Adrian Chapman wrote:Maybe I'm not understanding something here.

All you have to understand is that these are probably bugs.

Also, is it my imagination but QRecall 2 seems MUCH faster at capturing and opening archives.

I hope so. A lot of time was spent benchmarking the Foundation and BSD APIs to get the best possible filesystem performance, particularly when reading all of the various file attributes needed to perform a capture.

Adrian,

We received your diagnostic reports. Were you experiencing any other problems, beyond what you've already reported, prior to reinstalling?

Steve,

Yes, this is a known issue (as was noted in the release notes ).

If QRecall encounters an error while trying to update itself:

Download the latest beta from http://www.qrecall.com/download/

Open the disk image

Run the Install QRecall application

But thanks for the console log anyway. We're still trying to figure out why Sparkle—which has always been a remarkably reliable piece of software—is failing.

See this post: http://forums.qrecall.com/posts/list/515.page

Thanks to everyone who's been brave enough to download the new version of QRecall.

It's been a bit of a rough start.

I've found and fixed a couple of bugs in the QRecall Monitor process that were causing it to freeze up (deadlock). This was related to status information for archives that weren't reachable. This has a domino effect, because any other process (the QRecall app, the scheduler, the QRecall service, ...) that tried to communicate with the monitor would then lock up too.

I have also been trying to resolve the problem with the auto-update feature, but I might not have a solution for that today. If I don't, I'll build a new beta, release it tonight, and continue working on auto-update at later time.

Adrian Chapman wrote:I understand that version 2 changes version 1 archives irreversibly, but can version 2 still be used to verify, merge and compact version 1 archives and leave them compatible with version 1.

Verify or recall, yes. Merge or compact, no.

Any action that changes the contents of an archive using QRecall 2.0 will write modern data structures, making the archive incompatible with earlier versions.

I ask because while I want to assist with testing the V2 beta on my iMac I wish to continue running V1 for now on my wife's Macbook but I run a weekly verify/merge/compact on her archives from my iMac.

To preserve 1.x compatibility, you'd need to schedule the merge actions to run on the Macbook. You could also schedule it to perform the compact, but for the short term of the beta test cycle you might just consider not compacting the archive. You can continue to verify the archive from the iMac with QRecall 2.0.

Adrian,

Several people seem to be having trouble with the monitor process hanging up (and then hanging up everything that depends on it).

In the future, try to use QRecall's Send Report... command for reporting problems. In QRecall 2.0, Send Report samples the QRecall processes so I can tell what they were doing (or not doing) at the time.

And what version of OS X are you running?

If you can run the QRecall application, send another diagnostic report. (The report will sample the monitor process, if it's running, to tell me what's going on.)

Next, try using the Activity Monitor to kill the QRecall Monitor process and see if it relaunches. That might fix it right there.

If not, try restarting and see if that helps.

Paul Mann wrote:I sent you a log via Recall so hopefully you can see what is going on.

Good. (I was sweating the Send Report... feature on 10.11, so that's a relief.)

Edit: I forgot that I do not seem to have the follow options in my services menu either ;

My bad. I forgot to mention that OS X disables new services by default. You'll need to go into the services preference (either from the Finder > Services or via System Preferences) and turn them on.

The good news:

I was able to fiddle around with QRecall running under OS X 10.11(beta3), fixed a few issues, and it seems to be working. I was able to create an archive, run a capture, verify the archive, schedule an action, and so on.

The bad news:

El Capitan complains about the executable format of the embedded Sparkle framework in 2.0.0b6. (This is the tool that allows QRecall to auto-update itself.) I upgraded to the latest version of Sparkle and that fixed those warnings. But now there's a new problem: when QRecall tries to update itself, it crashes. This only seems to occur on El Capitan. One my 10.10 systems, QRecall auto-updated itself just fine.

So here's the deal...

If you want to play around with QRecall on 10.11, you can click this link to download version 2.0.0b7. Open the disk image and launch the Install QRecall app.

When the next version of QRecall becomes available, it will most likely crash. To work around that, manually download the next version and run the install program again. You'll have to repeat that process until the Sparkle issues are sorted out.

Paul Mann wrote:This is what I mean, there are 3 databases in 3 different locations on remote shares and I cannot see where any of them are?

As you pointed out, the Reveal in Finder command won't mount a remote volume just to show you where the archive is. I could change that behavior.

Another enhancement would be to add a help tip to the status window that would display the archive's original path.

You could also give your archives different names.

Paul Mann wrote:I did wonder though, are you planning on updating the look to be a little more Yosemite native, or is the plan to leave that part alone?

