I have an iMac that backs up at 1am and a Macbook Pro that backs up when I open the lid in the morning. Today both backups appear to have run and completed, but at the end of each backup the Qrecall Activity window put up a "Lost connection with process" error window. The logs on both machines show entries for "Lost communication with helper," "Lost connections with command," and "Unable to connect with helper." These entries occur 2 minutes 11 seconds after the completion of the backup on both machines. This has happened a couple of times in the past but since the backup seemed OK I didn't report it. The backup drive is mounted on the iMac and connected to the MBP over the network. I'll send a report from the iMac, since that's where the problem occurred first. Let me know if you'd also like a report from the MBP.

Ralph

Ralph,

This is a known problem. It's a message race condition between the action and the application or monitor window that's keeping an eye on that action.

You've already checked the log, but I'll repeat this advice for anyone else reading. If you get a "lost communications" error it just means that the user interface lost it's communications link with the running action. It might mean something horrible has happened (like the action has crashed), or it might just mean the link between to two went dead. The first thing to do is to look at the log and find the action. It the log for that action says it finished (as in "Capture finished") there's nothing to worry about.

This loss of communications between the UI and the running action has been popping up since Snow Leopard, and seems to be worse in Lion. (Apple has been getting agressive about conserving power when the computer is idle, but sometimes things are so quiet now the monitor thinks the action has died.)

I've recently changed some code to address this issue and it seems to be helping. I haven't recorded a single "lost communication" error in the past week on any of my test machines.

If the fix is stable, it will roll out with version 1.2.1, which should be released within a week.