Sadly, I have to resort to the forum as there is no reply to my bug reports
Last nights build has a fatal flaw that it thinks that I an Northern Hemisphere and shows a below the horizon issue after it has quit. It has busy notices throughout the log and the mouse hangs and freezes.
Two nights ago it worked flawlessly but there is no place in a bug report to say Well Done Team KStars.
... so, is anyone else doing nightly build testing?

Hey Len, I just compiled the latest KStars and set my location to Perth, WA. At first sight, I can not find any issues. When/where does it fail for you?

Hello Alfred, thanks for the reply
I have the logs, all 5 taken during the crashes, but I want to be able to have a back channel with someone who has the the knowledge and interest to confirm my findings before I submit time wasting logs.
Here is an overview of KStars from my perspective.
KStars in 2017 was always tolerant, the notices allowed me to make the necessary changes and continue.
Kstars in 2023 is brittle and any notice comes after it crashes and then tries to restart.
Now here is the really annoying bit for me. I have populated my name, location and equipment in KStars > Tools > Devices > List your Equipment; KStars > Settings > Manage Observer and KStars > Geographic > Location on every computer since 2017, Mac OS , Raspberry Pi's and now a Linux PC running Kubuntu. - but the information in-full never gets to completely populate
the INDI Control Panel. Geographic Information works perfectly, Focuser and Telescope partly, but they have new fields labelled "System Ports" and they don't populate at all.
Getting my name to populate the Camera > General Info > Observer (currently Unknown) is a chore as it is one of about 30 adjustments to the populated fields that I need to make each time it crashes.
For example, I have just rebooted exactly the same as last night but without my intervention, and I have a message in the setup page that says Failed to connect to Pegasus DMFC and Losmandy Gemini.
Does any of this sound familiar?

Hi Len,
let us try to sort it out, since it sounds that there are several issues that you report.

On your Ubuntu machine with KStars, do you compile from sources or do you take precompiled versions? From your logs it seems like another process crashes and tears KStars down, but I'm not sure.

I'm not sure but it could be related to Stellar Solver. Do you have the latest one?

Cheers
Wolfgang

... and regarding the first issue with Southern Hemisphere: could you point out how to reproduce the bug?

I previously mentioned the small error windows that show after a total crash. They do not show on the crashed log nor on the short log as Kstars tries to restart. If I'm quick I can take a sceenshot, but I had five identical crashes and each one showed a Below the Horizon error.
And Yes, I know exactly what I was doing... I chose to start and restart KStars without populating the Indie Control Panel as I had been told it was not neccesary.
Why did I conclude Southern vs Northern Hemisphere - Cause the first time I tried to set up KStars I got NH vs SH wrong and got my first error window "Objects are below the Horizon"
(and there may have been some annoyance at play) Apologies.

Hello Wolfgang,
I am very open to your suggestions that there may be conflicting issues on my OS and this year I decided to set aside imaging time to do bug documentation as we have some very long clear summer evenings. Bug reporting seemed like a citizen science project so I converted one of my 2 systems to nightly builds only.

• StellarMate now resides on a 64 bit RPi-4B 4Gb and is manually updated through the built in software updater. Currently using ver 1.7.5.
• KStars from www.indilib.org/download.html It does automatic daily updates.
They are published by your end of day, I test them and any bugs can be reported by the time KStars team wakes up
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mutlaqja/indinightly
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indi-full kstars-bleeding gsc
• Linux i7 PC runs 32GB RAM on a new 500GB SSD with no other disks mounted. and is latest version of Kubuntu. I used a USB drive to transfer an ISO Image onto the PC.
The problem for me is that previously I just had to go to the Mount – unplug a device USB, re-power and replug the troubled device and then inside the house, CONNECT the item in the Indi Control Panel. A Pegasus Astro DMFC Focuser is the main offender and if I use the USB2 ports on the RPi 4B, it prevents me restarting StellarMate from the Web Manager Page (it may be back-feeding 5V DC) USB3 port is OK. I have had these focusers since late 2021, always annoying but never fatal like now.
EKOS ALWAYS KEPT RUNNING, BUT NOW IT CRASHES and takes KStars with it leaving a blank desktop and I have to repeat every reset – often many times. It immediately tries to restart and shows a small error window like these:
Dr Konqi – KStars Closed Unexpectedly – Please report this error to help improve this software
KStars – Missing devices detected (QSI CCD, Pegasus DMFC, QST CCD), Please reconfigure the optical trains before proceeding any further.

Hi Len,
do I get it right, the root cause of the KStars crash is a problem with the Pegasus Focuser which causes a crash to its INDI driver and subsequently leads to a KStars crash? This at least explains the last lines in the log files you provided.

Wolfgang

Hello Wolfgang,
I have spent 50 +years as an electrical fitter and I will honestly describe all findings and NO, I did not say Fatal, I said annoying for the pegasus, Once connected, I can and always have been able to Image for hours with a functional KStars. I enjoy the KStars achievements in Plate Solving, Multistar guiding, the Indi communication protocol etc,
Unfortunately, any intervention, even a meridian flip can end a nights imaging, so I tend to image on one side of the mount.
Changes in my operating systems have been caused by the passage of time, My Imac runs High Sierra - no longer supported. Raspberry Pi 3B Stellarmate - 32 bit - no longer supported. Windows was never an option.
Am I alone with this startup Issue?
Today I will replace the ethernet run, 45 metres, to my mount.
Thank you for reading my summary, but my issues are new and they are fatal crashes of KStars, Indie and Ekos, nothing is left standing.

Regards Len

Hi Len,
could you please be a little more specific what goes wrong? Could you confirm my theory that a crashing Pegasus INDI driver leads to the observed behavior - at least in some cases?

I would like to reproduce the described behavior in order to fix it.

Wolfgang

Hello Wolfgang and thanks for hanging in with me.Once connected, the Pegasus focuser is one of the best additions to my mount,
My TeleVue has a a rack focus and the Pegasus DMFC and Controller work extremely well. It is matched to a stepper motor and therefore is an absolute focuser.
The Pegasus has never malfunctioned and I am happy that it can be a nusiance connecting sometimes, but Pre- "The PORT SELECTOR Mod" so was everything, Mounts, Cameras the LOT.
To reproduce my concerns:
1 Open KStars > Toggle Ekos > Choose your Equipment Profile (Please don't use a Simulator) > In Section 2 Start Ekos.
2 In the INDi Control Panel, when I open > Telescope > Connection : There are no green connection indicators.. not the click boxes but the small green lights on the left of the page This is the same on many pages and I have to go through and make my selections again.
3 A recently added box that is not on the simulators enables System Ports and without this selected the device will not connect.

Hi Len - sorry to hear of all the frustrations and problems.

On the very narrow issue of the Losmandy mount connection you describe, I notice on your screen shot that the port it is trying to use is the one that your Pegasus DMFC is using and therefore the mount cannot connect. Perhaps if you are able to select the Losmandy port on that Connection tab, the mount will successfully connect.

For my part, this has been fiddly from time to time - particularly during configuration of a new or revised profile. I've found that 'sometimes' setting the auto search to Enabled makes it easier to get the right connection, then I disable auto search once it finds the right port. I also select save configuration in the Options tab - I've had good success in keeping the ports consistently sorted out over months of use. Also, the connection can also be challenging based on the baud rate - I don't have your mount so I don't know what it should be but I know others have had challenges with baud rates and connections. For example, in my case (an iOptron mount) the baud rate is 115,200.

Best of luck!