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A bit opaque in the logging: "-50 Bad parameter" ?

edited February 2014 in SecuritySpy
Hi Bensoftware

- throw me a bone on this log entry?

02-13-2014 0809-07: Error running the camera "Front Door" in active mode, it has been set to passive mode 3.2.1,22177,-50 Bad parameter

and is there a scheme for decoding which camera is causing the following?

02-13-2014 0807-34: Error recording audio from the device "Built-in Input" 3.2.1,900,841 Buffer overrun - computer is overloaded

and which computer ( the camera, the server ) is overloaded?

Comments

  • also re #1 = what is the procedure for recovering from this mode?
  • Sorry for the cryptic error message, this one has never actually come up before! It's basically a general error while writing some video data to disk for the particular camera. The -50 error is a code passed back to SecuritySpy from one of the Mac OS X system functions that SecuritySpy uses, and unfortunately it's very non-descriptive. I've had a look at the code and it's not immediately obvious what could be going wrong. What capture drive are you using for this camera? Is it the Mac's internal hard drive or a NAS/USB drive?

    As for the second message, you can check which camera is using that device under the Audio tab in the Camera Settings window. However, which camera this refers to isn't too important because the problem here seems to be a system-wide problem of not enough CPU resources on the computer running SecuritySpy for everything that you have set SecuritySpy to do. I would advise you lower the frame rates of all the cameras you are using with SecuritySpy to reduce the CPU usage. You can use Activity Monitor to see how much CPU SecuritySpy is using.
  • Thanks Ben -

    Perfornance wise, Security Spy is running on a 2012 Mini 6,2, 2.6 Ghz i7. This box has 16gig of Ram.

    Security Spy is gently coasting at about 60%. SMBup is running about 2%. Those are the only full percentage number load processes running on the 4 core machine.

    Security Spy is writing to a firewire attached Raid.

    The Cat6 connection is up at a gig.

    that would seem to be pretty performant.

    the camera pool is locked to 10fps max. A couple of the cameras have mics, i'll iterate across them.

    WRT the log content I was surprised at the second as the first is so descriptive.

    The only way I can recover from the -50 is to restart the instance of Security Spy. ?
  • BTW I just noted that a number of cameras just went into passive mode.

    The log message is different: "Error writing to disk"

    The disk is fine, but I get -50 errors when attempting to work with the folder tree.

    last time this happened I had to delete the Finder's plist file for the user.

    any ideas?
  • Also BTW, nice Skeleton win
  • Hi - as a test, can you set the cameras to use the Mac's internal hard drive and see if these errors go away? Most disk errors we see occur with unusual disk setups, and a FireWire-attached RAID array is definitely an unusual setup (even though a RAID is of course supposed to offer increased performance or reliability). I would guess that using the internal drive would make these errors go away, and therefore you should look at your FireWire drive as the cause of the problems.

    Is it possible/convenient to reformat the drive using Disk Utility to see if this fixes it?

    I would guess that simply setting the camera back to Active mode would allow SecuritySpy to continue recording, rather than a SecuritySpy/computer restart. However if the underlying problem is not fixed then this is not a long-term solution of course!

    As for the buffer overrun error, it sounds like your Mac is not in fact overloaded. It could simply be a temporary hold-up processing data in some other part of the application (or waiting for the disk perhaps) which is causing the audio processing to lag behind and generate this error. I think it's likely that fixing the disk issue will also fix this issue too.

    Hope this helps.
  • Thanks Ben, sound advice.

    I've used firewire raids for years for music and video editing, so I tend to think of these as rather standard technology. ( also great for big java builds and maven repos )

    I can reformat the disk sure :) perhaps I'll repartition the raid and dedicate some to security spy.

    Now, 'simply setting the camera back to Active mode' doesn't work when this error is raised. The Security Spy UI doesn't allow the change. I have to restart the Spy.

    I think writing to audio is getting bound up in this Finder issue. I have seen some writings where re-using a file name immediately after delete sometimes triggers this odd situation. ( shouldn't, of course )

    I'll ping back when I get further. I did set Spy to email someone on error, and hope to catch this condition this way. Or at least have someone restart the Spy.


  • After more chasing and tweaking and wrangling about here is what I've found.

    This is turning out to be a problem with the 3rd generation of G-Tech Raids.

    The company is replacing them once a RMA is pulled.

    I have ordered a QNAP to which I'll offload the storage, then I'll send the G-Tech back for whatever they do to them.
  • update: a week or so with the QNAP and no return of the -50 ( and associated Finder permission ) errors.
  • Hi caseyd - great to hear, thanks for reporting back!
  • More info. I started having the same -50 error this morning. By moving the storage location off the current HD onto any other HD, and restarting SS the problem goes away. Why this popped up on a very stable setup is the question. All of my external drives are on FW800.
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