Trying to avoid NT8 crashes

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello everyone,

Thank you for the replies.

The issue is that we need to have a test case to reproduce this issue before we can submit it to the development team for a fix.

drawing less than 20 lines per day, running about 6 strategies together in a same machine

Could we use this information to reproduce the issue? Perhaps we can run a long test with market replay data to recreate this issue. At this point I don't have any opinions of what is causing the crashes. We would need to reproduce the issue to fully understand it and give you an answer as to what exactly is causing the matter.

There may have been some confusion around my previous statement of placing try/catch blocks within OnRender(). This advise would only be applicable if you had code in OnRender() that we could troubleshoot. I was not offering a debugging solution by overriding OnRender() to add try/catch blocks.

There is another open thread where OnRender() errors are being discussed. I have posted some instructions to create multiple instances of the NinjaTrader 8 platform that can assist in being able to reproduce this issue in a clean enviornment. The idea is to have a clean installation of NinjaTrader in which you can test for issues without having to troubleshoot your main platform.

For example, if you come across a scenario where the issue arises, it can be tested in the blank installation if it can consistently reproduce the matter.

Here is a link to my post within that thread: http://ninjatrader.com/support/forum...2&postcount=15

Even if it were to take multiple days to reproduce, as long as we have some clear steps that can take to reproduce this issue, we will be able to move forward.

@Alfred, thank you for providing some tests that may reproduce this matter. I will test these and report my findings.

I will continue monitoring this thread for scenarios we can use to cause these issues.

[Alfred]

A Finger Dowsing Solution

This past year I have learned how to finger dowse for answers to problems that seem beyond the 5 senses. There is a marvelous book on dowsing....The Divining Hand by Christopher Bird....truly stunning scholarship. Page 263 thru 266 describe finger dowsing in detail. Why dowsing works is also explained in the book.

With this in mind I have asked a series of finger dowse questions on a vertical line crashing Ninja.

1.) Is something wrong with the vertical line draw tool....Yes
2.) Does it have something to do with the speed of timing in placing the tool....Yes
3.) Is the resize pointer involved in vertical line crashes....No
4.) Can Ninja fix this crash problem by analyzing the vertical line tool....Yes
5.) Can Ninja development analyze and solve this problem within one hours time....Yes

So....there you have it....a road map for a fix.....

Looking forward to the fix.....

[reach4thelasers]

OMG!! Can finger dowsing also be used to Determine the future market direction?

[manugarc]

Hello everyone,

Thank you for the replies.

The issue is that we need to have a test case to reproduce this issue before we can submit it to the development team for a fix.

[...]

There may have been some confusion around my previous statement of placing try/catch blocks within OnRender(). This advise would only be applicable if you had code in OnRender() that we could troubleshoot. I was not offering a debugging solution by overriding OnRender() to add try/catch blocks.

[...]

Hi Jim,

Don't worry; no confusions. At this point I realize you have very serious problems with your development team. This is not the way a real project should be managed, and I needed NT8 to be stable, that's why I'm offering myself to debug what your development team apparently is not in the mood for debugging.

If I had that code (I believe that sharing that snippet is not a problem since it could mean to solve the problem) I could isolate the problem and make you know how to fix it. By the way, I'm almost sure that it's about a race-condition problem, so don't expect to reproduce it using market replay.

I appreciate your sincerity; your development team is not going to fix it. That's OK, I'm switching platform, I cannot do any other thing since my job depends on having my strategies running. However, I'm interested on running them on NT8 when possible, so please count on me if at some point you want external help to fix it.

[Alfred]

OMG!! Can finger dowsing also be used to Determine the future market direction?

Generally some dowsers say it should not be used for personal gain...
You could dowse for your personal answer to that though & see if it will work for you.
Perhaps explore & practice with some short term market examples first.

In The Divining Hand there are many many amazing documented dowsing results ...finding oil wells, water wells, lost persons....it is an old technique used in Europe to find metal mines...I very highly recommend the book....

..........

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello everyone,

If anyone would like to help us track this issue so it can be properly reported, I am offering to distribute older installers for NinjaTrader 8 for anyone that would like to spend the time to let us know when the issue became actual for them.

If we can pinpoint the issue to a certain revision of NinjaTrader 8, we will have something that we can report to the development team for further analysis. We have not yet been able to reproduce on our end, so it will be necessary for you to tell us where to start looking.

For those wishing to test older versions of NinjaTrader 8 to find out when this issue became actual for them, please write in to platformsupport[at]ninjatrader[dot]com with the text Attn Jim and the thread URL.

