Repetier-Host crashes randomly on Linux Mint

Repetier-Host v.1.5.4
Linux Mint v17.2 64-bit
Huge amount of disk space
Plenty of memory available

Repetier-Host works really well under my Linux Mint OS, and I like using it - but it keeps shutting down at random times.

It could be just after I connect to the printer, or when I've just loaded a file and clicked on the Slicer tab, or during a print (especially annoying when it's been printing for an hour or more and there's only 5 minutes left!). It even shuts down all by itself, when it's not doing anything particular. These shutdowns don't happen often - just often enough to be very annoying. There are no error messages; the window just vanishes, and the program vanishes off the task list (i.e. it's not showing as 'stopped' or any other similar condition).

Pronterface will stay up and running for hours on end, even if I start it just after Repetier-Host has shut down, so I doubt that there's much wrong with the environment outside of the R-H program.

Anyone else experienced this? Any clues on what might be the cause?

You should start the host from a terminal so you see the traceback on a crash. That gives more informations and may even lead to the source.

Also one hint to save your prints. 1.5.5 is out and since 1.5 we have a repetier-server connector. So instead of printing over the host directly you can use this to print trough repetier-server whcih then acts like a printer spooler running in the background. So if you use that combo, a crashing host will not stop your print. You can even reconnect while printing. Of course I'd like to know and fix what is going wrong.

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Thanks - I'll give that a try...

I want to stay with Repetier-Host as I find it very convenient!

Right - I upgraded to 1.5.5 and tried again. Thought the problem had gone away, but unfortunately it happened again this afternoon. Here's the output in the terminal:

Unhandled Exception:
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at System.Threading.EventWaitHandle.Reset () [0x00000] in :0 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Threading.EventWaitHandle:Reset ()
  at System.Threading.Timer+Scheduler.SchedulerThread () [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Threading.Thread.StartInternal () [0x00000] in :0 
[ERROR] FATAL UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at System.Threading.EventWaitHandle.Reset () [0x00000] in :0 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Threading.EventWaitHandle:Reset ()
  at System.Threading.Timer+Scheduler.SchedulerThread () [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Threading.Thread.StartInternal () [0x00000] in :0

I've also noticed another 'crash report' when running from a terminal - this appears every time I shut down Repetier-Host:

Unhandled Exception:
System.ArgumentException: A null reference or invalid value was found [GDI+ status: InvalidParameter]
  at System.Drawing.GDIPlus.CheckStatus (Status status) [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Drawing.Graphics.GdipMeasureString (IntPtr graphics, System.String text, System.Drawing.Font font, System.Drawing.RectangleF& layoutRect, IntPtr stringFormat) [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Drawing.Graphics.MeasureString (System.String text, System.Drawing.Font font, Int32 width, System.Drawing.StringFormat format) [0x00000] in :0 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Drawing.Graphics:MeasureString (string,System.Drawing.Font,int,System.Drawing.StringFormat)
  at System.Windows.Forms.TextRenderer.MeasureTextInternal (IDeviceContext dc, System.String text, System.Drawing.Font font, Size proposedSize, TextFormatFlags flags, Boolean useMeasureString) [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.TextRenderer.MeasureText (System.String text, System.Drawing.Font font, Size proposedSize, TextFormatFlags flags) [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.OnParentChanged (System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip oldParent, System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip newParent) [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.set_Parent (System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip value) [0x00000] in :0 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem:set_Parent (System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip)
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItemCollection.Remove (System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem value) [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.Dispose (Boolean disposing) [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripDropDownItem.Dispose (Boolean disposing) [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripMenuItem.Dispose (Boolean disposing) [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.ComponentModel.Component.Finalize () [0x00000] in :0 

thanks, was goign to report the same, also linux mint, updated to latest mono

mono -V
Mono JIT compiler version 4.0.3 (Stable 4.0.3.20/d6946b4 Tue Aug  4 09:43:57 UTC 2015)
Copyright (C) 2002-2014 Novell, Inc, Xamarin Inc and Contributors. www.mono-project.com
	TLS:           __thread
	SIGSEGV:       altstack
	Notifications: epoll
	Architecture:  amd64
	Disabled:      none
	Misc:          softdebug 
	LLVM:          supported, not enabled.
	GC:            sgen

I had two crashes, one inspecting g-code layers, the second one with the app in background, printing

