Cura freezes every 30-45 seconds

[iYassin 0]

Hello forum!

 

I'm happily using Cura for a few months now, but in the last 2-3 weeks, it has started to act up. Already on 3.6.0, it started to freeze on me regularly (every 30-45 seconds) for around 15-20 seconds - then I can't click anything and eventually Windows will detect it's not responding, but then it catches up and I can use it for another 30-45 seconds. It doesn't matter what I'm doing - changing a setting, moving a model or just scrolling through the menu. Interestingly this only happens while Cura is the active window, if I leave Cura open in the background and then come back to it it always responds. A few days ago, I updated to 4.0 hoping this might resolve the problems, but it unfortunately didn't. Of course this makes it pretty frustrating to use.

 

I'm running Cura on a ThinkPad T470p, i7-7820HQ, 24GB RAM and ~46GB free SSD space, so system requirements shouldn't be an issue. What could I try to fix this problem?

 

Thanks!

 

iYassin

[ahoeben 1,948]

When Cura is starting to become unresponsive, how much memory is it using (according to Task Manager?)

Are you using any plugins? What printer do you use, and how is it connected?

[iYassin 0]

13 minutes ago, ahoeben said:

When Cura is starting to become unresponsive, how much memory is it using (according to Task Manager?)

Are you using any plugins? What printer do you use, and how is it connected?

 

I just checked, on the last freeze it was using 674 MB with 0.2% CPU usage. Once it responded again, RAM dropped to 670 MB and CPU increased to ~10% momentarily.

 

Aside from the preinstalled ones, I only use "OctoPrint connection". I'm using a Crealtiy Ender 3 through that plugin, so that I can see the Webcam feed and control the nozzle/bed temperature in the "Monitor" tab.

[ahoeben 1,948]

Can you go to the Marketplace, Installed tab and disable the OctoPrint Connection plugin and restart Cura, to check if it also happens without that plugin?

[iYassin 0]

3 hours ago, ahoeben said:

Can you go to the Marketplace, Installed tab and disable the OctoPrint Connection plugin and restart Cura, to check if it also happens without that plugin?

 

That actually fixed it. Thank you very much, finally I can use Cura again 😄

 

Is that a common issue with the OctoPrint plugin? It's a really convenient way of connecting to my printer so I'd love to be able to continue to use it.

Edited April 8, 2019 by iYassin

[ahoeben 1,948]

I created that plugin. I did not know about this issue. I’ll try to reproduce it. Can I ask you to do some more testing?

[iYassin 0]

2 hours ago, ahoeben said:

I created that plugin. I did not know about this issue. I’ll try to reproduce it. Can I ask you to do some more testing?

 

Sure! Is there anything specific I should test? Or simply record some more RAM and CPU loads during the freezes?

Edited April 8, 2019 by iYassin

[ahoeben 1,948]

For now it would help if you could post your cura.log somewhere so I can see if something strange is going on. It should be in your configuration folder (Help -> Show configuration folder)

[iYassin 0]

12 minutes ago, ahoeben said:

For now it would help if you could post your cura.log somewhere so I can see if something strange is going on. It should be in your configuration folder (Help -> Show configuration folder)

Here you go, I've attached it to this post!

 

Actually when I just started Cura, it took very long to come up and then froze again as soon as the main window appeared. I was able to reproduce that a second time, but it wasn't exactly the same step: the log entry after it recovered the first time was where it froze the second time.

 

First time:

2019-04-08 23:00:17,474 - DEBUG - [MainThread] cura.Machines.QualityManager.initialize [136]: Lookup tables updated.
2019-04-08 23:00:38,594 - DEBUG - [MainThread] cura.Machines.Models.QualityProfilesDropDownMenuModel._update [61]: Updating QualityProfilesDropDownMenuModel.

Second time:

2019-04-08 23:06:14,930 - DEBUG - [MainThread] cura.Machines.Models.CustomQualityProfilesDropDownMenuModel._update [15]: Updating CustomQualityProfilesDropDownMenuModel.
2019-04-08 23:06:36,701 - DEBUG - [MainThread] UM.Qt.QtRenderer._initialize [183]: Support for Vertex Array Objects: True

Also I've just encountered another freeze during usage, without the OctoPrint plugin. It froze between those two entries:

2019-04-08 23:12:44,109 - DEBUG - [MainThread] UM.View.GL.ShaderProgram.load [55]: Loading shader file [C:\Program Files\Ultimaker Cura 4.0\resources\shaders\toolhandle.shader]...
2019-04-08 23:13:08,443 - DEBUG - [MainThread] cura.AutoSave._onTimeout [48]: Autosaving preferences, instances and profiles

Could it be the autosave function?

cura.log

[ahoeben 1,948]

Interesting that it also happens without the OctoPrint plugin (but less frequently?)

Unless there is something freaky with your network/drive setup, I don't see how autosave could be the problem.

[ahoeben 1,948]

The Connect to OctoPrint dialog has a checkbox to  "Automatically discover local OctoPrint instances". Could you check if the delay also happens with that checkbox unchecked? You would have to add your printer manually (but I think you already did).

