I just happened to be looking through the console log on our server (which is currently running X Server 10.4.1) this morning, and found these entries:

QRecall(7950,0xa000d000) malloc: *** error for object 0xad25760: incorrect checksum for freed object - object was probably modified after being freed, break at szone_error to debug
QRecall(7950,0xa000d000) malloc: *** set a breakpoint in szone_error to debug

Since there's no dates, I'm not sure when this happened, but I think the console log is cleared at reboot, so it would have been in the last 48 hours. As far as I know, QRecall hasn't actually crashed. It seems to be working just fine.

-- Bruce

Very interesting. What's curious is that those messages are from the debug version of the malloc libraries, and as far as I know I didn't ship any versions of QRecall that use the debug malloc library. It might be possible that you have an environment variable set that enables this (this might even be standard on the server). It's worth investigating.

Regardless, the messages appear to be coming from the QRecall client. Since you suspect that this occurred in the last 48 hours, do you happen to remember what you might have been doing in the QRecall application lately? This would help me in trying to reproduce the problem.

James Bucanek wrote:Very interesting. What's curious is that those messages are from the debug version of the malloc libraries, and as far as I know I didn't ship any versions of QRecall that use the debug malloc library. It might be possible that you have an environment variable set that enables this (this might even be standard on the server). It's worth investigating.

I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to investigate that, much less even set the environmental variable. I did, however, install the Xcode tools on the server. Might that have done something?

Regardless, the messages appear to be coming from the QRecall client. Since you suspect that this occurred in the last 48 hours, do you happen to remember what you might have been doing in the QRecall application lately? This would help me in trying to reproduce the problem.

In that period of time, it ran some actions that were created by the assistant. I modified them all to change from "hold" to "ignore" if the backup drive was not present. I changed the interval on the capture from once a day to once an hour, for a few hours, then back to once a day again. I probably opened the archive a few times to check that everything was working. And that's all I can think of.

I'm going to the server now to see if I can duplicate it. I'll report back shortly...

-- Bruce

OK, this is a little strange. First, I was able to duplicate the console errors, but not consistently. I was running QRecall while leaving the console log window open. When it happens, it happens just after closing an archive window. Simply opening an archive, and then closing it, was enough to cause it to happen at first. The more I tried to repeat it, however, the less often it happened.

Then I tried to Verify the archive. This is where it gets interesting. As the verify ran, I got about 11 messages in the console log that looked like this:

2008-01-11 18:02:22.224 QRecallHelper[12609] *** Assertion failure in -[DataFile readAtPosition:intoBuffer:length:], /Users/james/Development/Projects/Quantum Recall/Common/Source/File/CarbonFile.m:218

The verify eventually failed, at about 95% on the progress bar, and when I clicked on the warning triangle, I got a dialog suggesting that I consider reindexing or repairing the archive. Instead of doing that, I closed the archive (and did not get a console error that time). Then I re-opened it. and I ran the verify again, and got the same errors. So I closed it (again with no errors, and reindexed it. The reindex apparently succeeded, since I got no errors or warnings, but a subsequent Verify failed just like before.

So I tried a repair, and that failed as well. I don't have much on this server yet, so I'll run a new backup with a new archive. I'll send you the QRecall log file via e-mail.

-- Bruce