Cyclone 2021.1.2 can erase your HDD!!

Discuss all Leica Cyclone, Cyclone REGISTER 360 & Cyclone FIELD 360 software here.
Post Reply
btylutki
I have made 30-40 posts
I have made 30-40 posts
Posts: 33
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2009 9:16 am
14
Full Name: Bart Tylutki
Company Details: KSE
Company Position Title: HDS Manager
Country: USA NJ
Been thanked: 3 times

Cyclone 2021.1.2 can erase your HDD!!

Post by btylutki »

did erase mine, at least...a couple of times.

all data from HDD gone…… except files that were currently locked or used in cyclone database.

But why it happened?:

well...I needed a lot of space on HDD to unify large database, so I had to move "TEMPORARY FILES FOLDER" onto another drive.
After I relocated “TEMPORARY FILES FOLDER” to ROOT folder of a HDD Cyclone, during every DATA IMPORT operations, erased all HDD content (except files that were currently locked).
If TEMP directory was set up INSIDE a dedicated folder then it was all fine....

Thanks Leica. Something like "WARNING: ALL data on HDD will be erased" would be greatly appreciated.

This post may help somebody to avoid a hassle in the future: DO NOT setup your TEMP folder in ROOT directory!!!!

Is this some sort of common knowledge, that I was not aware of? That’s what Leica support certainly made it sound like.
They didn’t consider it as software bug, but rather as a user error.
In my personal opinion no software on this planet should be allowed to do things like that unless It’s a malware or similar….
Luckily, I backup regularly so not much loss here.

Cheers!
RJGEOMATICS
V.I.P Member
V.I.P Member
Posts: 133
Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2019 7:20 pm
4
Full Name: Bart Man
Company Details: Laser Scanning
Company Position Title: Passionate about making amazing PCs
Country: Canada
Linkedin Profile: No
Has thanked: 38 times
Been thanked: 68 times

Re: Cyclone 2021.1.2 can erase your HDD!!

Post by RJGEOMATICS »

Yap. need have 3 times the size of your project/raw data as temp space available. And preferably on an M.2 NVMe as it is very heavy read/write procedure.

On our Cyclone/Register360 Processing machines we have them all as Standalone with 3 separate 2TB M.2 NVMe drives. One of course is for Drive "C" operating system, and there we have 1TB reserved for Temp Space. Then next 2TB drive is where the Raw Data and Project exist. Then third 2TB is for exports and Archives plus to interim move things around while working.

Also our Cyclone/Register360 computers are only Cyclone/Register360... They have some lite weight support programs, but no heavy modeling or anything else on them. We just have Cyclone, Then BricsCAD to look at Models and coordinate control, and ReCAP. Nothing else. The systems are dedicated to registration. We have other systems for modeling and assembling files, that are built with entirely different chips and video cards.

Also as drives get full, you'll see that things really get slower in your project work... Especially when you get into projects where you have 10,000 links and try running a C2C on the entire bundle with all 10,000 links.
badam
V.I.P Member
V.I.P Member
Posts: 916
Joined: Tue May 11, 2021 5:36 pm
2
Full Name: Adam Berta
Company Details: InnoScan 3D Hungary Kft
Company Position Title: unknown
Country: Hungary
Linkedin Profile: No
Has thanked: 51 times
Been thanked: 297 times
Contact:

Re: Cyclone 2021.1.2 can erase your HDD!!

Post by badam »

btylutki wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 6:55 pm did erase mine, at least...a couple of times.

all data from HDD gone…… except files that were currently locked or used in cyclone database.

But why it happened?:

well...I needed a lot of space on HDD to unify large database, so I had to move "TEMPORARY FILES FOLDER" onto another drive.
After I relocated “TEMPORARY FILES FOLDER” to ROOT folder of a HDD Cyclone, during every DATA IMPORT operations, erased all HDD content (except files that were currently locked).
If TEMP directory was set up INSIDE a dedicated folder then it was all fine....

Thanks Leica. Something like "WARNING: ALL data on HDD will be erased" would be greatly appreciated.

This post may help somebody to avoid a hassle in the future: DO NOT setup your TEMP folder in ROOT directory!!!!

Is this some sort of common knowledge, that I was not aware of? That’s what Leica support certainly made it sound like.
They didn’t consider it as software bug, but rather as a user error.
In my personal opinion no software on this planet should be allowed to do things like that unless It’s a malware or similar….
Luckily, I backup regularly so not much loss here.

Cheers!
tbat should be considered as a software bug... but as leica usualy handles reports and bugs it will not be solved.. like utf8 char support, sorting of days during reg360 import, etc...
badam
V.I.P Member
V.I.P Member
Posts: 916
Joined: Tue May 11, 2021 5:36 pm
2
Full Name: Adam Berta
Company Details: InnoScan 3D Hungary Kft
Company Position Title: unknown
Country: Hungary
Linkedin Profile: No
Has thanked: 51 times
Been thanked: 297 times
Contact:

Re: Cyclone 2021.1.2 can erase your HDD!!

