phantomjs exit() doesn't terminate the process - windows

I've been using phantom.js on Windows 7 for quite some time now (I think v1.4.0 was the first version I used) and everything was always fine. But for some reason the process isn't properly terminated any longer when calling phantom.exit() and I absolutely don't know why.
The problem started to occur in v1.7.0, from one day to another. Everything once worked fine in 1.7.0 but then it did no more. Even after upgrading to 1.8.0 and now 1.9.0 it still doesnt work. The console just hangs. I can't type anything, phantomjs.exe is still listed in the list of processes in the taskmanager, even CTRL+C doesn't do anything. The whole thing is just frozen.
The underscore in the console blinks as if it expected more input but I can't type anything. The only chance I have is to close the cmd window using the [X] button which is totally dumb for automated testing.
I use the precompiled binaries I downloaded from http://phantomjs.org/ and as I said: it stopped working from one day to another. I even reinstalled it a few times, even to different folders but the process just doesn't get terminated any longer. Anyone who has an idea what the problem could be?

This is a known issue with the Nvidia drivers when you have two cards.
To resolve this issue you need to select "High-performance NVidia processor" in the NVidia control panel (NVidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Global Settings).
Read more here: https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/issues/10845

Related

PyCharm has failed to load the environment from '/bin/zsh'

I wrote a program about a month ago, and it worked fine. I haven't touched it since than, until today.
All of a sudden, I get the warning when opening Pycharm: "PyCharm has failed to load the environment from '/bin/zsh'. Integration with tools that rely on environment variables may work incorrectly." I couldn't find a good explanation and solution to this warning, without leaning out of my comfort zone of altering files on my computer.
When running the program I got the error message "Process finished with exit code 139 (interrupted by signal 11: SIGSEGV)". I have read that this error is related to a memory problem or, that a file needs to be closed.
I have cleaned the memory of my mac so far I know how to and all files are closed. The program reads from one file, but this is only one line, which has worked before and I don´t see how this could cause the error. Otherwise, I did write few other scripts in the same project over the last month, but that shouldn't be a cause of a memory issue, right?
Restarting Pycharm and my computer didn´t change anything.
The only other thing I can think of is, that I have updated my mac to Monterey version 12.2.1.
Could that be the cause for this behaviour? Did anyone else have a similar experience after this update?
And is it possible for the error message and Pycharms warning to be related?
I am thankful for any tip, that may help me understand this behaviour.
I was able to fix this issue through the following steps:
Updating PyCharm to the latest version
Within PyCharm going to File -> Invalidate Caches -> Checking all boxes -> Clicking "Invalidate and Restart"
(Previous attempts to Invalidate Caches with only the default boxes checked did not work for me, but checking all the boxes fixed the issue.)

A blue window pops up randomly while using my laptop, it says windows power shell, should I suspect someone hacked into my laptop?

While I'm using my computer a blue window will pop up for a second then go away. The label said windows power shell, I've tried looking at the event viewer but I could not identify anything there since I'm a new user. What could be causing this?
Running windows 10
Sometimes installed programs open up command prompts to run services/init tasks, so its not completely unusual.
I've never seen it happen with powershell however.
it could be innocent and just a program you have installed running init behavior, but it could also be malicious.
the first thing to try is checking what programs are set to startup automatically. if there is a load of bloat, you could try turning off the unnecessary ones and see if it still happens.
but realistically the only real way forward is to get a good quality antivirus, and run a full system scan over your pc to double check. it wont give you 100% certainly as things could possibly get passed it, but realistically if it passes you should be fine

Diagnosing Windows program that hangs on startup

I have a new Win10 laptop. I've installed lots of software, including a 25-year-old Codewright editor that I've customized up the wazoo, and that I've been installing on all my machines for, well, 25 years. After working for a few days, it suddenly stopped, and reinstalling it didn't fix it. On startup, it puts up a small splash window, and normally opens the main window a half a second later (that took more than 5 seconds 25 years ago). It's not using any CPU, and there's nothing I can do but kill the process.
In the past, I've occasionally got my system into a state where Codewright would hang on loading, due to some other program that hadn't terminated correctly, and it was unfrozen by killing off that other process. So that's reason to believe that Codewright is waiting at some global lock which some other malfunctioning software is holding. So I have two questions:
Does this ring a bell? Is there some known failure mode where a program putting up a splash window then switching to another window can be prevented by something else going on the system?
Is there a way to diagnose this, perhaps by finding out what system call it's hanging inside? I tried dtrace.exe, started Codewright, and then stopped tracing, and it produced a 3GB XML file, which is quite a haystack. There's a way to filter it by PID, but since this is a startup problem, I have no idea what the PID will be. Is there a better tool for doing this, or some more appropriate dtrace feature that I missed?
The comment about using the Task Manager to create a dump file actually led me to notice that there is an Analyze Wait Chain function there that I had never seen before, since I haven't used Task Manager much since I switched from Win7. This gave me exactly the answer I wanted. My editor was waiting for something that was being held by some NVIDIA GeForce Experience module. Since I don't use that, I uninstalled it, and I'm back up and running. Thanks for the tip.

