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ISEmedia caption run: 'stuck' at 1267 of 1396

Transcript — 24/09/2026 — Andrew.human & Claude.ai

Andrew

Media Indexing stuck on "Processed 1267 of 1396 images"

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--07:38:34:559 AEST]

This session isn't linked to your computer and I don't have the current MediaIndexer build here, so I can't see the code. Before changing anything, the first job is to find out which of two cases you're in, because the fixes are different.

1. Is the indexer still running?

ps -eo pid,etime,pcpu,rss,cmd | egrep 'MediaIndexer|llama-mtmd|ffmpeg|whisper|python' | grep -v egrep

Process gone, counter frozen: the indexer crashed or was killed, and the progress/status file was never updated after its last write. Check dmesg | tail -30 for an OOM kill, and look at the end of the indexer's log or stderr for a traceback.
Process alive, llama-mtmd-cli child near 100% CPU for minutes: one caption call has hung on one image. With a normal SmolVLM caption taking seconds, this is the most likely case.
Process alive, 0% CPU: it's blocked on I/O or a pipe. A common cause is a subprocess whose stdout/stderr pipe filled because nothing was reading it.

2. Find the file it's stuck on

PID=<indexer or llama-mtmd-cli pid>
ls -l /proc/$PID/fd | grep -i attachments
cat /proc/$PID/cmdline | tr '\0' ' '; echo

The command line of the llama-mtmd-cli child names the image file. Then check that file:

file <that_file>; identify <that_file> 2>&1 | head -3

These kinds of image usually cause the hang or failure: very large dimensions (such as a 10k+ px panorama), animated GIF, CMYK or progressive JPEG, truncated or corrupt uploads, or an SMF attachment with no extension that isn't actually an image.

3. Fix, whichever file it turns out to be

The indexer needs to cope with one bad file on its own rather than stall the whole batch:

Put a per-file timeout on the caption subprocess, e.g. subprocess.run(..., timeout=60). On timeout, kill it, log the attachment ID to a skip list and continue.
Read the subprocess output with capture_output=True or communicate() so a pipe can't fill up and block it.
Pre-check each file with Pillow (Image.open().verify()) and downscale anything over about 2048 px before captioning.
Write progress per file (or every N files), so a restart resumes from item 1268 instead of starting again from 1.

Is MediaIndexer running as a plain CLI job, or does something (cron, or a status page) watch it and show the "Processed X of Y" text? If you send the current MediaIndexer.py along with the output from steps 1 and 2, I'll write the specific change as a versioned module update. When to deploy it is your call.

Andrew

 Live  root@forum:05:39:20:/var/www/html/The_ISE_Project# cat Classification_Progress_Report.py
import json

e=json.load(open('embeddings_store.json'))

c=json.load(open('captions_store.json'))

print('Processed',len(c),'of',len(e),'images')
 Live  root@forum:05:39:26:/var/www/html/The_ISE_Project#

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--07:39:47:743 AEST]

So the report only divides two counts: captions divided by embeddings. "Stuck at 1267 of 1396" just means no captions have been added since the last check. It doesn't mean anything is still running. The question now is which 129 items have an embedding but no caption. Their file types usually show the reason: they might be videos or GIFs that got embedded but that the caption pass skips, or files the caption pass tried and failed on without saying so.

This read-only script compares the two stores by key rather than by count:

cat > /tmp/missing_captions.py <<'EOF'
import json, os, collections
e = json.load(open('embeddings_store.json'))
c = json.load(open('captions_store.json'))
def keys(s):
    if isinstance(s, dict): return set(map(str, s.keys()))
    return {str(x.get('attachment_id', x.get('id', x.get('file')))) for x in s}
ek, ck = keys(e), keys(c)
missing, orphan = sorted(ek - ck), sorted(ck - ek)
print('embeddings', len(ek), '| captions', len(ck), '| missing', len(missing), '| captions w/o embedding', len(orphan))
exts = collections.Counter(os.path.splitext(k)[1].lower() or '(none)' for k in missing)
print('missing by ext:', dict(exts))
print('first 20 missing:', missing[:20])
open('/tmp/missing_captions.txt','w').write('\n'.join(missing))
EOF
cd /var/www/html/The_ISE_Project && python3 /tmp/missing_captions.py
ps -eo pid,etime,pcpu,cmd | egrep 'llama-mtmd|caption|MediaIndexer' | grep -v egrep
ls -l --time-style=+%H:%M:%S embeddings_store.json captions_store.json

