Unable to connect with helper

My scheduled backups are running fine, but every day or so an error message pops up in my log saying "Unable to connect with helper." It happens at what seems like a random time, unconnected with any of my scheduled events, and it's happening on both my MBP and my wife's iMac. When I click the disclosure triangle I get

Unable to connect with helper
cannot establish a connection with helper
Port: QRecallHelper.xxxxxxxx, where xxxxxxxx is a different hexadecimal string each time.

It's not causing any problems for me, but just seems strange.

OSX 10.7.1 and Qrecall 1.2.0.41 on both computers.

Ralph

Ralph Strauch wrote:My scheduled backups are running fine, but every day or so an error message pops up in my log saying "Unable to connect with helper."

Ralph,

This message indicates that the QRecall application, the monitor window, or the background scheduler has lost its communication link with a running action.

By itself, it doesn't indicate that anything is wrong, save a failure to communicate. When you see this error, you'll want to open the log and review what actually happened to the action. If the action logs that it finished (i.e. "Capture finished (33:35)"), then nothing serious happened. If the action logged that something went wrong, then that's a problem. If the action didn't long anything after the loss-of-communications error, then the helper process could have crashed, which is very serious.

OSX 10.7.1 and Qrecall 1.2.0.41 on both computers.

I'm getting a steady stream of users mention that they see this error on a regular basis in Lion. I've been unable to reproduce it here, but I suspect that timing changes in Lion may be causing processes to lose communications with each other on a semi-random basis. It's on the list of issues to investigate.

James Bucanek wrote:When you see this error, you'll want to open the log and review what actually happened to the action. If the action logs that it finished (i.e. "Capture finished (33:35)"), then nothing serious happened. If the action logged that something went wrong, then that's a problem. If the action didn't long anything after the loss-of-communications error, then the helper process could have crashed, which is very serious.

The instances I'm seeing are unconnected with any action. Here are the timings on the last 4.

9/14 last action recall at 11:00, disconnect at 11:15
9/15 backup at 07:53, disconnect at 18:12
9/16 backup at 8:57, disconnect at 11:06
9/17 backup at 10:17, disconnect at 14:22

(The backups are at seemingly random times because the MBP doesn't wake up when closed, so the backup happens when I open the lid.) I think that Qrecall may have been running in the background all this time, so I'll make sure to turn it off for a few days and see if that makes a difference.

Ralph

Ralph,

Thanks for the extra info. This may help me track down the cause. If you have a chance, please send a diagnostic report (Help > Send Report...) so I can review the disconnect messages in your log.

FYI: Nothing runs with the computer is asleep. When it wakes up again, QRecall's scheduler reviews what actions would have run while it was asleep and starts them.

I'm still fighting this one myself. The only archive that seems to have this problem is my main one. I've had to run Time Machine instead while I try to figure this out. I deleted and created a new archive, it runs fine for a while then
it suddenly has the 'helper' error. I'll send over another report.

Chris