“Instrument access failed” in middle of calibration

[Cyclonik]

I’m getting “an instrument access fail” message mid-way through performing a calibration.

I’m using a SpyderX under Kubuntu 18.04. I had instrument access problems at the beginning which eventually I solved by deleting the symlink and copying the 55Argyll rule to the Udev rules folder.

I then did 3 successful runs and found that to use the profiles I had to install colord-kde, which also installs gnome-color-manager & argyll packages. This last package is outdated – Argyll v. 1.8 -so I’m using the up do date version that DisplayCal downloaded.

The problem has occurred since then – whether it’s to do with the installation of colord-kde, I don’t know.

Here’s the tail end of the log.

2020-03-19 19:54:27,005 Patch 64 of 64 DE 0.078713, W.DE 78.712937, peqDE 78.712937, Repeat
2020-03-19 19:54:28,488 Patch 64 of 64 DE 0.078713, W.DE 78.712937, peqDE 78.712937, Repeat
2020-03-19 19:54:29,971 Patch 64 of 64 DE 0.078713, W.DE 78.712937, peqDE 78.712937, Repeat
2020-03-19 19:54:31,454 Patch 64 of 64 DE 0.078713, W.DE 78.712937, peqDE 78.712937, Repeat
2020-03-19 19:54:32,939 Patch 64 of 64 DE 0.078713, W.DE 78.712937, peqDE 78.712937, Repeat
2020-03-19 19:54:34,422 Patch 64 of 64 DE 0.078713, W.DE 78.712937, peqDE 78.712937, Repeat
2020-03-19 19:54:35,905 Patch 64 of 64 DE 0.078713, W.DE 78.712937, W.peqDE 78.712937, Fail ( > 0.250000)
2020-03-19 19:54:35,906
2020-03-19 19:54:35,907 Brightness error = -0.723379 cd/m^2 (is 154.259222, should be 154.982600)
2020-03-19 19:54:35,908 White point error = 0.723668 deltaE
2020-03-19 19:54:35,908 Maximum neutral error (@ 1.000000) = 0.744807 deltaE
2020-03-19 19:54:35,909 Average neutral error = 0.275492 deltaE
2020-03-19 19:54:35,909 Failed to meet target 0.600000 delta E, got worst case 78.712937
2020-03-19 19:54:35,909 Number of measurements taken = 251
2020-03-19 19:54:35,910 Computing update to calibration curves...
2020-03-19 19:54:35,990 The instrument can be removed from the screen.
2020-03-19 19:54:36,030 Written calibration file 'G247HL #1 2020-03-19 19-41 D5000 2.2 M-S XYZLUT+MTX.cal'
2020-03-19 19:54:36,033 DisplayCAL: Reached EOF (OK)
2020-03-19 19:54:36,138 dispcal exitcode: 0
2020-03-19 19:54:36,193 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2020-03-19 19:54:36,193 Session log: G247HL #1 2020-03-19 19-41 D5000 2.2 M-S XYZLUT+MTX
2020-03-19 19:54:36,193
2020-03-19 19:54:36,194 Working directory:
2020-03-19 19:54:36,194   /
2020-03-19 19:54:36,194    tmp/
2020-03-19 19:54:36,194     DisplayCAL-GmmIoX/
2020-03-19 19:54:36,194
2020-03-19 19:54:36,194 Command line:
2020-03-19 19:54:36,195   /home/webby/.local/share/DisplayCAL/dl/Argyll_V2.1.2/bin/dispread
2020-03-19 19:54:36,195     -v
2020-03-19 19:54:36,195     -d1
2020-03-19 19:54:36,195     -c1
2020-03-19 19:54:36,195     -ye
2020-03-19 19:54:36,195     -P0.498272287491,0.520593080725,1.24802110818
2020-03-19 19:54:36,196     -N
2020-03-19 19:54:36,196     -k
2020-03-19 19:54:36,196     'G247HL #1 2020-03-19 19-41 D5000 2.2 M-S XYZLUT+MTX.cal'
2020-03-19 19:54:36,196     'G247HL #1 2020-03-19 19-41 D5000 2.2 M-S XYZLUT+MTX'
2020-03-19 19:54:36,196
2020-03-19 19:54:36,246 DisplayCAL: Starting interaction with subprocess
2020-03-19 19:54:36,274
2020-03-19 19:54:36,343
2020-03-19 19:54:39,474 Number of patches = 175
2020-03-19 19:54:39,476 Setting up the instrument
2020-03-19 19:54:44,981 dispread: Error - new_disprd failed with 'Instrument Access Failed'
2020-03-19 19:54:44,982
2020-03-19 19:54:44,983 DisplayCAL: Reached EOF (OK)
2020-03-19 19:54:45,084 dispread exitcode: 1
2020-03-19 19:54:45,085 ...aborted.
2020-03-19 19:54:45,098 DisplayCAL: Uninhibited org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver
2020-03-19 19:54:45,099 DisplayCAL: Uninhibited org.freedesktop.PowerManagement.Inhibit