How to read the output:

Missing count isn't 129: the stores use different keys, or the captions store has orphan entries. In that case the progress report's arithmetic is also misleading, and the report needs to compare keys instead of lengths.
Missing items are mostly one type (for example .gif, video, or no extension): the caption pass filters them out by design or doesn't handle them. That's a coverage gap, not a hang.
Missing items are ordinary JPGs/PNGs and no caption process is running: the caption run finished or died and skipped them without logging. Run llama-mtmd-cli by hand on one of them to see the actual error.
captions_store.json modified recently and a caption process is running: it's still working, just slowly on the tail, or it's hung on one file. Use /proc/<pid>/cmdline from my last message to find which file.

If the keys are attachment IDs rather than filenames, the by-extension line won't mean much. Paste the first few missing IDs and I'll adjust the script to look up each file's type.

Andrew

cat > /tmp/missing_captions.py <<'EOF'
> import json, os, collections
> ... (script as above) ...
> EOF
 Live  root@forum:05:42:12:/var/www/html/The_ISE_Project# cd /var/www/html/The_ISE_Project && python3 /tmp/missing_captions.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/tmp/missing_captions.py", line 2, in <module>
    e = json.load(open('embeddings_store.json'))
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'embeddings_store.json'
 Live  root@forum:05:42:12:/var/www/html/The_ISE_Project# ps -eo pid,etime,pcpu,cmd | egrep 'llama-mtmd|caption|MediaIndexer' | grep -v egrep
18454       00:52  175 /root/llama.cpp/build/bin/llama-mtmd-cli -m /root/models/smolvlm/SmolVLM-500M-Instruct-Q8_0.gguf --mmproj /root/models/smolvlm/mmproj-SmolVLM-500M-Instruct-Q8_0.gguf --image /var/www/html/attachments/793_5f74337f5dc42ea38173fdc507f3eb58c8778835 -p Describe this image in 7 words or less. -n 32 --temp 0
 Live  root@forum:05:42:12:/var/www/html/The_ISE_Project# ls -l --time-style=+%H:%M:%S embeddings_store.json captions_store.json
ls: cannot access embeddings_store.json: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access captions_store.json: No such file or directory
 Live  root@forum:05:42:24:/var/www/html/The_ISE_Project#

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--07:42:42:622 AEST]

That output shows two things:

Captioning is still running. llama-mtmd-cli is on attachment 793_5f74…, has been going for 52 s and is using 175% CPU. So it isn't dead. It's either slow on this particular image or hung on it.
The two JSON stores aren't in The_ISE_Project. Classification_Progress_Report.py uses relative paths, so it only works when run from the directory the stores are actually in, and that isn't this one.

Next step:

# where do the stores live, and are they still being written?
find / -xdev \( -name captions_store.json -o -name embeddings_store.json \) -exec ls -l --time-style=+%H:%M:%S {} \; 2>/dev/null

# who launched the caption process (the driver script + its cwd)
ps -o pid,ppid,etime,cmd -p $(ps -o ppid= -p 18454)
ls -l /proc/$(ps -o ppid= -p 18454 | tr -d ' ')/cwd

# is this image a problem file?
f=/var/www/html/attachments/793_5f74337f5dc42ea38173fdc507f3eb58c8778835
ls -l $f; file $f; identify $f 2>&1 | head -2

# is it moving? run twice ~60s apart and compare
ps -eo pid,etime,cmd | grep [l]lama-mtmd | awk '{print $1,$2,$NF}' ; grep -o 'attachments/[^ ]*' /proc/18454/cmdline 2>/dev/null

How to read the result:

The --image argument changes between the two checks and the captions file's timestamp keeps moving: the run is working normally. The count looked stuck because the report was run from somewhere else, or because the driver only saves to disk every N images. Nothing needs fixing, apart from making the report use absolute paths.
PID 18454 is still on attachment 793 after several minutes: that image is hung. file/identify will usually show why: very large dimensions, a GIF, CMYK colour, or a truncated upload. Killing it with kill 18454 should let the driver move on to the next image. That depends on whether the driver catches a failed subprocess, and the parent script will tell us. Whether and when you kill it is up to you.

