[SailfishDevel] sporadic bouts of "Could not connect to MerSDK Virtual Machine. Timeout waiting for reply from server."

[christopher.lamb at thurweb.ch]

Hi All

I am suffering from sporadic bouts of the error: "Could not connect to  
MerSDK Virtual Machine. Timeout waiting for reply from server"

One moment I can be happily hacking and deploying code to my Jolla  
without error. Then I make a small change to the code, try to deploy,  
and bing! the error rears its ugly head once again like a scandinavian  
troll from under a bridge.


Project ERROR: Could not connect to MerSDK Virtual Machine. Timeout  
waiting for reply from server.
14:02:28: The process  
"/Users/christopherlamb/.config/SailfishAlpha4/mer-sdk-tools/MerSDK/SailfishOS-armv7hl/deploy" exited with code  
1.
Error while building/deploying project landed26_QT5 (kit:  
MerSDK-SailfishOS-armv7hl)
When executing step 'Rpm'
14:02:28: Elapsed time: 00:27.


When the error occurs, there seem to be at least 2 variants:

1) It will successfully deploy "As binaries" without error, but will  
give the error on "deploy as RPM".

2) Any kind of deploy gives the error.


The strange thing is, that despite the error, it does seem to  
(sometimes) deploy (or possibly partially deploy) code.

Right now I am getting the error in constellation 1), so according to  
the error a "deploy as RPM" should fail. Yet the test below indicates  
that it is at least partially deploying code.


[root at Jolla javascript]# pwd
/usr/share/landed26_QT5/qml/javascript
[root at Jolla javascript]#
[root at Jolla javascript]# ls -ahl
total 52K
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  180 2014-04-26 13:56 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  110 2014-04-26 13:56 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4.2K 2014-04-26 13:55 jsonpath.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.3K 2014-04-26 13:55 jsonSupport.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  349 2014-04-26 13:55 landed.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.2K 2014-04-26 13:55 message.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8.4K 2014-04-26 13:55 readDataModel.js
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8.8K 2014-02-03 08:32 settingsDB.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5.2K 2014-04-26 13:55 writeDataModel.js

//create new file testDeploy.js in QtCreator, then attempt deploy as  
RPM. Error is generated. Repeat attempt to deploy as RPM. Error is  
generated again.
//but testDeploy.js is now on the Jolla!

[root at Jolla javascript]# ls -ahl
total 56K
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  206 2014-04-26 14:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  110 2014-04-26 14:01 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4.2K 2014-04-26 14:00 jsonpath.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.3K 2014-04-26 14:00 jsonSupport.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  349 2014-04-26 14:00 landed.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.2K 2014-04-26 14:00 message.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8.4K 2014-04-26 14:00 readDataModel.js
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8.8K 2014-02-03 08:32 settingsDB.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   38 2014-04-26 14:00 testDeploy.js
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5.2K 2014-04-26 14:00 writeDataModel.js

So it looks like that after a second failed deploy, the file is  
actually deployed!


During bouts of the error, QtCreator seems to get out of sync the true  
status of the SDK VM (indicated by the VirtualBox GUI). So QtCreator  
may show the green "Start SDK" status, even though the SDK is already  
running. Or QtCreator shows the same button grey.

So far I have not found any lasting solution to prevent the error in  
the first place. Sometimes it goes away on its own accord, and  
sometimes various combinations of restarting VirtualBox, the VM,  
QtCreator or my development host help for a while (but rarely for long).

What exactly is the timeout? Is this a property that I can increase?

The "known issues" page of the Alpha (Qt4.8) SDK suggests:

https://sailfishos.org/wiki/SDK_Alpha_Known_Issues

VBoxManage modifyvm MerSDK --natdnshostresolver1 on

But that has not helped.

I am running the very latest version of the SailfishOS SDK, but had  
the same error with previous versions.

Any ideas?

Chris