I plan to do some clean up of the UI, but the focus of this release is data integrity, reliability, stability, compatibility, and security.

Its looks a little dated albeit thats secondary to the data of course!

At this point, I feel it's more important to have a reliable system than a pretty one, although both would be nice. Also, my graphics design guy is currently working on other projects, so I probably won't be able to get any updates to the icons and such until early this fall, and that's squarely in the next release too.

Edit: Perhaps a harsh comment, but not meant to be, as after using a little more there are subtle nice changes.

You're a beta tester. Harsh comments are what I (don't) pay you for.

As a new user I struggle with not seeing for example 'where' the archive is located that is being actioned, in any of the dialogs showing actions being done.

For me it says capture db name to and nothing more.

That isn't a feature. The problem in El Capitan is that QRecall can't seem to create URLs or bookmarks or whatever to the repository. All of the errors you posted earlier are like "archive: (null)". The UI is supposed to show you the name of the archive, but it's broken internally and that's why it's blank.

Paul Mann wrote:Hopefully you are planning on supporting El Capitan in this v2 release, or not?

I plan for QRecall 2.0 support El Capitan. In fact, the reason I've been sweating this beta to get QRecall out there and tested with El Capitan before its release.

And being so focused on getting the beta working has meant I've had no time to test on El Capitan at all. But that's about to change. I'm typing this on a freshly installed 10.11 beta 3 system and plan to fire up the developer tools later this morning.

So for all of you brave El Capitan testers out there, sit tight. I'm sure we'll have something working soon.

Caveat: I'm already aware that there are new security features of El Capitan that will prevent QRecall from restoring a bootable El Capitan system. I'm investigating those and hope to have a solution soon.

Dawn to Dusk Software is pleased to announce the beginning of the QRecall 2.0 beta test program.

This rates a "finally!"

To get started, go to the QRecall Download page.

Please, please, please, read the release notes. This is a major upgrade to QRecall and will irreversibly modify your archives.

If you already have a permanent or trial identity key, you can continue to use that. If don't have a permanent key, or your trial key has expired, you can request a free Beta Identity Key on the download page that will be valid for the entire beta test period.

The theme of QRecall 2.0 is "moving forward." QRecall 2.0 jettisons many legacy OS X technologies, like the Carbon and File Services APIs. It has been rewritten using the latest compiler and language features, and incorporates many of OS X's advanced technologies.

This has paved the way for new features such as encryption, error detection and correction, native notifications, better security, per-item capture preferences, a command line tool, and much more.

Please note that, as of this posting, QRecall 2.0 has not been tested on OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) and has had very limited testing on OS X 10.7 and 10.8.

QRecall 2.0 is largely feature complete. A few minor features are still planned, but this beta test period is primarily to discover and iron out any problems with these new technologies.

As always, feedback is welcome and encouraged.

Lowell,

Thanks for your interest in QRecall. Let me see if I can answer your questions.

Lowell wrote:I want to add a folder hierarchy to an archive, but I don't want to include a couple of large subfolders. I don't see a way of doing this directly. As soon as I add the top level folder, QRecall immediately starts the capture process. I realize that I could wait for the capture to finish, then delete the undesired subfolders, but I would rather not wait for hundreds of GB in these subfolders to be backed up, just to immediately delete them. Is there a better approach?

Method #1: Using the current version of QRecall, create an action to capture the top level folder. In that action, add the folders you want to exclude to the Excluded Items list. Save the action and run it whenever you want to capture that top-level folder, but not capture those specific sub-folders.

Method #2: Wait for the QRecall 2.0, which will exclude items on a per-item basis. You can either set items that you never want captured in your archive's preferences, or set the capture preferences of any item right in the Finder. Once set, these exclusions apply to all captures, no matter how they are made (interactively or by actions).

Another unrelated question - when entering administrator access in QRecall, where is the password stored, and is it in clear text?

QRecall simply asks OS X for elevated permissions; QRecall never has access to your password.

When any application asks for elevated permissions, OS X puts up the "enter your admin name and password" dialog. It then verifies your identity and, if it's correct, temporarily grants the application the permissions it was asking for. The application never sees, nor has access to, the information you entered in the security dialog.

In QRecall's case, it originally asks for elevated privileges so it can install its helper tool as root. Once installed, the helper tool implicitly runs as root (so it can capture files your user account wouldn't normally have access to, like the operating system). This is a permanent condition, so QRecall doesn't have to ask again in the future. (Note that this mechanism also changes in QRecall 2.0, which uses a privileged helper service managed by launchd, which is more secure.)