Please send the output, plus the parent script's name once we know it. The permanent fix belongs in that driver: a per-image timeout, skipping and logging bad files, and resuming from where it stopped. I'd make it a versioned update to the script.

Andrew

 Live  root@forum:05:44:14:/var/www/html/The_ISE_Project# # where do the stores live, and are they still being written?
find / -xdev \( -name captions_store.json -o -name embeddings_store.json \) -exec ls -l --time-style=+%H:%M:%S {} \; 2>/dev/null
... (remaining commands pasted; output garbled) ...
-rw-r--r-- 1 apache apache 15860530 05:10:05 /var/www/html/ISE_Data/embeddings_store.json
-rw-r--r-- 1 apache apache 76546 05:10:05 /var/www/html/ISE_Data/captions_store.json

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--07:45:02:785 AEST]

Only the find output came through. The paste looks to have garbled after the first command, but that one result says a lot:

Both stores are in /var/www/html/ISE_Data/.
Both were last written at 05:10:05, in the same second. That's about 34 minutes ago, yet llama-mtmd-cli is still producing captions.

Because both files were written together, the driver seems to save its whole state at checkpoints (or only when it finishes), not after every image. If so, the progress report is reading a snapshot from 05:10. The captions made since then are held in the driver's memory, and the true progress is higher than 1267. The consequence: if the driver is killed now, everything done since 05:10 is lost. That matters before anyone kills PID 18454.

To confirm, run these one line at a time so the paste doesn't mangle them:

P=$(ps -o ppid= -p $(pgrep -f llama-mtmd-cli | head -1) | tr -d ' '); ps -o pid,etime,cmd -p $P; ls -l /proc/$P/cwd

for i in 1 2 3; do grep -ao 'attachments/[^ ]*' /proc/$(pgrep -f llama-mtmd-cli | head -1)/cmdline; sleep 20; done

f=/var/www/html/attachments/793_5f74337f5dc42ea38173fdc507f3eb58c8778835; ls -l $f; file $f

The first line shows the driver script and when it started. Its etime compared with 05:10 shows whether this is the same run that wrote the stores.
The second line prints the current attachment three times, 20 s apart. If the name changes, it's progressing and nothing is stuck.
The third line checks whether image 793 is an odd file.

To get an accurate progress figure, the report should read from /var/www/html/ISE_Data/ using absolute paths, and the driver should save more often (every N images, or at least every few minutes). I'll include both in the versioned update once I've seen the driver script.

Andrew

so do it !~

Andrew

and I have to keep Ctrl+c'ing it ~!

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--07:46:29:227 AEST]

The Ctrl+C is very likely why the count never moves. Both stores were last written at 05:10:05, which suggests the driver saves only at checkpoints or when it finishes. Each Ctrl+C then throws away every caption since the last save. The next run starts again at item 1268, reaches the same slow or hung image (possibly 793), and you Ctrl+C again. So it's the same stretch being redone over and over.

For now, avoid Ctrl+C unless you're prepared to lose everything since the last save. If the --image argument hasn't changed for several minutes, kill <llama-mtmd-cli pid> kills only that one caption call, and the driver may skip the image and carry on. Whether that works depends on how the driver handles a failed subprocess.

I've rewritten the progress report as v2.0 and tested it against mock stores (1267/1396). It now uses absolute paths to ISE_Data, compares the stores by key, shows how old each store is, and shows the live caption process with the image it's working on. So it will show you whether the run is moving without you having to interrupt it. There's also a Markdown reference doc for it.

The real fix goes in the driver script, and I haven't seen it yet. Upload the script that launches llama-mtmd-cli, and the versioned update will:

put a timeout on each image, then skip it and log it
save to disk every N images, and write each save atomically so an interrupted write can't corrupt the store
catch Ctrl+C (SIGINT) and save before exiting, so an interruption never loses work
resume from where the saved stores stop

Files are in the outputs folder:

Classification_Progress_Report.py
Classification_Progress_Report.md

Andrew

 Live  root@forum:05:50:01:/bin# chkindeximages
============================================================
 Classification_Progress_Report.py  v2.0  (2026-09-24)
 Andrew.human & Claude.ai
============================================================
Processed 1267 of 1396 images (90.8%)  [on-disk snapshot]
  missing captions      : 129
  captions w/o embedding: 0
  embeddings_store.json  last written 2026-09-24 05:10:05 (40m 01s ago)
  captions_store.json    last written 2026-09-24 05:10:05 (40m 01s ago)
------------------------------------------------------------
RUNNING llama-mtmd-cli pid 19379 (parent 11722)
  elapsed 44s, cpu 71s
  image   /var/www/html/attachments/819_78a28fc6a4f74cbfb3e7bfe0bff6311e434a9e9b
  NOTE: captions made since the last write above are held in
  the driver's memory and are not counted until it saves.
------------------------------------------------------------
Missing keys written to /tmp/missing_captions.txt (first 10 below)
  1007
  1009
  101
  103
  1048
  105
  1071
  1080
  1082
  1086
 Live  root@forum:05:50:06:/bin#

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--07:50:33:190 AEST]

It isn't stuck. The run has moved from image 793 to image 819 since your last check, so it's working through the images, just slowly. A single image is taking about 45 s of wall time and around 70 s of CPU. With 129 to do, that's roughly 1.5–2 hours for the whole batch, and none of it appears in the count until the driver saves.

The missing keys are attachment IDs, and the report lists them in string order (1007, 1009, 101, …). If the driver works through them in that same order, then 793 and 819 are near the end of the list, and most of the 129 may already be captioned in memory. This command checks that:

wc -l < /tmp/missing_captions.txt; grep -nx -e 793 -e 819 /tmp/missing_captions.txt; ps -o pid,etime,cmd -p 11722

If 819 is somewhere around line 110 of 129, the run is close to finished. Don't press Ctrl+C. Let it finish and save, and the count should jump to about 1396.
The ps line shows the driver's name and how long it's been running, which is the file I need for the permanent fix: saving every N images, saving on Ctrl+C, and a timeout on each image.

The slowness itself is expected. SmolVLM-500M Q8 running on the droplet's shared vCPUs at 175% takes about this long per image. Once the driver saves as it goes, a slow run is no longer a problem, because interrupting it won't lose anything.

Andrew

============================================================
 Classification_Progress_Report.py  v2.0  (2026-09-24)
 Andrew.human & Claude.ai
============================================================
Processed 1267 of 1396 images (90.8%)  [on-disk snapshot]
  missing captions      : 129
  captions w/o embedding: 0
  embeddings_store.json  last written 2026-09-24 05:10:05 (42m 46s ago)
  captions_store.json    last written 2026-09-24 05:10:05 (42m 46s ago)
------------------------------------------------------------
RUNNING llama-mtmd-cli pid 19662 (parent 11722)
  elapsed 29s, cpu 48s
  image   /var/www/html/attachments/836_f6ba646544b1f0da332f9dfb832f147a3e744b9d
  NOTE: captions made since the last write above are held in
  the driver's memory and are not counted until it saves.
------------------------------------------------------------
Missing keys written to /tmp/missing_captions.txt (first 10 below)
  1007
  ...
  1086

missing_captions:
129
109:793
117:819
  PID     ELAPSED CMD
11722       48:59 python3.8 -u MediaProcessor.py --log --monitor
 Live  root@forum:05:52:52:/bin#

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--07:53:09:953 AEST]

That confirms the run is working through the missing list in order, and it's nearly done:

793 is line 109 of 129, 819 is line 117, and 836 is about line 119. That leaves roughly 10 images.
It's doing about one image a minute (793 at 05:42, 819 at 05:50, 836 at 05:52), so it should finish in about 10 minutes.
MediaProcessor.py started about 05:04 and wrote both stores at 05:10. Every caption since then is only in its memory. Pressing Ctrl+C now would lose about 118 captions, which is most likely what happened on your earlier runs too.

If it finishes and saves at the end, the report should then show about 1396 of 1396, with both store timestamps updated. If the count doesn't move after the process exits, the driver doesn't save the captions at all on this path, and I'll need to see the code to fix that.

Once it's done, please upload MediaProcessor.py. The versioned update will save every N images, save on Ctrl+C (SIGINT), put a timeout on each image, and resume from where it left off, so an interrupted run no longer costs anything.

Andrew

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