in an archive to be provided to the developer(s).

Also, please install camera-ui2 from cssu-devel, I fixed what I think is a nasty "use after free" bug, which could lead to lots of various problems, including those intermittent faults you describe.

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

Thank you freemangordon, for your continued support of to the N900.
I am back on N900 from detour over Jolla and 808.

However I can't update anymore (on several devices I get the you need to take a backup / Nokia PC suite) due to confusion with the required repositories.
For months I don't find the time to dig into the long Thumb 2 thread.

So I stand with this person, asking for an overview of relevant repositories in one central place. Do you think that is a good idea?

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...ght=cssu+thumb

If it already exists please excuse me but I could not find it.

EDIT: got it nailed

Only enabled repo's

Nokia Applications
Nokia System Software Updates
Ovi
Maemo.org
Community SSU (testing)
Community SSU (thumb)
Maemo Extras

Checked "problems" on Thumb ubdate failures and discovered only one problem still remained: operator name applet <v3.0, luckily the update showed separately and once done prior to Thumb update, the Thumb update continued.

Boring story for most code vets but other regular users may benefit from the information.

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Estel (Post 1441301)

Re bugs, and my attempt to collect the and report *proper* way to CSSU bugteam:

I tried it on two devices, one my "usual" everyday one, (thumb), and one freshly flashed (inc. emmc vanilla, which shouldn't be relevant). The 2nd device used cssu-thumb, later I reflashed it to stock again and used cssu-testing, then repeated tests.

On all three devices, I got positive results (aka bugs present) with ALL things reported, at some point, in this thread - including, but not limited to:

*autofocus suddenly becoming slow

* autofocus getting stuck at focusing only up to some random value (for example, few-centimeters - no matter what scene we point it at. When it get's stuck, it clearly *changes* focus, but always device to end up at the same value. Interestingly, value changes between "stuck" accidents, but during same "accident", remains the same.

*camera-ui getting frozen during saving of video, resulting in broken .mp4 container.

*camera-ui crashing randomly

*camera-ui suddenly starting to fail saving most of pictures took

*camera-ui suddenly showing black viewfinder (with all UI elements as they should be, though) and seeming like it "lost contact" with camera hardware (pressing autofocus doesn't move lens, etc) - until restart

*just as above, but with addition of camera-ui window getting clones, and showing proper viewfinder in that clone

...etc. The problem is, that ALL of those issues are not clearly reproducible - they just happen, quite often (especially during longer photo or recording runs - think few hours), if anyone cares to search for them. (I haven't found similar problems in stock camera-ui, when trying to replicate them there).

Now, I wasn't able to find ANY way of getting meaningful logs/debug content from camera-ui. No one who I asked about - including this thread, camera-ui2 thread, and CSSU bugtracker (inside camera-ui reported bug) was able to point me how to get meaningful logs/debug info from camera-ui. I assume that it doesn't have ANY, accessible to average Joe.

This result in complete inability to post a meaningful bug report, that would be anything more than things commented as rants.

Due to this, I'm "officially" giving up on attempts to gather those bugs and report them to bugtracker - at least until some sane way of getting debug output is introduced into camera-ui. If someone more knowledgeable is willing to pick it up, be my guest - it's not a full "rage quit", it's just fact that spending a total of ~90 hours of chasing those bugs, experiencing them, but being unable to report them in a way meaningful to maintainers is too frustrating.

Maybe things like attaching gdb or whatsnot would help, but I have no clue about such things ATM (to the point that I don't even know if it's relevant to this case), and I already spent too much time on this, getting only "worksforme and my girlfriend" answers - despite that reports about camera-ui2 being substandard are numerous (and the links just show a small bite of them).

For now, I'm using a simple hack to have camera-ui (vanilla) for everyday functionality, and run camera-ui2 manually, when I need higher quality video recording (and it's not so important, so I don't fear that it might get corrupted at saving), or some nice functionalities that camera-ui2 offers, like manual focus.

/Estel

Can you share the simple hack that you made for using camraui2 and stock camera

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

Quote:

Originally Posted by freemangordon (Post 1441338)

thanks - indeed you have forget to say it (or I have missed it, somehow), it should make things a LOT more meaningful. Time to [/rant] and get back into [debugging], I think*... I'll install version from devel ASAP. noticed it few days ago, but I thought it's minor update and haven't detected that it could leak other problems (at least, from the changelog).

BTW - the rich coredump will help if I reproduce crash, but still, how to properly get debug info for (much more common than crashes) various strange non-crashing issues, if they would be still present, despite -devel update? Maybe some logging/output functionality could be provided to camera-ui, in the form of update? Unless there are better options, of course.

Quote:

Originally Posted by UJKU (Post 1441388)

Can you share the simple hack that you made for using camraui2 and stock camera

(writing from memory, as I've done it some time ago, and ATM I've booted [not "easy"] debian on my main N900, doing something in the background):
Nothing special, I just copied CSSU'ish camera ui things to camera-ui2 name, dpkg -i vanilla camera-ui, and manually created desktop file to conveniently launch camera-ui2. I don't remember if I hit any problems with that (so if yes, they must have been easily solvable) - the only thing that might needed tweaking is osso service file to run vanilla camera-ui (shouldn't be required, if CSSU camera-ui uninstalls cleanly) and maybe messing with control file of some package to satisfy dependencies (also shouldn't be required, if dependencies aren't artificaly required).

Of course, you also need to get rid of mp-fremantle-community-pr dummy package, or change it's dependencies.

BUT, considering that there is reported a way to debug crashes (and I hope that there will be a way to get debug from other "accidents", soon) and developer's will to fix it, I strongly recommend to "suffer" a little with CSSU'ish camera-ui and help making it better. It *really* offers great advantages over vanilla camera-ui, and if we can make it stable, it's worth all debugging in the world.