[iYassin 0]

Now I've just started another print today, and I still had Cura freeze a few times in the 10 minutes I used it. So without the OctoPrint plugin it's better, but not complelety resolved. I've now checked the log a couple of times and interestingly after each freeze, I found an entry on autosaving being completed (with no entries in the 20-30 seconds before that). So to me it really seems like it freezes every time it autosaves. Is it possible to disable that feature? There's nothing special with my drive setup, just a normal internal SSD... only 45/512GB free, but that should still be plenty.

 

20 hours ago, ahoeben said:

The Connect to OctoPrint dialog has a checkbox to  "Automatically discover local OctoPrint instances". Could you check if the delay also happens with that checkbox unchecked? You would have to add your printer manually (but I think you already did).

 

For now, I just reinstalled Cura completely. I'll then set it up with the OctoPrint plugin as well and report back.

 

Update - so now I set everything up again (turns out even though I selected "delete all configuration files", my profiles were still there) and disabled the option you mentioned. It still froze again immediately afterwards. From the log, I found the autosave entry again. 19:49:23 is when it froze, 19:49:48 is when it recovered.

2019-04-09 19:49:23,612 - DEBUG - [MainThread] UM.View.GL.ShaderProgram.load [55]: Loading shader file [C:\Program Files\Ultimaker Cura 4.0\resources\shaders\toolhandle.shader]...
2019-04-09 19:49:48,504 - DEBUG - [MainThread] UM.View.GL.ShaderProgram.load [55]: Loading shader file [C:\Program Files\Ultimaker Cura 4.0\resources\shaders\toolhandle.shader]...
2019-04-09 19:49:48,558 - DEBUG - [MainThread] cura.AutoSave._onTimeout [48]: Autosaving preferences, instances and profiles

 

Edited April 9, 2019 by iYassin

[ahoeben 1,948]

2 hours ago, iYassin said:

It still froze again immediately afterwards

 

How about after a restart? I am mostly interested in the often-recurring freeze, and if it is less often with the "Automatically discover local OctoPrint instances" option unchecked (and after a restart, to be sure).

[ahoeben 1,948]

Autosave cannot currently be disabled easily. You can make it happen less frequently, by adding a preference in cura.cfg. Open it in a text editor (while Cura is not running), and add the following line in the [cura] section:

autosave_delay=1000000

This makes the period between autosaves 1000 seconds (ie: fairly long). The default is 10 seconds.

[iYassin 0]

22 hours ago, ahoeben said:

 

How about after a restart? I am mostly interested in the often-recurring freeze, and if it is less often with the "Automatically discover local OctoPrint instances" option unchecked (and after a restart, to be sure).

 

It still happened even after a few restarts. To me it seems like it's less often with the automatic discover option disabled (i.e. down to the level which to me seems to be caused by autosave) but I'll take some notes the next time I properly set up a print and do the same steps once with the option checked and once with it unchecked.

 

22 hours ago, ahoeben said:

Autosave cannot currently be disabled easily. You can make it happen less frequently, by adding a preference in cura.cfg. Open it in a text editor (while Cura is not running), and add the following line in the [cura] section:

autosave_delay=1000000 

This makes the period between autosaves 1000 seconds (ie: fairly long). The default is 10 seconds.

 

I tried this option, but unfortunately that caused Cura to crash during startup. I've attached the logfile again. is there any other option to extend the autosave period?

cura.log

[mhpics 0]

On 4/9/2019 at 9:56 PM, ahoeben said:

Autosave cannot currently be disabled easily. You can make it happen less frequently, by adding a preference in cura.cfg. Open it in a text editor (while Cura is not running), and add the following line in the [cura] section:

autosave_delay=1000000

This makes the period between autosaves 1000 seconds (ie: fairly long). The default is 10 seconds.

this seemed to resolve the freeze in my case. Just to let you get more feedback on that.

[ldm314 0]

On 7/7/2020 at 7:37 AM, mhpics said:

this seemed to resolve the freeze in my case. Just to let you get more feedback on that.

Adding to this, the cause of my problem was by having numerous config files for older versions (back to 2.x). Some of these folders had thousands of files and hundreds of megabytes worth of config data.  I saw the freezing with both 4.5 and 4.6.

Here are the exact steps I did. Note that it will delete any old config files and settings so save anything you want first.

• Exit Cura
• Reboot
• Open an explorer window to %APPDATA%\cura
• Remove old version number folders, leaving only 4.5 and 4.6. I did not remove the log files

I've now had 4.6.1 working fine for a couple of days without closing it now.

[mhpics 0]

10 hours ago, ldm314 said:

I've now had 4.6.1 working fine for a couple of days without closing it now.

 

thanks for your answer! I'll try that right now.
One question remains. You say "...without closing it..."
My problem is Cura freezes for several seconds and gets back after that. This depends on the autosave value mentioned above. It is not closing, only freezes for a while.

[nallath 1,120]

I've also found an issue with the autosaving in 4.6 (which I guess has been there for a while, but I didn't check), that would cause it to save much much more frequent than it should.

 

I've fixed that for 4.7. I hope that it will fix these issues.