ETC Cobalt Family v7.1.0 - Manual (Page 69)

Cobalt 7.1 - 20140612
68
Troubleshooting - Crashes & Bugs
All software-based products run the risk of a crash regardless of testing
procedures. In the unlikely event it happens, please help us to eliminate
problems with crashes and bugs by reporting them to us.
To make it easier and faster to solve problems with the Cobalt software, it is important that problems
are reported in a proper and complete way.
First, it is important to define what a Crash means. To a developer, a crash means that the application
crashes with some kind of error message. Most crashes can be intercepted to make it possible to save
play data and to present a proper crash message. These are known as "handled crashes". Handled
crashes produce an error message and also produce what is known as a "Dump file" containing
important information about the console state when the crash occurred. In addition, a "Recovery File"
is produced and is offered on a restart so that you can recover any data you programmed but had not
saved before the crash.
When you have restarted, please connect your USB stick to the console and use the
BROWSER>FILES>COPY LOG AND DUMP FILES TO USB command to copy a ".zip" archive of
a number of files to that USB stick. Please email that ".zip" file, a copy of your play file and a detailed
description of what you were doing at the time of the crash to
[email protected] .
If the application hangs or misbehaves, this is not regarded as a crash (it may still be a serious problem
however).
• If the application seems to hang, please check the following things:
• Was the hour glass constantly on in the upper corner? If so, this is a real hang-up. The system
should only be in this state for 30 seconds before a log file is created. Please follow the
directions above to send the log file to us.
• Does anything work? Mouse, keyboard, some buttons etc? If an external keyboard is
connected, is anything pressing down a key like a script or a headset?
• Was it possible to press ESC to unlock this state? (It is possible, in some very special
situations, that a key could be "forgotten" in the down state, which blocks other keys. ESC
should always fix this.)
• Does it say "Keyboard override" in the upper right corner? If so, there is probably a text cell
open for editing somewhere on screen.
Is there a focused tab (with the orange frame)? In rare situations the focus gets lost, meaning there is
no tab focused, which can be confusing since some things don't do what you expect. If there is no
focused tab, click on one using the mouse or trackball or enter a tab number and press TAB.
If you need to report a problem, please try to include as much information you can about:
• the software version number
• the configuration (standalone, server/backup, other connected devices on the network, etc)
• the situation the problem occurred in (what did the user do when it happened, open editors,
special conditions etc)
• any other information that you think could be useful