I have been developing an iOS app that utilizes the CloudKit feature available for Apple Developers. I've found it to be a wonderful resource, especially since the very day I started designing my backend, the service I was intending to use (Parse) announced it was shutting down. It's very appealing due to it's small learning curve, but I'm starting to notice some annoying little issues here and there so I'm seeking out some experts for advice and help. I posted another CloudKit question a couple days ago, which is still occurring: CloudKit Delete Self Option Not Working. But I want to limit this to a different issue that may be related.
Problem ~ Ever since I started using CloudKit I have noticed that whenever I manually try to edit (delete an entry, remove or add part of a list, even add a DeleteSelf option to a CKReference after creation), and then try to save the change, I get an error message and cannot proceed. Here is a screenshot of the error window that appears:
It's frustrating because anytime I want to manipulate a record to perform some sort of test, I either have to go do it through my app, or just delete the record entirely and create a new one (that I am able to do without issue). I have been just working around this issue for over a month now because it wasn't fatal to my progress. However, I am starting to think that this could be related to my other CloudKit issues, and maybe if I could get some advice on how to fix it I could also solve my other problems. I have file numerous bug reports with Apple, but haven't received a response or seen any changes.
I'd also like to mention that for a very long time now (at least a few days), I've noticed down in the bottom left hand corner of my Dashboard that it is consistently saying that it's "Reindexing Development Data". I remember at first that wasn't an issue, I would get that notification after making a change but it'd go away after the operation is complete. Now it seems to be stuck somewhere inside the process. And this is a chronic issue, it's saying this all the time, even right when I log into my dashboard.
Here is what I'm talking about:
As time goes on I find more small issues with CloudKit, I'm concerned that once I go into production more problems could start manifesting and then I could have a serious issue. I'd love to stick with CloudKit and avoid the learning curve of a different service like Amazon Web Services, but I also don't want to set myself up for failure.
Can anyone help me with this issue, or has anyone else experienced it on a regular basis? Thanks for the advice and help!
Pierce,
I found myself in a similar situation; the issue seemed to be linked to Assets; I had an Asset in my record definition. I and several other I noted reported the re-indexing issue on the apple support website and after about a month it eventually disappeared.
Have you tried resting your database schema completely, snapshot the definition; since you zap it completely and than reset, see inset.
Ultimately I simply created a new project, linked it to cloud kit and use the new container in my original app.
I have a client app with coredata as its back end. Its simple enough, with two entities.
UPDATE: Using CloudKit as the sync service. I'm not really sure what is going on there. Except I can query and get results, incase things don't automatically work. The problem is, as I noticed with most third-party sync-service providers. 95% of the time, they all work. Its when I test it with a more than a few devices / simultaneous calls that some undesired change comes in.
This question is more about iOS and coredata than the actual syncing architecture.
there are times when there is definite sync data loss. I really can't tell when and how. That im still figuring out. Sometimes initial sync takes a long time (if theres existing data) and the user might close the app, (some people double press the home button and actually close apps!).
But no matter what I do, sometimes i miss an object, sometimes an attribute.
So I saw this NSAsynchronousFetchRequest and I thought about giving me an option to check if all local-data (coredata) is okay, to see if theres anything missing.
Perhaps i could use a simple predicate to see of some managedObject.title == nil and fetch its identifier. Collect those faulty objects and request the truth server for data for these objects? Is this a good use of NSAsynchronousFetchRequest?
If yes, when during the lifetime of the app would this be good?
Im thinking maybe after applicationDidEnterBackround would be a good time..? Then If I do get it, will need a good way to manage CoreData in the background!
If no, well.. Really don't know wat to do then.
Im trying to actually do this, will update with my results.
UPDATE: Question updated to reflect the use of Cloudkit
We're writing an application which uses our http api, and occasionally it will encounter errors, failed connections, timeouts, etc.
We'd like to, at least in beta, be able to capture these incidents, and forward them to ourselves somehow. Since obviously many of these issues could be due to the actual connection being down, this would need to queue these incidents and send them when a connection is available.
I tried googling for an answer for this but to no avail, came across a bunch of solutions which catch exceptions, but not just random "incidents" (could really just be a string we log somewhere, we'd just include all the details in it).
Short of writing my own coredata (or something) backed queue, I'm at a loss at what a solution for this could be.
Does anyone know of any libs/services which could help with this?
You might want to look into Testflight, or less general purpose, Parse. Not quite sure, but maybe HockeyKit offers a solution for this, too.
You can take a look at Bugfender, it's a product we have built to solve this problem. We have found that while developing an app there are a lot of issues that are not crashes, so we decided to make our own product to help us on this.
It's easy to integrate and you can get the devices logs. Our service works offline and online, we have spent a lot of time to make it reliable and easy to use.
