Planet Replay

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Hello,

I have been away for a while and came back to see that Henry is still updating WiRNS 2.1, so I was wondering if a small problem I am having can be looked at...

I have a portable USB hard drive that I use to archive TV shows from the Replay. I normally have this drive disconnected from my laptop, but will connected it and go to "Configuration -> WiRNS Show Paths" and put a check mark next to the folder that has the shows on the external drive when I need to access them or save new ones.

This all works fine (although it takes a while to load all the show info, since I have hundreds of shows).

Anyway, the problem comes when I am trying to unmount the drive.

I go to "Configuration -> WiRNS Show Paths" and uncheck the path and press "Save". I then go to the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon and tell it to "Safely Remove Hardware" to properly unmount the hard drive. This is when it gives me the error "Can't stop device because a program is still using it".

I currently use "WiRNSMon->Restart" to free up my external drive so that it can be safely unmounted. So, I was wondering if a fix could be made so that WiRNS completely frees up a drive once the path is unchecked so that I do not have to restart WiRNS every time.

Thanks for your time!

[hdonzis]

First, I am not really updating WiRNS 2, it just so happens that every once in awhile I test a fix in WiRNS 2 before I put it into WiRNS 3 so it doen't hurt as large of a population. As far as new fixes and features, they are going into WiRNS 3 only...

Second, WiRNS doesn't "use" the paths that aren't enabled, but it could be that maybe .Net is keeping them open for some reason. I'm not sure how restarting WiRNS frees up the drive access, but maybe Glenn would know something more about how to get WiRNS to completely quit using them...

Quite honestly, I'm not sure what it would hurt for you to just unplug the USB hard drive after attempting to unmount it. If you're not accessing it at the time, then it's unlikely that there's any unflushed data to lose. So, I would just unplug it anyways and see how that works out...

FYI, just looking at the code, the only thing that stands out at me at first glance is the automatic guide refresh mechanism. If you want to see if it makes a difference, when you go into WiRNS Show Paths, in addition to unchecking the path enable, also uncheck "Automatic Guide Refresh" and save it that way and see if then you are able to unmount the drive.

Henry
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Here's my Poop

[The Robman]

It might be totally unrelated to WiRNS also, I was transferring files between computers yesterday using an external drive and even after I'd closed every program on the computer it still wouldn't release it.
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Later, Rob
http://www.hifi-remote.com

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[hdonzis]

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I turned it back on with the external mounted, and then unchecked that path in WiRNS, and it would not let me safely unmount the drive.

I then unchecked "automatic guide refresh" (apply) and it still would not let me unmount it.

I then rechecked "enabled" next to the path (apply) and unchecked it (apply) and still would not let me unmount.

I had to restart WiRNS to allow it to unmount.

After restart, I was able to mount and unmount without a problem (I suppose because I never turned on "automatic guide refresh" while the path was mounted since the restart.)

So it appears that if I have "automatic guide refresh" enabled at the same time as I have a path that is on the external drive enabled, it will not let me unmount the drive unless I restart WiRNS.

[hdonzis]

It loses the watched paths if you ever update the show paths without unchecking the "Automatic Guide Refresh" first, so you have to be careful the order you do things in. If you have the external mounted path enabled and you click Save without unchecking "Automatic Guide Refresh" first, then the external mounted path watcher is going to get lost. So, you'd have to first turn on "Automatic Guide Refresh" and then enable the external mounted path, and then turn off "Automatic Guide Refresh" and then disable the external mounted path...

What version of ServerManagement.dll are you running?

Henry
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Here's my Poop

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[hdonzis]

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OK, well all the testing I do is without accessing any shows on the external drive, so that is not a factor. I am just plugging in the USB cable, then putting a check mark in the "enabled" column for the corresponding path and pressing "save".

I then uncheck it and press "save" again.

I then select the "Safely remove drive" option from the "Safely remove hardware" icon in the system tray

If I do this with "automatic guide refresh" unchecked, all works fine, the drive is unmounted.

