Crafty crashing as soon as it's out of book

[EdCollins]

Greetings,

I've spent longer tonight than I care to admit, trying to figure this problem out, and I'm about to give up. Maybe someone else has an idea.

Crafty (Crafty-23.2-win64.exe) is crashing the very moment I play a move against it, that gets it out of its book.

I'm using WinBoard, version 4.4.2b. So far I've never had a problem with any of my other Winboard engines or UCI engines.

My crafty.rc file looks like this:

tbpath=D:\chess\Tablebases\345
egtb
resign 7
ponder off
swindle on
learn 7
book on
book random 1
mt=2
log on
exit


My WinBoard debug file looks like this:

oveType 4 = 33, promochar = 0
TC string = '+5+5'
mps=0 tc=300000 inc=5000
move: d2d4
, parse: d4 (
)
nps: w=-1, b=-1
8947 >first : name Ed
nps: w=-1, b=-1
time odds: 1 1
8948 >first : time 30000
8948 >first : otim 30500
book hit = (NULL)
8948 >first : d4
8974 <first : tellicsnoalias kibitz Hello from Crafty v23.2 PS! (4 cpus)
8975 <first : move Nf6
machine move 1, castling = 7 0 4 7 0 4
move to parse: Nf6
Parser Qa1: yyleng=3, 23(-1,-1)-(5,5) = 0 ( )
TC string = '+5+5'
mps=0 tc=300000 inc=5000
move: g8f6
, parse: Nf6 (
)
moveType 4 = 33, promochar = 0
TC string = '+5+5'
mps=0 tc=300000 inc=5000
move: h2h3
, parse: h3 (
)
time odds: 1 1
11379 >first : time 30497
11379 >first : otim 30759
book hit = (NULL)
11379 >first : h3 (<------ I played h3 here, but any non book move makes it crashe.)
Fatal Error: Error: first chess program (Crafty-23.2-win64.exe) exited unexpectedly
GameEnds(38, Error: first chess program (Crafty-23.2-win64.exe) exited unexpectedly, 2)
13909 >first : result 0-1 {Error: first chess program (Crafty-23.2-win64.exe) exited unexpectedly}
13909 >first : force
13909 >first : ping 2
13909 >first : quit



The tail end of my Crafty log file looks like this:

White(1): post
White(1): hard
pondering enabled.
White(1): easy
pondering disabled.
White(1): ping 1
pong 1
White(1): name Ed
Crafty 23.2 PS vs Ed
White(1): time 30000
time remaining: 5:00 (Crafty).
White(1): otim 30500
time remaining: 5:05 (opponent).
White(1): d4
time used: 8.59
book moves {Nf6, d5}
book 0.0s 68% Nf6 c4
Black(1): Nf6
time used: 0.00
White(2): time 30497
time remaining: 5:04 (Crafty).
White(2): otim 30759
time remaining: 5:07 (opponent).
White(2): h3
time used: 2.43
time limit 16.75 (+0.00) (1:32)
depth time score variation (1)
starting thread 1
starting thread 2
starting thread 3




And for some reason, when I attempt to use an earlier version of Crafty, to help determine if the problem is specific to version 23.2-win64, the earlier version doesn't load or recognize or use the opening book at all... so that's something else I need to figure out.

Below are the two crafty lines in my WinBoard.ini file:

"Crafty-23.2-win64.exe" /fd="D:\chess\Engines\Crafty"
"Crafty-20.14.exe" /fd="D:\chess\Engines\Crafty"

As you can see, the earlier version that I'm using is 20.14... which doesn't seem to be crashing, but then again, it's not loading the book either.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Ed

Oh, my PC is Windows Vista Home Premium, 8.00 GB Ram, 64-bit Operating System, Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Quad CPU Q9400 @2.66GHz

[Olivier Deville]

Hi Ed

Which compile are you using ? Here I have no problem with Crafty 23.2_x64 compiled by Jim Ablett.

Olivier

[EdCollins]

Hi Olivier,

I'm using the executable found at this site:

http://www.webkikr.com/

The most recent exe from Bob's FTP site (ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/) is from 2006. If someone can post a link to another compiled executable for version 23.2, I'd appreciate it. I'm looking but so far I can't find one.

