Spark will sometimes freeze when attempting to start a conversation with a specific user. Our current workaround is to end the Spark process, and rename the transcript folder for that user, then reopen Spark. Fixes the problem every time.
The question is… why?
Someone on my team has the Spark source code and is going to attempt to look for the cause, but none of us are Java developers (I’m just a SysAdmin myself), so we’re shooting in the dark.
I attempted a workaround by writing a script that disables the local chat history (since transcripts are stored in our SQL DB), but users hate not having the history and will re-enable it themselves.
From the other posts I’ve seen, obviously this is an issue for more than us. Does anyone have a clue as to the root cause? Has anyone made an attempt to fix this bug?
Personally i have to do this (renaming old transcript file) when the history gets huge (like a few years of constant chatting with someone). Spark is not freezing for me, but sending and receiving messages becomes slower (a second or so pause before every message). Huge history takes more memory and Spark can’t handle it. A known culprit with no solution so far. But in the case of the freezes, this may be a corruption of transcripts. I can’t say for sure this is fixed in the 2.7.0 version, we are still using it a bit less than a year, but so far there were no issues like Spark always hanging when chatting with a specific user. 2.7.0 so far only exists in the form of the nightly builds. I’m updating to the latest version once in a month or two (~150 users). Sometimes it hangs for one or two users (not because of transcripts), but pretty stable so far. You can give it a try http://www.igniterealtime.org/downloads/nightly_spark.jsp
Is the source code for 2.7.0 available for download? If so, could you provide a download link? I’ve recompiled 2.6.3 with some customizations but ran into a bump in the road because that version uses some deprecated functions (I’m not a Java developer but I can see how code works and tweak it to my needs). Any help would be much appreciated thanks!
Source is now managed via Github. You can find github link here http://www.igniterealtime.org/downloads/source.jsp SVN is now in read-only mode and is not synced back from Github. 2.7.0 has some changes and new features, but it probably will still have those deprecated functions. There are too many old places in the code that should be rewritten, but that’s a huge task to take and we only have one-two occasional volunteer here.