Compared to other products, you don't need any crash to get the logs, you choose when you want them.
We've got a strange problem that is very hard to troubleshoot. We are looking for some assistance on methods that might help us troubleshoot this problem. We use memcache and thinksphinx. Recently we moved to a new server and suddenly elements on the pages are showing up missing.
So for instance, our home page has news items and latest files added. In one case I see that we are missing the last 2 news items. My developer checks and sees its there. 10 minutes later he checks and see all the news items missing. Check again 15 minutes later and missing 3 items.
We were able to notice that on the server move we had memcache set at 2mb, so we moved it up to 1gb. It looked like everything was fixed. However, now we are seeing similar inconsistencies when people are searching. Users will report problems, I will see them, send them to my developer and he sees different results. We both refresh and see something else.
We are able to realize this is somehow related to memcache and/or our thinkingsphinx, because when we clear and rebuild, everything acts normal.
My only assumption is that at some point we run out of memory in memcache, but it makes no sense that only certain data would not be shown.
Can anyone give any advice?
Thanks,
Will
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I have a piece of code that is trying to write to disk many files in one second. However, it fails wince I have installed Kaspersky Anrivirus 2011.
Stream:= TFileStream.Create(sName, fmCreate);
The code totally worked with Kaspersky 2010 and also works with Kaspersky 2011 if I disable its scanners (it cannot be totally unloaded from memory - unless it is uninstalled). The code also works if (Kaspersky 2011 is running and) I write to disk slooooowly. So it obviously is not fast enough to handle my disk requests.
The error I get is EFCreateError ('Cannot create xxx file blablabla'). Error is random. Most of the files are written to disk. About 10% fail.
I have tried to get support but is impossible to find a real person at Kaspersky to speak with. Their so called 'support' is actually a FAQ data base. Of course it speaks about how to install the product and related stuff. There is nothing about programing-related issues. Any ideas?
PS: this has repercussions for the entire Delphi community! All our customers will fail to use Delphi software if they are using KIS 2011 as antivirus. For the moment I recommend to my users to disable their antivirus but I need a real solution.
It will be nice if a person with KIS 2011 can confirm the problem. Just create a tiny program that write 200 small files to disk using TFileStream.
UPDATE:
The problem appears ONLY when the file does not exist and it is created (created as opposed to overwritten).
Similar report: https://forums.embarcadero.com/thread.jspa?threadID=32751&tstart=15
Similar report: http://forum.kaspersky.com/index.php?showtopic=120561
A possible solution that popped in my mind is to detect if KIS is running and if it is, to put a delay after each writing to disk. Or at leat, let the user know there may be problems. Anybody knows how to detect if a service is running?
I added a delay of 650ms (after each file creation) and the bug is still there). So is not about how fast you write to disk but about how many files you write.
Just uninstalled KIS 2011. The problem does not appear anymore.
Just reinstalled the good old KIS 2010. The bug is still there but it appear rarely (about every 300 files instead of about 30 as in KIS 2011).
The problem was confirmed on a second computer.
NEWS: The crash appears in TFileStream.Create however it may be caused by a function called earlier: TestWriteAccess. If I disable this function, the TFileStream.Create doesn't fail anymore. Well, this doesn't change things too much. No matter which line of code generates the error, the program still fails (randomly) to write files to disk while Kaspersky is running.
Still waiting a response from a real person from Kaspersky...
More automated responses received from Kaspersky support (I sent emails to support in several countries). All pointing to a FAQ database.
I change my status from Kaspersky fan (and customer) to Kaspersky hater because I finally receive an answer from a real person from Kaspersky support and it was plain and simple obnoxious.
To test the code, try to use the code in a loop, to create 1000 files. The program creates a bunch of files (random number) then it fails at StreamFile:= TFileStream.Create.
Update: The issue can be fixed by entering a small delay after creating each file.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1H3_O1z1iEqfh9ZT9u3B0R1tGEj-Hc9o7rAE0LKPr33Y
2013 Update
Starting with this afternoon (after an update) KIS conflicts with Delphi.
Every time I compile a project KIS spikes to 100% CPU utilization. I will have to uninstall it.
2017 Update
All false positive alarms disappeared magically for all my Delphi programs starting with 2017. It seems that it was enough for a program like Kaspersky remove Delphi-generated executables from its virus list; all other smaller antivirus programs followed.
Delphi 7, Win 7 (32), KIS 2011
You need to instruct your users, i.e. Kaspersky's customers, that Kaspersky is interfering with the operation of your software, and that THEY should report it. Express your frustration that you, as a developer, don't have access to a real human being. This is the only way that the anti-malware companies will ever react - bad PR with their paying customers.