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[Florian Höch]

Might be an intermittent USB problem.

[Cyclonik]

I thought of that – and checked that I wasn’t using USB3. I’ve also checked afterwards if the instrument is still there and still “owned” by colord. It is.

The log above is the third time. And it happens at the same moment in the cycle.

I’m not quite sure of the terminology – there is a series of passages and then a pause and then a message saying something like it’s building a list of swatches and it then tries to reinitialise the instrument and it fails. II think it could be that, in restarting, the command goes to the installed argyll.deb (installed with colord-kde) rather than the version downloaded by DisplayCal. There has been no maintenance of the “official” package for 2 years and it’s still Argyll v. 1.8 and SpyderX is not supported – my SpyderX is invisible to Gnome color manager.

Thing is the DisplayCal profile manager doesn’t work (doesn’t even start) under Kubuntu 18.04 and installing a profile through DisplayCal fails. Installing colord-kde is the solution proposed here and elsewhere, but I note that all the authors of the solutions are using older instruments which would not be affected.

I’m trying to work out why DisplayCal’s profile management doesn’t work, but the colord documentation is, to say the least, minimal and I’m far from expert.

[Florian Höch]

There is no DisplayCAL profile management. On all supported platforms, it uses the facilities provided by the system. And DisplayCAL will always use the ArgyllCMS version that is configured, i.e. by menu “File” -> “Select ArgyllCMS executables”.

[Cyclonik]

Well there’s a thing called “Profile Loader” that wasn’t there before and dies when launched.

If I knew where to look, I might  be able to be more intelligent about it. At the moment, the only solution I have is colord-kde remove -purge to see if that is the problem and then I’m left with profiles I can’t install or use. There must be logs somewhere that give a hint of what is happening, but I haven’t a clue where.

[Florian Höch]

Well there’s a thing called “Profile Loader” that wasn’t there before and dies when launched.

It’s a command-line only application, it is not supposed to show a GUI. Running it will just call the appropriate system functions to load calibration, then exit. On modern systems, it isn’t really needed anymore – the reason I keep it around is that in cases the system actually fails to set the calibration, it’ll fix that.

There must be logs somewhere that give a hint of what is happening, but I haven’t a clue where.

Hmm depending on what the system uses (probably systemd) the system log files should have that information. Also, both colord and colord-kde probably have some documentation somewhere for “when things go wrong” – at least they ought to have.

[Cyclonik]

Colord isn’t very helpful and colord-kde is basically a widget for systems settings on the back of gnome colour manager. There seem to be other packages that may work without colour manager but you’ll only find the in the package manager and not in “Discover” or whatever the Ubuntu equivalent is.

Anyway back to the coal face…

[Cyclonik]

I found that uninstalling colord-kde did the trick – as it insists on installing the Argyll package and does something to the configuration. What, how, where, I don’t know. The problem comes because the packaged version of Argyll is an old one and doesn’t support the SpyderX.

Anyway, remove, purge of the offending packages and everything started working again.

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