[manugarc]

Hi Jim,

You have a number of people in multiple threads telling you OnRender() is crashing NT8 when drawing a simple line. Do you really need to know which version begins to fail (maybe all of them) to simply tell the development team that they need to debug their OnRender() code?? Looks like none of you is in the mood of fixing this, I can't understand it.

[reach4thelasers]

I agree... I'm a bit baffled by the "We need to make a reproducible test-case or script before we are allowed to bother the developers" approach...

I've been a software engineer commercially for about 17 years now and in all that time it would have been absolutely lovely if users or testers didn't bother me unless they had a script to help me exactly pinpoint a bug in my code; but it doesn't work like that. There are many users experiencing a FATAL crash, that nobody can consistently reproduce. This needs to be looked at by someone with knowledge of the codebase.

[Alfred]

Hello everyone,

@Alfred, thank you for providing some tests that may reproduce this matter. I will test these and report my findings.

Jim...plotting new vertical lines at targets this week....about 40 lines per session +/- (max 3 or 4 lines on screen at any time typically)...had 4 crashes, three were close to 1pm Pacific during the high volume close period...one was 6am in maybe not so high volume.

Plotting on ES (all charts) on 4 windows 3, 5, 8 second data.

Things went smoothly (no crashes) the previous week for 3 days with another method...started with 3 vert lines and dragging to new targets (no new vert lines plotted after the open)...

Looking like Ninja has a problem plotting vert lines in fast high volume... this can possibly trigger a crash.

Thanks.....

[soulfx]

I absolutely agree with your point reachforthelasers. It has been echoed by others too. Also worked in top banks live systems development and support where stability is paramount and i dont get Ninja rationale - yes we try to do our best and spend countless hours testing and checking code; but serious stress testing of ninja doesnt seem to happen and we are left to find the issues and 'prove' it - this new model of innocent til proven guilty may work for them but is somewhat imbalanced and lacking somewhat - this is software we are talking about after all, hardly the realm of perfection and if one scans the bug list of the releases it is quite informative and tells its own story ..

[akjeff]

Crashes and sluggishness

I will add my thoughts here. I purchased a lifetime license a few months back and am really disappointed. NT8 is slow and has a cumbersome feel to it. Compared to ThinkorSwim, it is like a tortoise and a hare comparison. I run 4 monitors on a very fast and robust system. ThinkorSwim functions in less than a blink of an eye and processes voluminous amounts of data in doing so. NT8 has lag and is very sluggish. I would not trust it for live trades. Support is minimal. This reminds of software that you purchase that has a no refund policy and it simply becomes space on your hard drive because you can't bring yourself to delete it based on what you paid for it. I remember back in the 90's when Tradestation was selling their software. I purchased the full version at that time for around $2400. Several years later they changed their business model and no longer supported the paid versions that their customers had purchased. I believe NT is headed down that path. No one is going to trust this software in a few years and they will become irrelevant. The various forums related to trading are full of complaints about NT8 being sluggish and crashing and/or locking up. I see the same thing unfolding in the other forums that is unfolding here: support is not able to re-create what the requestor is complaining about and therefore, not able to resolve any matter. None of us want to beta test software when trading a live account and that is what NT8 is at this time. As traders, we have all spent thousands of dollars on software and vendors that we felt would help us to trade better. When that turns out not to be the case, we need to know when to discard the software or vendor and move on. Just like in a trade, we cut a loser lose and move on to the next trade. There are many robust trading platforms that are available to us traders. However, NT8 for me, is not one of them.

[tmfdouglas]

Absolutely agree with these latest points, it very much seems like customers (I'm a lifetime licence holder) are paying for the privilege of testing NinjaTrader where basic functionality is not fit for purpose. NinjaTrader 8 has great potential, but in it's current state is not fit for purpose and hugely frustrating from both a bug perspective and overall platform usability. The reoccurring themes of posts on this forum and others is that there is no real progress being made on resolving this, and no acceptance from NinjaTrader that there are fundamental problems with the software.

[lordnel]

I concur... it crashes or locks up frequently, and I can't trade futures with it reliably. This thing came out of BETA much too soon, IMO. Lifetime license holder.

[manugarc]

Hi Jim,

As I told you I would like to put my strategies again on NT8 when these problems will be solved, so I'll keep an eye on versions updates to check when this exceptions are controlled. Does this issue (OnRender() crashes) at least has an ID to be tracked?

Thanks in advance.

[NinjaTrader_Jim]

Hello everyone,

The issue is currently being tracked with the ID NTEIGHT-11613. You can use this ticket ID to reference the fix for this issue in the release notes of NinjaTrader 8 for the version that contains the fix.

Release Notes - https://ninjatrader.com/support/help...ease_notes.htm

The related forum threads are linked within that ticket as well.

Please let me know if I may be of further help.