Unhandled Exception:
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at System.Threading.EventWaitHandle.Reset () [0x00000] in :0 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Threading.EventWaitHandle:Reset ()
  at System.Threading.Timer+Scheduler.SchedulerThread () [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Threading.Thread.StartInternal () [0x00000] in :0 
[ERROR] FATAL UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at System.Threading.EventWaitHandle.Reset () [0x00000] in :0 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Threading.EventWaitHandle:Reset ()
  at System.Threading.Timer+Scheduler.SchedulerThread () [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Threading.Thread.StartInternal () [0x00000] in :0

Unhandled Exception:
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at System.Threading.EventWaitHandle.Reset () [0x00000] in :0 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Threading.EventWaitHandle:Reset ()
  at System.Threading.Timer+Scheduler.SchedulerThread () [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Threading.Thread.StartInternal () [0x00000] in :0 
[ERROR] FATAL UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at System.Threading.EventWaitHandle.Reset () [0x00000] in :0 
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Threading.EventWaitHandle:Reset ()
  at System.Threading.Timer+Scheduler.SchedulerThread () [0x00000] in :0 
  at System.Threading.Thread.StartInternal () [0x00000] in :0 

That is a bad thing. Your error traces only contain .NET class functions, not a single line from our code. So it is not possible to say if mono implementation is bad or if there is a config parameter set somewhere previously causing later a problem.

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Repetier-Software - the home of Repetier-Host (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) and Repetier-Firmware.
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Can you suggest any ways for us to localise the problem?

I should emphasise that I only want to fix the issue, wherever it is, not point the finger of blame at Repetier!

Can you suggest any ways for us to localise the problem? Does RepetierHost use external applications that perhaps are not used by programs like Proterface? The reason I ask is that Linux Mint has several substitutes for common software such as Java - there are a few of them - and maybe one of them isn't behaving is the same way as the original.

I should emphasise that I only want to fix the issue, wherever it is, not point the finger of blame at Repetier!

The only thing it uses is where the crash happens and that is mono. But if I forget the error at the end, which you can ignore, it is always the thread handling that crashes and that reminds me that there is a bug in linux kernel that causes mono to do exactly this.

Here comment from our forum:

There is a incompatibility/bug introduced in kernels from 3.13.0-46 that causes multithreaded mono apps to crash. So safest way is to use the old kernel which you had before updating. It seems Mono 4.x works also more stable now but does not fix th eproblem on kernel side completely.

I'm not sure what the current state of the problem is. I do not understand that kernel stuff - not my field. I just hope they will fix it soon.

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Repetier-Software - the home of Repetier-Host (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) and Repetier-Firmware.
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I googled the 'mono crashes on Linux' issue - and you may well be right. The error I reported exactly matches other reports I found during the search, for many other software packages that use Mono.

Apparently this bug has been fixed by the kernel developers, but it won't take effect until kernel v4.0 is released. Unfortunately Linux Mint tend to delay the release of new software versions until they've been proved OK, so it will be a while before I get this...

I don't intend to revert to an earlier kernel - that's just too complicated.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2015 09:39AM by David J.

Other users with that problem choosed to downgrade the kernel to previous version. That was on a ubuntu version where 1.3.13-46 came as an update, so this was possible.

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Repetier-Software - the home of Repetier-Host (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) and Repetier-Firmware.
Repetier-Server - the solution to control your printer from everywhere.
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Quote
repetier
Other users with that problem choosed to downgrade the kernel to previous version. That was on a ubuntu version where 1.3.13-46 came as an update, so this was possible.

that was the solution, thanks!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2015 06:38PM by luismanson.

I am running Ubuntu 15.10 with kernel 4.2.0-35-generic and i get random crashes when there is an error the error sound plays and repetier crashes.

help would be great as i like the interface better than prontaface,

I have the same problem. I use Linux Mint 17.

Linux Mint 18 now has the fixed kernel - I have been using R-H quite a lot lately, with only 1 random shutdown (as opposed to the frequent failures I used to get on Mint 17.3).

While I can not anything against kernel crashes I want to give some hint so at least prints are not affected by host crashes. The host can send/connect through Repetier-Server which is not affected by the kernel bug problem. So if you install the server and set in printer settings connector to repetier-server it will use the server for printing instead, which means even if host crashes the server will continue to print. You can also close host and reconnect again without stopping the print.

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Repetier-Software - the home of Repetier-Host (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) and Repetier-Firmware.
Repetier-Server - the solution to control your printer from everywhere.
Visit us on Facebook and Twitter!