The links I'm finding for Dann Corbit's site are all invalid: For example, this page

http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/download.htm

gives this link

http://dcorbit2008.corporate.connx.com/

which doesn't work. Another forum lists ftp://cap.connx.com/pub/chess-enghines/new-approach as a link, but I can't connect to that either.

[Charles Browne]

Jim Ablett's 23.2 Crafty compile can be found on this page.

http://homepages.tesco.net/henry.ablett/jims.html

In case you weren't aware, Crafty books made with earlier versions of Crafty will not work in Crafty 23.0* and above, and vise versa. Not that this has anything to do with what you are experiencing with Crafty 20.14.

* I think that is the version when some kind of book format change was made.

[EdCollins]

Update: I think the reason why the earlier versions didn't recognize the book at all was because the book format changed with version 23. (I read something about this elsewhere.) Sure enough, after I downloaded older crafty books, and place these older books and executables together in a separate folder, that seems to work.

But the latest versions of Crafty still crash on me, the moment I make a move that puts it out of its book. I found "Crafty-232-64-ja.exe" online, and downloaded that exe. It opens and starts fine... but the same crash occurs, as described above.

So I'm still looking for suggestions. Thanks

Ed

[EdCollins]

Thank you Charles. I wrote my last post prior to reading yours.

[Charles Browne]

I am unable to give any advice really.

But a couple of questions come to mind.

What happens if you type in moves in a console window for Crafty? Thus bypassing the Winboard GUI?

What happens with running the 32bit version of 23.2?

What hash setting would Crafty use by default?

Not that this matters but I didn't see a hash setting in the .rc file you posted but really someone else needs to help with this because I think with 23.2 some Crafty settings are now set in the Winboard GUI. And I am really foggy on how this actually works and exactly which H.G. Muller Winboard versions this works with. And again this may have nothing to do with the problem.


I have the Jim Ablett compile of 23.0 if you want to try that.

[EdCollins]

Thank you Charles! Problem fixed!

The hash settings in my winboard.ini file were set to 2048. Please note that with my system, that setting works for all earlier versions of Crafty, AND every other engine I have.

Per your idea, I played around with the settings. When I lower it to 1024 (or when I specifically specify this hast figure in the crafty.rc file), Crafty no longer crashes!

And yes, typing in the moves in the console did work fine... (and Crafty 23.2 also worked in Arena) which is how I knew my exe was working, and that the problem was probably somehow related to WinBoard.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

[Charles Browne]

Problem fixed!

Well the problem of not having the engine crash maybe, but not the problem of why you can't use 2048MB of hash and also why that amount of hash causes a crash. If 2048MB of hash is being used by Crafty 23.2 when it is being run in the console or in the Arena GUI then it is obviously a Winboard GUI conflict somewhere, I would think.

I'll post this link but you most likely have seen it since you have apparently done your own searching and reading.

http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... _view=flat

The above thread really is worth reading very closely for anyone using crafty 23.2 in Winboard but in particular this post by Robert Hyatt is saying that putting the settings in the crafty.rc file overrides the xboard/Winboard GUI controlling the hash settings, etc.

http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 261#335261

So if you have the hash and pawn hash settings in the crafty.rc file and the engine is still causing problems when using 2048MB of hash, there cannot be a Winboard GUI conflict causing the crash because the GUI is no longer involved in controlling the settings, the engine is. Right? But in another post in the above linked to thread someone complained that his crafty.rc settings were not being obeyed, that Winboard had taken over. Spooky stuff.


The above are just some thoughts. I do not have large enough memory to test if 2048MB of hash works here.

[EdCollins]

Thanks for posting the links to that discussion.

I'm definitely not having the issue that Peter Skinner was/is having. For me, Crafty is indeed reading crafty.rc and using all of the settings in that file and NOT using the settings in WinBoard.ini.

But you're right... there must be some kind of a WinBoard conflict, because when I run Crafty from the console with my hash settings set at 2048M, everything is fine. And yet when running it from WinBoard with those settings the crash is immediate.

This is the case for both of my Crafty 23.2 compiles (Crafty-23.2-win64.exe and Crafty-232-64-ja.exe.)


So... more testing is in order, which will probably include downloading an earlier (and/or later) version of WinBoard (I'm using version 4.4.2b... I understand there is a 4.4.3 version) and earlier versions of Crafty, to see if I can pinpoint the problem further.