Activation should occur before premium plugins are loaded

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lwc
Posts: 518
Joined: Tue Sep 27, 2005 5:46 am

Activation should occur before premium plugins are loaded

Post by lwc »

After running the new v4.5.2 for the first time, the Activation window popped up. But even though I ran it successfully it still disabled my plugins and I had to close PP and open it again.

Why does it happen every time I upgrade? If it requires a restart then will you consider to:
  1. Alert me about it after the success message.
  2. Restart PP automatically for me or at least prompt "Activated succesfully, but a program restart is needed. Click "Yes" to do it now."
  3. Mention this in the help file under Activation.
?

Thanks!
Last edited by lwc on Tue Sep 18, 2018 4:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Jeff
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Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2001 9:46 pm

Re: Activation requires a program restart

Post by Jeff »

It does not require a restart and you're the first person to report this issue.

- What plugins do you have installed?
- Which plugins have you intentionally disabled, if any?
- Which plugins are disabled after you re-activate?
- Do *any* premium features work if you don't restart?
- What specific symptoms have you observed before you restart? e.g. presumably something that you use doesn't work, but have you gone into Tools / Plugins and are the premium plugins disabled, and what happens if you try to enable it?
- Any other insights you think might be relevant in trying to duplicate the behavior?
lwc
Posts: 518
Joined: Tue Sep 27, 2005 5:46 am

Re: Activation requires a program restart

Post by lwc »

To answer those questions better, is there a way to reset the activation so I'll tell you in real time? Any poppeeper.ini setting to do so?
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Jeff
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Re: Activation requires a program restart

Post by Jeff »

It's embedded into the license file, so you can't access it. What I do is just overwrite the current files with the older version and then run it. You'll get the activation window when you start the older version (and the results should be viable, ie. no need to discard the results and do it again when you go back to v4.5.2)
lwc
Posts: 518
Joined: Tue Sep 27, 2005 5:46 am

Re: Activation requires a program restart

Post by lwc »

Done as you requested and now I know what happened. The order of actions is the following:
  1. Pop Peeper checks for messages (assuming AutoCheck is on).
  2. Pop Peeper asks me to re-activate.
Well, maybe technically it's simultaneous but the e-mail check is complete way before the re-activation is ready.
That means any premium plugin that runs between 1 and 2 displays an error.
In my case, I specifically mean Remote Folders. They're checked for the first time only in the session the follows the re-activation. How long that automatically takes depends on one's polling interval.
I can actually see a yellow warning appears in the background while I'm asked to re-activate.
Once I re-activate, and before the next session, I can click the warning and it displays "Pro/Plus Pack is not activated (folder specified)".

Can't we assume until the next polling interval it'll also mean the voice notification won't read new messages, RSS check won't take place, etc.?

Maybe #1 should be done synchronously.
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Jeff
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Re: Activation requires a program restart

Post by Jeff »

Aaah... I'll need to dig deeper to see why remote folders aren't available, but the simplest solution may be the best solution -- skip the check mail while the Activation window is open; this solution would also prevent messages from bypassing AntiJunk.

I've recently been considering an option to allow the activation to occur in the background (I'm rather old-school in that I like knowing when software is doing that), and that would fit right in. The option to background-activate probably won't happen in v5.0, though.
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Jeff
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Re: Activation requires a program restart

Post by Jeff »

I've checked out your scenario (PP checks mail immediately) and it's not as bad as you think -- you get an error with the "remote folder" account (because it's not activated), but it's not necessary to restart POP Peeper after activation. You just hit "check mail" (or wait for the next scheduled) and it works as expected.
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Jeff
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Re: Activation requires a program restart

Post by Jeff »

Code has been added for v5 to address this:
- If a scheduled startup check mail occurs when the Activation window is open, then the check mail will be delayed until the Activation window is closed
- This will NOT affect a regular check mail

So if, for example, you have the polling interval set to 1 minute, then you would have 1 minute to perform the activation before running into the same issues as before. I think that a likely scenario where this might affect someone is if they had done a PP update, but not restarted it; turned their computer off; then the next day turn the computer on and walk away while it's loading. However, I don't think it's very likely and the side-effects aren't that serious anyway. And would be mitigated by the potential background-activation option.
lwc
Posts: 518
Joined: Tue Sep 27, 2005 5:46 am

Re: Activation should occur before premium plugins are loaded

Post by lwc »

Yes, in my last post I've explained that the requirement is another polling session and not a restart. I've just edited the thread's subject to reflect that.

So in this new code, will it be identical to having AutoCheck off when the program starts, and then turning it on a second later?
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Jeff
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Re: Activation should occur before premium plugins are loaded

Post by Jeff »

No, because the polling interval will still proceed as normal and would cause the same problem if Activation hasn't been processed yet. But the solution I've made should avoid this situation in most cases (unless, like I said before, a person is using a 1 minute polling interval and/or isn't paying attention to the Activation window). If the startup check mail was skipped because of the Activation window, then upon dismissing the Activation window, POP Peeper will perform a checkmail and clear up any errors that occurred because of the regular polling interval that occurred pre-Activation. Voila or something.
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