Intermittent failure to run code

wcraine

A few times (with no easily discernible pattern) I have been unable to run code blocks within notebooks. I'll hit control-enter and nothing happens, or else I will use Cell -> Run All Above, and an error will be produced that indicates that all code above has NOT been run, like object 'dat' not found. If the entire dataframe isn't there, something's up.

This has happened to my students a few times, also.

Is this just general server wonkiness, perhaps related to the number of kids that are logged in at that time? I've had some success with logging all the way out and logging back in. However, sometimes things won't work for 20 minutes.

I'm wondering if anyone on the server side has an insight or if there's a fix. I looked around at the menus in the notebook, and maybe Reconnect will do something, but I haven't been able to reproduce the issue. It just happens sometimes.

Bill

ivonnem10

Hello Bill,

This is an interesting issue. I am not sure what the exact error might be but here are some suggestions to try that might fix the issue:

Reconnect Kernel: Go to the Kernel drop-down menu and click Reconnect. If working correctly, a blue box that says Kernel ready should appear.
Reconnect to Server: Click the top right button that says Control Panel. Start by hitting Stop My Server. Afterward, click on theStart My Server button. This would prompt you to your classwork folder which contains all 4 notebooks inside.

Let me know if this works, if not I'll try looking into other suggestions. 😊

wcraine

ivonnem10

Thanks! I will try this if it happens again.

dashiell-young-saver

Thanks for flagging this @wcraine and for the great advice @ivonnem10 !

To add on Ivonne's notes, another tip: make sure that all students only have 1 notebook open at a time. If they have multiple notebooks open on multiple tabs, there's a higher likelihood that they'll exhaust their memory allocation and the kernel will need to be restarted.

When my students want to reference back to older notebooks, I recommend to them that they pdf their old notebooks (File -> Print Preview -> Ctrl + P -> Save as pdf). Then have the pdfs open in other tabs. In addition, having the R reference guide open in another tab can also be helpful for this purpose!

wcraine

dashiell-young-saver

I can't remember for certain, but it could be the multiple notebooks. I am that guy that always has 20 tabs open, so it could be that!

Great suggestion to refer back to PDFs as needed. The kids already have them made, since that's what they hand in to me.

Thanks!