Post by badam »

RJGEOMATICS wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 7:37 pm Yap. need have 3 times the size of your project/raw data as temp space available. And preferably on an M.2 NVMe as it is very heavy read/write procedure.

On our Cyclone/Register360 Processing machines we have them all as Standalone with 3 separate 2TB M.2 NVMe drives. One of course is for Drive "C" operating system, and there we have 1TB reserved for Temp Space. Then next 2TB drive is where the Raw Data and Project exist. Then third 2TB is for exports and Archives plus to interim move things around while working.

Also our Cyclone/Register360 computers are only Cyclone/Register360... They have some lite weight support programs, but no heavy modeling or anything else on them. We just have Cyclone, Then BricsCAD to look at Models and coordinate control, and ReCAP. Nothing else. The systems are dedicated to registration. We have other systems for modeling and assembling files, that are built with entirely different chips and video cards.

Also as drives get full, you'll see that things really get slower in your project work... Especially when you get into projects where you have 10,000 links and try running a C2C on the entire bundle with all 10,000 links.
Nobody asked how many temp space are required. And just to rant a little bit, those numbers are true for a special case, but most of the time reg360 for example don't use temp as much, for example it only uses huge amount of temp space during finalized registration point cloud creation. If you only export the highest temp usage is like few hundred megabytes. During import it is low. During daily usage temp is not used at all, it is using the server/project db and reads files, thats all. write only happens if you clean point cloud. (i am only talking about reg360, i cannot speak about cyclone register as i 've never used that.)
jedfrechette
V.I.P Member
V.I.P Member
Posts: 1236
Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2010 7:51 pm
14
Full Name: Jed Frechette
Company Details: Lidar Guys
Company Position Title: CEO and Lidar Supervisor
Country: USA
Linkedin Profile: Yes
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Has thanked: 62 times
Been thanked: 219 times
Contact:

Re: Cyclone 2021.1.2 can erase your HDD!!

Post by jedfrechette »

I would consider that a critical bug. Data loss bugs should always be critical, especially if a program is deleting files that don't belong to it. I can think of a couple ways the code could prevent this kind of unwanted behavior.
Jed
User avatar
smacl
Global Moderator
Global Moderator
Posts: 1409
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2011 5:12 pm
13
Full Name: Shane MacLaughlin
Company Details: Atlas Computers Ltd
Company Position Title: Managing Director
Country: Ireland
Linkedin Profile: Yes
Location: Ireland
Has thanked: 627 times
Been thanked: 657 times
Contact:

Re: Cyclone 2021.1.2 can erase your HDD!!

Post by smacl »

btylutki wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 6:55 pmIs this some sort of common knowledge, that I was not aware of? That’s what Leica support certainly made it sound like.
They didn’t consider it as software bug, but rather as a user error.
In my personal opinion no software on this planet should be allowed to do things like that unless It’s a malware or similar….
Luckily, I backup regularly so not much loss here.
Not exactly common knowledge, but contents of TEMP folders are often considered fair game for deletion by some routines when extra space is needed, e.g. Windows cleanup. Still a critical bug for all the obvious reasons, but IMHO it is never a good idea to set a temp folder to be the root of any drive, let alone your system drive.
Shane MacLaughlin
Atlas Computers Ltd
www.atlascomputers.ie

SCC Point Cloud module
VXGrid
V.I.P Member
V.I.P Member
Posts: 544
Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2017 10:47 am
7
Full Name: Martin Graner
Company Details: PointCab GmbH
Company Position Title: Research and Development
Country: Germany
Linkedin Profile: No
Has thanked: 160 times
Been thanked: 175 times
Contact:

Re: Cyclone 2021.1.2 can erase your HDD!!

Post by VXGrid »

smacl wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 4:32 pm
btylutki wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 6:55 pmIs this some sort of common knowledge, that I was not aware of? That’s what Leica support certainly made it sound like.
They didn’t consider it as software bug, but rather as a user error.
In my personal opinion no software on this planet should be allowed to do things like that unless It’s a malware or similar….
Luckily, I backup regularly so not much loss here.
Not exactly common knowledge, but contents of TEMP folders are often considered fair game for deletion by some routines when extra space is needed, e.g. Windows cleanup. Still a critical bug for all the obvious reasons, but IMHO it is never a good idea to set a temp folder to be the root of any drive, let alone your system drive.
+1
Temp folders are fair game, I often delete everything which is in %temp%, because some applications are not doing that.

From a software developer perspective I'd say there are two things to prevent this:
When allowing to redirect the temp path a) check it is not a drive file path or (better) b) generate your own temp folder within the given path, then this folder is your (the software's) fair game
Post Reply

Return to “Leica Cyclone, Cyclone REGISTER 360 & Cyclone FIELD 360”