Exception before creating config link

[bsobel]

Hi, I posted in the sticky thread, but thought I'd move my issue here so hopefully you'll see it ,)

Blade, I noticed today that BLRadar was not working. Checked the forum and found this thread. Some version did the ini conversion but my xml file was empty. So I renamed the .ini file back and deleted the 0 length xml file, restarted BlRadar. It correctly created a Xml file but there is no config link on my plugin page anymore (I tried rebooting incase HS was acting weird) . So right now I have a running config (I saw a zone turn on), BLRadar says its status is ok (and it is licensed), but no config link to jump to the configuration and if I try to go to /blradar manually I get a 404. So something about the config link registering is failing. I do see a log entry indicating an exception, but all it says is "This exception was caught during initialization: Object reference not set to an instance of an object" but doesn't give more info. So I am assuming the exception is occurring before the config page is setup. Is there a way to turn on more login manually to give you a way to track this down?

Also, just FYI while Block does set the config link flag so that you can click on its name in the Installed plugins list and go to the default config page, BLRing and BLRoombaWifi do not.

Best,
Bill

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[Blade]

That is odd - must be something in the INI file
Can u log a help desk ticket on my web site and attach your original INI file zipped
I can then check it and see what is causing the issue
Thanks

[Blade]

Forgot to mention

Please do this to capture me a debug log so I can see if there are any issues in the conversion

1. Disable plugin
2. Delete the BLRadar.xml file
3. Put the original INI back in place in the config folder
4. Re-enable the plugin and let it convert the INI file again

Once done, turn off debug logging in the plugin
Attach the BLRadar-Detailed.log zipped to the ticket you created
The log is in the HS3 root folder

This will help me figure out what is causing the issue

[bsobel]

Blade, how do I turn on debug logging if I cant get to the configuration page?

[Blade]

Yea sorry
When the plugin is disabled, in the original INI file, change debugLevel=true and save the INI file
Then restart the plugin

[bsobel]

Hi Blade, a number of things I noticed in trying to do this:

1) I had stated that after putting the .ini file back BLRadar created a xml file. It did and it was ~24k. However today when I went to delete it and put the .ini file back I noticed it was back to 0k. So at some startup after the first one it must be written out as an empty tree or simply truncated before the exception.
2) The hspi_BLRadar.ini file still exists in the config folder. It was never renamed or removed after conversion (sounded like it should have been since you said put it back?)
3) I changed the debug setting to true, but my BLRadar-Detailed.log wasn't appended to (it existed from an issue back in May). I renamed it, did the conversion again, but no detailed log is being created. Totally happy to try something else, just not sure what to try, as I don't know where else it could be reading that setting from since it appears to be ignoring the ini file and the xml is gone.

First few lines from the ini file:

[Settings]
debugLevel=true
helpFolder=/BLHelp/
logToDatabase=true

[Blade]

That is very odd - I will check out your INI and see if I can pin point an issue with it
I will try and check that out tonight - it will depend on what time I get home from work

[bsobel]

That is very odd - I will check out your INI and see if I can pin point an issue with it
I will try and check that out tonight - it will depend on what time I get home from work

Thanks Blade, much appreciated (and understand the real life work scheduling fun of doing this on the side!)

[bsobel]

That is very odd - I will check out your INI and see if I can pin point an issue with it
I will try and check that out tonight - it will depend on what time I get home from work

Any luck?

[Blade]

I was just looking at this
Your INI file looks ok to me
I am going to play your INI file on my dev machine and try to convert it with logging on and see what I get

[Blade]

I just loaded your INI and it converted the XML file just fine
I can see the config links as well under the Plug-Ins dropdown
Can u show me a screenshot of what you are seeing

[bsobel]

I just loaded your INI and it converted the XML file just fine
I can see the config links as well under the Plug-Ins dropdown
Can u show me a screenshot of what you are seeing

Blad, I don't know what to say, this is weird. Back in town so went to get that info, I had restarted HS again (a few times) since the first post. The error was consistent until the last reboot, now the config appears migrated and the config link is working. I have no idea what the issue may be, and I suspect it will eventually come back, but for now its working . Question; do you have a exception handler in your code that can right out the full exception to disk to look at later? I found that was very helpful in my plugins to track issues down, as the exception in the log really isn't giving enough info to find the root cause here.

[Blade]

All of the exceptions will get logged in the debug log when it is enabled.
This is a strange one for sure
Let me know if it happens again

[bsobel]

All of the exceptions will get logged in the debug log when it is enabled.
This is a strange one for sure
Let me know if it happens again

It happened again. Restarted HS, got another exception during init. Stopped/Resarted the plugin, worked. The debug log didn't show any exception information, should it have?

Sep-09 7:35:45 PM

BLRadar Error

This exception was caught during initialization: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

[bsobel]

Blade,

After a lot of digging I am fairly confident this issue is related to background loading of plugins. I talked to Rich, he disabled this by default in the current beta (the one posted this week). That said, I suspect that when background loading is on, their is a race condition in one of these HS api's:

WriteLog
GetAppPath
RegisterEventCB
RegisterGenericEventCB
Version
RegisterConfigLink
RegisterLink

I figured WriteLog, GetAppPath, and Version where not likely candidates as they are probably called concurrently at times by existing plugins during their normal course of operations. But the Register* functions would never have multiple callers in the past, but with the background change could now have. So I suspect one of them is throwing an exception, that is what your first try/catch block in InitIO is failing over but the plugin continues to run since the exception was caught (I know its before RegisterLink because RegisterConfigLink never occurs in may case).

I sent this all to Rich, but if you could ping him on it as well it would be appreciated.

Best
Bill