/Estel

*I do admit that I was a little "screw it all" attitude yesterday - after spending 10 hours straight, fixing problems that arose on my desktop Debian after upgrade, due to SCREWED systemd-related things (even though I don't use systemd for init - just shitty systemd-shim, to satisfy some fckin' dependencies and functions). Well, at least it's working, now (with some packages from unstable and some older ones from debian snapshots...

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Estel (Post 1441454)

...
BTW - the rich coredump will help if I reproduce crash, but still, how to properly get debug info for (much more common than crashes) various strange non-crashing issues, if they would be still present, despite -devel update? Maybe some logging/output functionality could be provided to camera-ui, in the form of update? Unless there are better options, of course.

My gut feeling tells me that there is a bug that sometimes leads to crash and sometimes not (similar to "use after free"), and that that bug is not necessarily in camera-ui2 itself. Having a coredump from such a crash is way more easier and (usually) brings way more information (even if the crash happens rarely) than putting g_debug() in every function camera-ui2 consist of. Not to say that UI (camera-ui2) is the cherry on the top, there is a pile of libs involved as well. Also keep in mind that adding such log capabilities will change the memory layout of the application, so it may become impossible to recreate the crash or instabilities.

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

Did anyone manage to get a coredump of a crashing camera-ui2?

Quote:

Originally Posted by freemangordon (Post 1443153)

Did anyone manage to get a coredump of a crashing camera-ui2?

I'm not using the N900 atm due to the battery life problems, if I solve it, I'll give a try.

Anyway, I used to have sp-rich-core installed, but despite the (core dumped) messages no file was created in MyDocs. How to properly setup and configure sp-rich-core?

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

Quote:

Originally Posted by marmistrz (Post 1443163)

http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/...5/sp-rich-core

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

(Most) Probably on SD card /media/mmc1/core-dumps

or

maybe (if crash happened in early boot phase,i.e. before mounting p1), then you need
umount /home/user/MyDocs
ls /home/user/MyDocs/core-dumps
#rm -fr /home/user/MyDocs/core-dumps
mount /home/user/MyDocs

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

I am on the same boat as marmistrz. Installed sp-rich-core and sp-rich-core-postproc but nothing was created on an app crash. Not even the core-dumps dirs, neither in MyDocs nor in mmc1. I have RTFM but it does not say I need to do anything else, but I (accidentally) rebooted too when my battery ran out a few days later.

So what am I missing? TFM mentions a crash_reporter_daemon but nothing like that shows in ps.

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

Quote:

Originally Posted by pichlo (Post 1443245)

I am on the same boat as marmistrz. Installed sp-rich-core and sp-rich-core-postproc but nothing was created on an app crash. ... TFM mentions a crash_reporter_daemon but nothing like that shows in ps.

Try that one.

Oops, nope.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pichlo (Post 1443245)

... So what am I missing? ...

You should also install "crash-reporter"! ;)

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

Thanks Peter, that was the key. Looks like TFM could do with some updating ;)

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

Quote:

Originally Posted by pichlo (Post 1443336)

Looks like TFM could do with some updating ;)

???

Went to wiki pages of sp-rich-core and crash-reporter and added some lines to hopefully sort that out.

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

Hi all,

I've recently been playing around with manually controlling the N900's camera focus in an app, and discovered that moving the focus a large distance caused an unhealthy sounding "click" from the hardware. After a bit of investigation, I stumbled over Bug 9085, which describes how the N900's stock driver moves the focus too quickly, causing it to run up hard against the stop and potentially damaging the camera.

I've switched my app to only moving the focus by small amounts, and to (slowly) move the focus back to its original state when the app closes, and this seems to have gotten rid of the clicking noise.

I was wondering if this bug has already been fixed in the CSSU or in the new Camera-UI. Thanks!

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

camera-ui2 moves lens at full speed during manual control and closing of application, which causes audible "click". (in case of closing application, the "click" depends on focus before closing). I have observed deteriorating of lens ability to auto-focus on a number of my devices, after prolonged use of manual focus mode, including the extreme case of one module being able to focus only as far as 30 cm thus, during auto-focus, the further possible focus is 30 cm, every shoot requiring further focus comes out blurry, every one requiring closer distance is OK).

For other cases, the "limit" gets higher, but in all of them, results in loss of ability to focus properly on scenes requiring max-out focus - BTW, it doesn't matter if you use auto focus or manual mode after the damage is done (although, manual mode "thinks" it still focus further, without actually moving the lens after certain point).

I've confirmed the damage (max "limit" being closer focus than it should be, thus no actual lens movement past certain point, despite software thinking that it still changes focus) using micrometer. I just wasn't aware what could cause such reproducible deterioration, until Copernicus published his findings.

Personally, I would mark this bug as critical (hardware damaging) and suggest avoiding using manual focus (especially the max-in and max-out shortcuts) until fix suggested by Copernicus is integrated..

/Estel

Re: camera-ui2 (now a part of CSSU) (updated 09. May)

Since after a few experiments i had to poweroff my n900 pulling out the battery, i have discovered that camera-ui could not save anymore the photos in the sdcard returning the message:
"Memory full. Unable to save contents."

Digging aroung i have found what is going wrong with:
root@N900# gconftool-2 -a /system/osso/af/mmc
internal-mmc-corrupted = false
mmc-corrupted = true

While the sd card is working fine because i manually checked the fs just after the crash. (and the N900 has been already rebooted a few times)
Now i have no idea about when that flag should come back to false...
But in the meanwhile, if someone hits the same problem, the fix is :

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /system/osso/af/mmc/mmc-corrupted false