I've recently added a FireWire 800 external drive to my Intel iMac running 10.5.4. QRecall is scheduled to run at night when no-one is logged in and, using Cocktail, I've set my external disk(s) up to mount without user login.

Normally all runs OK. On occasion the Firewire 800 drive fails to 'mount' at login and usually I find that it has also failed to mount when QRecall tried to run during the night. When this happens, the login process is blocked and I have to resolve it by turning the drive off/on.

Today QRecall tried to run its back-up when the drive was mounted again. It could not do so, I guess, because it had lost contact with its scheduler service. I launched QRecall and tried to re-initiate the service by running a Verify. This failed with the message 'Action not scheduled'. The message went on to advise me to quit and reopen QRecall in order to reinstall the scheduler. Following this advice several times failed to resolve the problem however. Resolution required a restart.

It would be good if QRecall could survive disconnection/reconnection of an external drive. I appreciate that disconnection/reconnection is not ideal but it happens; in my case I suspect an intermittent problem somewhere in the FireWire 800 'chain' as it has never happened with a FireWire 400 drive.

-- Charles

Charles Watts-Jones wrote:QRecall is scheduled to run at night when no-one is logged in and, using Cocktail, I've set my external disk(s) up to mount without user login.

You might not need Cocktail. Code was added to QRecall to automatically mount directly connected hard drives when logged out.

It would be good if QRecall could survive disconnection/reconnection of an external drive.

In principle, it already does. However there may be circumstances beyond its control.

Unmounting a volume is an orderly process which QRecall deals with regularly. If the volume was being accessed, the operating system will return an error and QRecall will deal with that error as best it can.

However, abnormal disconnections are not orderly and there are cases that can lock up the drivers or kernel. In this situation, any application (QRecall included) is powerless to do anything about the problem because the application isn't executing anymore. Until the drivers or kernel are "unstuck" nothing short of a restart will fix the problem.

in my case I suspect an intermittent problem somewhere in the FireWire 800 'chain' as it has never happened with a FireWire 400 drive.

It may be the Firewire interface on the drive. I have encountered several external drives that exhibit bad/poor mounting behaviour. One customer has a FW400 external that disconnects every time the computer goes to sleep. The drive has to be powered off and back on again before it will reappear.

As always, I'd love to see log files and any crash reports (Help > Send Report...).

As always, I'd love to see log files and any crash reports (Help > Send Report...).

On its way asap.

-- Charles

Hi,

I am getting this same error at the moment.

I can't run any actions at all...

Action Not Scheduled
"The scheduler service could not be contacted. Quit and reopen the QRecall application to reinstall the scheduler."

Is there a way to fix? I haven't restarted as the guy said above. Should I just try that?

Thanks

Joel wrote:Is there a way to fix? I haven't restarted as the guy said above. Should I just try that?

If you're running Leopard, then a restart will probably fix it. Alternatively, you could uninstall QRecall (hold down the Shift+Option keys and choose QRecall > Quick and Uninstall, restart QRecall, then go to Preferences and reauthorize it).

Regardless, please send a diagnostic report (Help > Send Report...) so that I can (hopefully) determine why the scheduler stopped running in the first place.