About to give TuneSpan a shove ...

MajorIzWater shared this problem 10 years ago
Known

TuneSpan is stuck in Recovery Mode. I clicked on ReSpan Now and it just threw up the UI with nothing working. Instructions/help do nothing. What the heck do I do now?


UPDATE: OK, TuneSpan has gone completely off its rocker. Each time it is launched, it changes what it thinks it can see (despite the servers being on static IP addresses and never moving). One minute it is the main server in the window with the spanned server in the Unknown Media window, the next it is seeing both servers, but each time you cannot DO anything to recover the span or sort out the mess that it has gotten into. I think I am beginning to lose my hair - again.

Replies (6)

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Thanks so much for getting in touch, I'm so sorry you've run into this issue and I'm sorry I wasn't able to get back to you right away.


So, TuneSpan is in Crash Recovery because it crashed while spanning. This basically locks down the interface and doesn't let you modify the Spanning Queue or Span Location until you re-attempt the span and complete it without crashing.


It sounds like the other part of the issue has to do with the mount-point of your server changing. You can see in the screenshot, that the Span Location is pointing to "2Tb-Data-1" which is no longer the mount-point of the network drive.


This is an area that could use improving in the TuneSpan source, I need to store URLs that can keep up with mount-point changes like this that can happen internally on OS X and are not usually and issue to the user as the display name of the drive doesn't change.


So, firstly, I have to ask for some patience. We can definitely solve this issue, but first I need to understand why TuneSpan crashed while spanning.


Then, I can send you some terminal commands to force update the span location to the proper new mount-point for your network drive.


So, first things first, would you mind sending me your TuneSpan crash reports?


You can get to your Crash Reports in the User Library folder. In 10.7 and later this Library folder is hidden. The easiest way to get to it is from the Go menu in the Finder menubar. Open the Go menu and hold the Option key and you'll see the Library menu item appear, select it to open the User Library folder.


In this Library folder, open the Logs folder, and then DiagnosticReports. All the crash reports for all apps are stored in this DiagnosticReports folder. We just need the ones for TuneSpan though. You can view the folder in List View and sort by name, to locate files that begin with "TuneSpan_". You can send me any and all TuneSpan crash reports you find in that folder. That will help me figure out what caused this crash while spanning to see if I need to make changes in the source. After that, we can move forward with completing your span properly and getting you out of Crash Recovery Mode.


You can send the crash reports to me directly at "pico {at} randomapplications {dot} com"


Thanks again for getting in touch, we can sort this issue out together.

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Just a heads up, I've made the appropriate changes in the TuneSpan source so that at least this "changing mount-point" issue will not be a problem in future versions of TuneSpan.


Other than that, I'm looking forward to hearing back from you with these crash reports so that I can make any necessary changes to also avoid whatever crash you happened to run into.

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Hi there, and sorry for the late reply.


OK first things first. I have just had a major network failure here so some stuff has been knocked out for the immediate future. I have gone through the Diagnostic Reports and there is nothing from TuneScan.


iTunes has now completely failed on me, saying that it cannot find media which I can locate in its directory and play (using FileBrowser on my iPad). Whether this is related or not, I could not say, but it is worrying.


With my primary server currently knocked out, I am in the process of restoring Thursday's backup of the iTunes library. This will take - wait for it - four DAYS to restore. This is because I will have to do a complete restore of the entire library from scratch. It could take longer, but I remain hopeful.


What this will do is restore my iTunes library to a point before TuneSpan was run on it. I will also do a clean install of iTunes 11.0.7 which came down the pike today.


In a nutshell - I have had a pig of a week, and someone has just decided to cook bacon.

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I'm really sorry to hear about that network failure, what exactly happened? Did the drive fail?


So, if there are no crash reports for TuneSpan, that means that it didn't unexpectedly quit on its own. Was it force quit during the span for some reason?


Did you get an alert from OS X saying that you're low on system memory and have to force quit some apps?


Or, did the computer get forcibly shut down during the span?


I'm guessing it was something like a force shut down, that is usually the situation that can also lead to a remnant getting left in the "Volumes" directory which could lead to a mount-point getting changed.


About your media files still existing locally, but iTunes not being able to find them, that is most likely because the span got pretty far through before the crash or force quit.


TuneSpan was able to copy the files to the network drive, and update the locations in iTunes. But, TuneSpan probably didn't get through the verification phase where it cleans up all the original files after it's confirmed that iTunes knows the new locations.


So, if you could've gotten access to the network drive, we could have finished up this span after doing some stuff in the TuneSpan preferences to change the Span Location to the appropriate mount-point.


I've been continuing to work on TuneSpan to better keep up when known locations like this are renamed, whether it is a user rename or a system renaming like this case. So, I'm happy to say that at least that part of the issue (which was the factor that really threw a wrench in the crash recovery) should not happen in the future.


Again, I'm really sorry to hear about the continuing problems, using TuneSpan should ideally be a very hassle free experience. TuneSpan didn't live up to that, and I'm very sorry, I'll keep doing my best to make things better.

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I've been doing some more work on this and although the primary server failed (after the TuneSpan problems), the mirror server did not fail and kicked in.


From what I can see from the network logs, iTunes quit during the TuneSpan process - about three quarters of the way through - for no apparent reason. This may have caused TuneSpan to get bent out of shape.


Anyway - for whatever reason, TuneSpan seems to have gotten it knickers in a knot and thrown its toys out the pram at the same time. In so doing, it has kicked iTunes in the ballads leaving an unholy mess in its wake.


I will retry the whole thing later (when I have replenished my scotch supply) and can face playing with the systems. I have invested in a crash-helmet and long return-key-prodder so I can be at a safe distance when I start things off again.

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I'm glad your mirror server is safe, do you feel that there's anyway TuneSpan could have contributed to the primary server failure? I'm doubtful that TuneSpan is capable of that, but I'm curious about your thoughts.


It's normal for iTunes to be quit during the spanning process, and it's listed as one of the notes in the Span Confirmation Sheet. TuneSpan quits iTunes to make sure the XML iTunes Library file is saved just before the TuneSpan verification process.


But, even if iTunes is quit early, TuneSpan will simply relaunch it as needed. iTunes quitting should not have caused an issue.


Since there are not TuneSpan crash reports, it sounds like your computer may have ran out of system memory and TuneSpan may have needed to be force quit. Do you remember what happened exactly when TuneSpan was force quit? Did you get an alert from the system?


But, it doesn't look like you were trying to span too much at once, so running out of memory shouldn't have really happened. But it all depends on your computer and what else was going on during the span.


Anyway, I don't really know what to say at this point since you've retrieved your media from a backup.


I guess let me know when things are up and running and you want to try TuneSpan again. I'll be here it help.

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