Extendscript Toolkit debugger fails: Can't start debug session

Not a programming problem per se, but rather a programming environment problem that I have been unable to find a solution to.
The problem relates to Adobe's Extendscript Toolkit (both 3.5 and 4), but so far I haven't been able to solve the problem, so here I am...
The error I get has appeared more or less over night. I didn't experience this problem yesterday, nor this morning. But exactly WHAT has happened is beyond me. I have removed preferences, I have uninstalled, reinstalled, created a new user, restored old preferences from Time Machine and I'm now pretty much lost for options.
Basically, nothing works in ESTK anymore. Just opening ESTK and entering alert('Hello') won't work. Neither will $.writeln(). Everything running from within ESTK seems to give the same error;
Cannot execute script in target engine 'main'
With details:
Cannot execute script in target engine 'main'!
(#1116) Can't start debug session.
Below is a screenshot taken from the new user I created to test, same problem.
The "funny" thing is that all the scripts (InDesign CS5, still hanging on to it for reasons) still work perfectly in the applications' script panels. So there is nothing wrong with the scripts (heck, they haven't changed one bit, and still refuses to run in ESTK).
As mentioned, I've tried installing the ESTK CC (version 4) as well, but the very same problem occurs there. Which leads me to think the problem lies somewhere else, but I do not know where, and why.
So, if anyone can shed any light on this issue, at all, I would be very happy. Debugging is basically the only thing ESTK is good for in my book, but now that even that functionality is gone, I don't know how to efficiently debug the scripts which is kind of hampering the workflow.
For reference, I'm running InDesign CS5 (from the old Creative Suite) on a 2008 Mac Pro with 10.11.6 (El Capitan) installed. Well aware that it's pretty out of date, but that is beside the point here.
In the above mentioned forum, Adobe has published a stable workaround!You just have to correct a setting inside the estk application:
Open the file(Mac): “/Applications/Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit CC/ExtendScript Toolkit.app/Contents/SharedSupport/Required/cdic/11BTBackend.jsx”
Search for the value: 604800000 (line reads bt.timeout = 604800000)
Replace that value with 604800 and save
Quit ExtendScript Toolkit and relaunch.
I can confirm that it works.
From the adobe Forum :
"we have found a first workaround: just change your date to any date before 20-nov-2018"
https://forums.adobe.com/message/10761440#10761440
Seems like a date issue :(
I just published a quick update about this on the Adobe Tech Blog.
For the time being, if you dismiss the dialog, you can still run your script via ESTK and step through code as usual.
Alternatively, if you really want to avoid the dialogs, and you don’t mind setting your clock back, you can sidestep the issue by setting your system clock back to November 19, 2018 or before. On most systems, changing the system time can have unintended side effects, so this isn’t recommended unless you’re really certain about it.

OpenGL randomly slows down

I'm currently learning OpenGL and I've noticed a rarely occuring performance problem:
My program is rather small so it's not a performance problem with the code itself, but when I'm running the code via Visual Studio I sometimes only get 1-2 FPS instead of the usual 60.
Once this happens I can restart the program as often as I want to (in debug and release mode alike) and it won't go away.
However, when I close my Firefox (or manually shut down the plugin-container.exe though task manager) and restart my program everything is fine again. After that I can start Firefox again (with the same tabs open) and the bug does not reappear.
I use the newest version of Firefox, and I've had this bug with several programs already - both made by me and others and using different versions of OpenGL. However I don't think I've had this problem when starting a compiled exe directly, but only by using the Run feature of Visual Studio.
I've searched the web but I only found a link about the generally bad performance of this plugin-container.
Does anyone else have this problem? Do you know any walkarounds or fixes?
PS: Regarding isti_spl's answer:
The CPU utilisation of the plugin-container.exe jumps to the 50% limit when the problem happens.
I'm working with Visual Studio, but the problem only occurs when I also have Firefox running (it most certainly is because of this plugin-container, so it probably won't happen with other browsers).
It's hard to isolate the problem because I can't replicate it. It might happen 1 out of 50 times.
I'll see if closing flash-related tabs (youtube, blip.tv etc) fixes the problem next time it happens.
Can you isolate the problem?
You first mentioned running visual studio then firefox. Please try to run separately.
Under FF. is it caused by WebGL or flash plugin? Is it caused by visiting specific sites?
Is it FF specific or happens under other browsers too?
Does CPU utilisation jump high? Please verify that too and which process consumes most CPU.
Not sure, but likely gpu driver + flash problems.
If so, the problem is not in your code, other GL program should be affected too.

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