Mods not activating/unactivating on restart?

kickit · 2024-02-16T09:08:43.036Z

In the mods menu on my Norns shield, I keep activating mods by moving the encoder until a plus sign appears on the right. I restart, and they are not installed. I’m trying to activate them one at a time. Sometimes when I restart, mods become DEactivated and I have to start over. I can’t activate all the mods I need to at this point. Your help would very much appreciated. Thank you!

kickit · 2024-02-17T03:48:51.495Z

Hi, I’m still having trouble with this. My mods deactivate and activate somewhat at random. I tried activating them one at a time, deactivating them all and starting fresh, etc… Anyone have any idea what could be causing this?

3-foot-1 · 2024-02-17T22:35:19.578Z

I think I’ve seen this behavior from time to time. IIRC, it has always been because one of the mods was failing in some way. Mods make pretty low-level changes to the system, and I don’t think there are many safety features around how they start up.

xmacex · 2024-02-18T09:25:49.094Z

What is messages are happening in Maiden @kickit ? As mentioned above, it is possibly one of the mods failing to start and confusing the other ones.

kickit · 2024-02-18T13:25:34.866Z

I think it had something to do with not installing n.b. mods correctly-- I did a reflash with a fresh install of norns and installed the n.b. stuff again and haven’t had a problem since!

xmacex · 2024-02-18T14:16:06.899Z

Glad to hear it, have a nice time jamming.

3-foot-1 · 2024-02-18T21:09:11.266Z

BTW, a re-flash or re-install of the whole norns system is rarely needed. (Not just for mods problems, but in general.) The idea of doing a fresh install is I think a hangover from the days of operating systems and applications that did not have proper software management. I’m thinking of Windows and Mac OS back in the day, and the very earliest days of Linux. Norns does not scribble over itself all the time like those old OSes did, so corruption of the base system is almost not a consideration.

Scripts and mods can get themselves into a bad state, though. From reading around lines, it seems that scripts get in trouble sometimes when they store state in dust/data or when they have corrupt presets. Those scripts sometimes need to have their data directory deleted. Some scripts and mods may have dependencies on other scripts or mods, or they might have extra install steps. Those scripts and mods can end up in a state where they have not been completely installed, and cannot continue. In those cases, the entire script or mod may need to be deleted and re-installed. But still, the norns system itself should not need to be touched. I think your issue with n.b. falls into this category.

There are a very small number of scripts or mods that install their own software alonside norns, or modify fundamental parts of the system that are not accessible through the usual norns scripting interfaces. I think Orac/sidekick, zxvcbn and warmreload are examples of scripts that do this. Maybe also connect-opz, connecto and autojack? If one of these scripts has a problem, that could cause issues for the rest of norns and possibly require a full re-install. (The issue here is that norns scripts commonly have instructions for installation, but no instructions for removal. If a script is self-contained, there is no need for such instructions because it is obvious: just delete the directory from dust/code. But if a script is not self-contained, it can be hard to figure out how to remove it cleanly. That is when you might have to fall back on a fresh install of norns.)

It would be nice if we had an index of scripts that reach out beyond the normal norns interfaces. Users would know that they need to do extensive surgery only if one of those scripts is involved. For everything else, just removing the script at hand or clearing its data would be enough.

(It would be even nicer if there were a rudimentary package management or dependency management system. But it is not simple to solve that problem without imposing a burden on script authors and system maintainers.)