Kaspersky = pirate company? Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe just yet another company with a bad product and nonexistent support. Their "support" consists in a FAQ database and an automatic email answering program. Phones are hooked to answering machines also. Their automated answer keep explaining me how to add my program in KIS "exception" database. I keep replying to those stupid emails that I cannot personally go to all my customers at home and put my program in the "exception" database and that it will be better if they will fix the bug.
When I finally got a non-automatic answer (the only one), the support guy fella is as rude as possible.
Possible solutions for Delphi programmers:
* Don't check if the user has write permission to a file (in order not to trigger Kaspersky bug)
* Check if the user has write permission. If the bug appears inform the user that Kaspersky creates problem and it should be temporary disable (while the program is running). Use a TRY EXCEPT block to do this.
Advice (based on my past experience):
Don't always blame your code if you ever received strange bug reports from your users when your program was trying to write to disk. Check also external factors (like existence of Kaspersky antivirus).
UPDATE:
I just applied for a refund. I will go for a chargeback if they won't refund the money (I strongly feel they won't).
Conclusion
When I posted this on StackOverflow I didn't realized the magnitude of the problem and I didn't realized it will deviate so much from initial course. Still I think it is well within the purpose of StackOverflow. We have all learned that sometimes the problems in out programs may not be caused by our faulty code and neither we can control the source of these problems (21 persons voted this question up - which means a lot of other people encountered issues with KIS).
We can just hope that poor designed programs that interacts with user's system at a very low level (such as KIS antivirus program) will be soon fixed so our sales won't suffer (much).
It is just frustrating when your program is labeled "buggy" and you can't do much about it!
Not an answer to solve your problem, but you should inform Kaspersky, probably they don't know there is a virus signature associated with a Delphi library.
And if your program isn't too complex, you might want to try Lazarus/FPC. It's not as good as Delphi, but I've been using it for several years now, and have got good results in Windows/MacOS/Linux.
i had similar problems with kaspersky 2011 when i was trying to add my prog to windows startup using d2010's new TFile.Copy() as well as raw api function:
CopyFile(PChar('C:\chellenger.exe'), PChar('C:\Documents and Settings\Omair\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\chellenger.exe'), False);
my solution was to put my delphi app in vb.net app as a resource, the vb.net app extracted it and put it to startup without false positives . Mixing two languages for your problem might solve your problem too(1 possible solution but a very ugly and nonprofessional solution i admit)
When you create file, any antivirus checks it. There is probably some kind of collision between your application and KAV. Have you tried to combine fmCreate with share modes. You can see in help for TFileStream.Create for available modes.
If the problem is just with kapersky, then just have your program detect if it is running. If so, scale back your file creation / writes to whatever passes their detection. Make sure you have some little status message somewhere that tells the user why things are slow. Incidentally, virus writers already know this which is why those heuristics simply don't work.
After doing that, contact Kapersky and work with them directly to get this resolved.
This gets past your immediate issue and will give you and kapersky time to figure out a long term solution.
Alternatively, you could simply shut kapersky down.. Just make sure you grab all of their watch dogs in the process.. But that tends to be a little more combative.
Creating a huge amount of files sounds like something that isn't necessarily A Good Thing, but you probably have your reasons :)
When you get the error code in Delphi, does KAV pop up any heuristic warnings, or is it completely silent? It wouldn't be weird to get a heuristic "omg, that app is doing something bad!" from creating a ton of new file, but if KAV is silent I'd say it's a bug.
Can you post a delphi executable with the tiniest amount of code that reproduces the bug? And a version that does the same step but only creates one file, it might be interesting to trace with SysInternals' ProcMon.
First, do you really need to test for write permissions by creating a file? Can't you just check the permission directly? I feel that creating a file for that purpose only is a lame way of doing it in any case.
Second, like noted above, it's likely that after you create and then delete a file, there is some intervention by Kaspersky's security mechanisms. Probably a driver tries to check the contents of the file you deleted, and keeps it alive for a while. Like this:
You create the file and open it, incrementing the refcount.
Kaspersky driver notices that and opens the file too. Even if you set share mode deny, as a driver it probably has the power to open it anyway (if Kaspersky could not circumvent sharing denials, any virus could have used the same trick to hide its data!).
You close the file and delete it. When you delete the file, the system just marks it "FILE_FLAG_DELETE_ON_CLOSE", but the file is still there until all the handles to it are closed.
Kaspersky continues to scan file, still haven't released the handle.
Therefore the file is still there.
You try to create a new file and the call fails because the old file is still not deleted.
The reason for all this mess is, of course, partly Kaspersky's checking mechanics, but they did nothing especially wrong here. Kaspersky needs to scan the file anyway, hardly anything can be done about that - it's antivirus, for crying out loud. On the other hand, checking permissions by creating and then deleting a file is (probably) very, very wrong. So I guess, you're the one at fault here.
I had the same problem. KIS made all kind of troubles. Until I reinstalled it. So, it was just a faulty installation.