If I do it with that option enabled, it is unable to unmount it.


If I enable and disable both options (the path and the autorefresh) at the same time, then it appears to also work fine.

So as long as I disable the autorefresh whenever I disable the external drive path, it appears that it works.


However this does not work:

1. Enable autorefresh (save).
   
2. Enable external path (save).
   
3. Disable external path (save).
   
4. Disable autorefresh (save).

At this point you are not able to unmount the drive safely without restarting WiRNS. It seems that nothing I attempt (other than restart) after it gets in to this state will allow the drive to be released. There is probably a file pointer left open that should not be when you disable autorefresh while having a disabled path that was previously enabled (and was being monitored).

Here is one more test:

1. Enable autorefresh (save).
   
2. Enable external path (save).
   
3. Disable autorefresh (save). (these two last steps reversed from previous test)
   
4. Disable external path (save).
   

This works, the drive can be safely unmounted.

[hdonzis]

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Those were life-like operations with regards to actual WiRNS activity. I was using it to get a consolidated list of all my shows (I do an SQL query (sorted by show name, then show start time) while all shows from the Replays, external and internal drives are in the Replay Guide).

I then have a single complete saved list of all shows/episodes that I have on all Replays, the internal drive, and the external drive, without having to hook up the external drive every time I want to look at this complete list.

Since I may record a season of episodes on multiple Replays, and may have some stored on the external or internal drive (or any of the three other Replays), this helps immensely by having a nice ordered list of all the episodes in one place to act as an index to where to find them.

Here is the query in case anyone is interested (use sqlite3 to run it)

[hdonzis]

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Oh! You posted an update before? I didn't realize that. I did not test any updates. The DLL version I posted was not an updated version was it?

That is probably where our misunderstanding was.

I just updated now (to 2.1.4509.42716) and it seems to be fixed, so thanks!

[hdonzis]

The DLL version you were using before matched my version, so I thought that meant you had the "fixed" version and it still wasn't working correctly. It's possible that I didn't have the updated version either, so maybe it was my mistake. Since I fixed the problem of the order of doing things, when you said it didn't work, then I assumed the problem must be deeper, which is why I asked what else you were doing...

I thought you used automatic updates on WiRNS, so I thought if my first fix had been correct, then you would have noticed that pretty quickly. I guess you can look at the previous version in your backup directory and see what the date is. If it's around then end of April, then it should have been my first attempt at fixing the problem...

Henry
_________________
Here's my Poop

[Space]

The previous version had a file date of April 2nd, so it was not the new one.

I wasn't updating for a long time because I didn't think any changes were being made to the 2.1 version, plus I have been very busy working on other things lately, so didn't want to have to spend time dealing with any issues that might occur after an update, because when I finally did update (it was the update that changed the ToDo icons) it totally screwed my ToDo list icons until I realized I had to un-check "Enable Custom ToDo Graphics" in the settings. So now that I am thinking about it, you may want to see why having that item checked causes issues (although I don't know why it was checked in the first place).

Anyway, thanks again!

[hdonzis]

[hdonzis]

[hdonzis]

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[hdonzis]

[Space]

Hmmm, that was not my experience; the colors were significantly different shades, but I just pressed the "default colors" button and applied that, and then re-set my custom color and it seems to be working now.

It looks like if you enable custom, and change the color, apply. Then disable custom, it only disables the custom color for the icon, the text remains using the custom color.

Here you can see an example with two shades of green (I was wrong before about the change I made, I actually made it a DARKER shade of green from the default green):



So I was a little confused with my explanation before. It looks like if you have the custom option checked, it uses all the right colors. But if you have it unchecked, after having used a custom color previously, it will have the default color for the icon, but the text will still be using the custom color.

Also, to make it a little more confusing, after you make a change (such as unchecking the custom colors option) the page refresh does not show the change in colors properly, if you then reselect Configuration->WiRNS Styles it will then show the real colors it will use in the ToDo.

[hdonzis]