📝 ISEmedia_Caption_Run_Transcript_2026-09-24_Part2.mdTheme:

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

Update MD and PDF transcript instructions: Add this conversation update to the the previous pdf right up to this point in time.

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--07:59:10:967 AEST]

The "previous PDF" isn't in this session. Nothing was attached here, and I can't reach files from earlier conversations. So I made a standalone transcript of this session, from your first "stuck at 1267" message up to this request, as both MD and PDF. I rendered the PDF pages to check they match the claude.ai print style (your turns indented right, no labels, date and "Claude" in the header, page numbers in the footer, no blank pages).

I shortened three of your long terminal pastes and marked the cuts with "…": the heredoc you pasted back, the paste that got garbled, and the repeated list of missing keys. Everything else is verbatim.

To get one combined document, attach the previous PDF (or its MD) and I'll add this session's pages to the end of it.

Andrew

r u sure about this ? stick stuck on that same guy:

Every 2.0s: chkindeximages                                                                           Thu Sep 24 06:05:33 2026

============================================================
 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 06:05:20 (0m 13s ago)
  captions_store.json    last written 2026-09-24 06:05:20 (0m 13s ago)
------------------------------------------------------------
RUNNING llama-mtmd-cli pid 23000 (parent 11722)
  elapsed 14s, cpu 20s
  image   /var/www/html/attachments/2144_9160210b2c5513c810c4b0ca2b907960b209cf42
  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    01:01:40 python3.8 -u MediaProcessor.py --log --monitor

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--08:07:01:061 AEST]

No. I was wrong, and this output disproves what I told you. Two things show it:

The stores were saved again at 06:05:20, but the count is still 1267. The driver did save, and no new captions appeared. So the captions it made over that hour weren't for the 129 missing images.
It's now captioning image 2144. In the string order the list is sorted in, 2144 comes before 793, so the driver isn't working through the missing list at all. My estimate of "line 119 of 129, about 10 minutes left" rested on that assumption, and the assumption was wrong.

What fits the evidence better: each run of MediaProcessor.py re-captions everything from scratch at about one image a minute, which is roughly 23 hours for 1396 images. The same 129 images fail every time and never get a caption stored. That explains why the count sits at exactly 1267 across every run, whether or not you press Ctrl+C.

To confirm, run these:

grep -cx 2144 /tmp/missing_captions.txt          # 0 = it's redoing an already-captioned image
ls /var/www/html/ISE_Data/ /var/www/html/The_ISE_Project/ | grep -i log

L=$(ls -t /var/www/html/The_ISE_Project/*.log /var/www/html/ISE_Data/*.log 2>/dev/null | head -1); echo $L; tail -40 $L

grep -m3 -n -e '"101"' -e '"1007"' /var/www/html/ISE_Data/captions_store.json; ls -l /var/www/html/attachments/101_* /var/www/html/attachments/1007_*; file /var/www/html/attachments/101_* /var/www/html/attachments/1007_*

The last command checks two of the missing images directly. My bet is that they aren't images SmolVLM can caption (videos, GIFs or corrupt files), or that the caption call returns empty and the driver drops the result without logging it.

There's no reason to wait for this run to finish. It won't fill in the 129, and whether you stop it is up to you. The real answer is in MediaProcessor.py. Upload it with the log tail and I'll write the fix: skip images that already have a caption, and record each failure with its reason so the 129 stop being invisible.

Andrew

 Live  root@forum:06:07:30:/bin# ls /var/www/html/ISE_Data/ /var/www/html/The_ISE_Project/ | grep -i log
attach_filetypes.log
indexbuilder.log
indeximages.log
ise_trace.log
mediaprocessor.log
misc_indexer.log
orphan_check.log
pdfindexer_fast.log
pdf_indexer.log
pdfindexer_union.log
query_log_reader.py
read_searches_log.py
 Live  root@forum:06:07:32:/bin#

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--08:07:48:594 AEST]

mediaprocessor.log is the log to check (indeximages.log is a second candidate). Run this:

cd /var/www/html; M=$(ls -d ISE_Data/mediaprocessor.log The_ISE_Project/mediaprocessor.log 2>/dev/null); ls -l $M; tail -40 $M

grep -cx 2144 /tmp/missing_captions.txt; grep -n -m5 -e '\b101\b' -e '\b1007\b' -e '\b2144\b' $M

file /var/www/html/attachments/101_* /var/www/html/attachments/1007_* /var/www/html/attachments/1009_*

What each part tells us:

The log tail shows whether each image is logged as captioned, skipped or failed, and whether the driver says it's starting from scratch.
The 2144 count: 0 means it's redoing an image that already has a caption.
The grep on 101, 1007 and 2144 shows what the driver logged for a missing image compared with an already-captioned one.
The file line shows whether the missing images are real JPEGs or PNGs, or something SmolVLM can't caption.

Andrew

 Live  root@forum:06:07:32:/bin# L=$(ls -t /var/www/html/The_ISE_Project/*.log /var/www/html/ISE_Data/*.log 2>/dev/null | head -1); echo $L; tail -40 $L
/var/www/html/ISE_Data/indeximages.log
[24/09/2026 06:04:25] [!] Captioning timed out (60s) for 1080_421fbbedd46c70508884bdba9f420850f8c8a09e -- embedding kept, caption will be retried next run
[24/09/2026 06:05:15] [!] Captioning failed for 1082_bb1c1864ea4c442e121e13664627296492ef5699: Command '['/root/llama.cpp/build/bin/llama-mtmd-cli', ... '--temp', '0']' died with <Signals.SIGKILL: 9>. -- embedding kept, caption will be retried next run
[24/09/2026 06:05:15] [!] Captioning failed for 1086_db55b501ebb2c2339b678b8ff110906a6c8539cb: [Errno 12] Cannot allocate memory -- embedding kept, caption will be retried next run
... (35 more identical "[Errno 12] Cannot allocate memory" lines, 06:05:15-06:05:16, IDs 1089 through 2042) ...
[24/09/2026 06:06:20] [!] Captioning timed out (60s) for 2144_9160210b2c5513c810c4b0ca2b907960b209cf42 -- embedding kept, caption will be retried next run
[24/09/2026 06:07:20] [!] Captioning timed out (60s) for 2146_7887b8b058fc8d9896487498d4bfcc34258531c9 -- embedding kept, caption will be retried next run
 Live  root@forum:06:07:55:/bin#

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--08:08:27:714 AEST]

The log settles it. It also corrects my last message: the driver is working through the 129 missing images (1080, 1082, 1086 … 2144 are all on the list, in numeric order). The problem is that every one of them fails, so the count stays at 1267 on every run. There are three kinds of failure, and all three come down to resources:

Log entry	Cause
`timed out (60s)`	On this droplet a caption takes about 45–70 s of wall time, as your earlier reports showed. A 60 s limit cuts off ordinary images partway through, not just bad ones.
`died with SIGKILL`	Almost certainly the kernel's OOM killer ending `llama-mtmd-cli` when RAM ran out.
`[Errno 12] Cannot allocate memory` (dozens within a second)	Python can't fork to start the caption process at all. The parent `MediaProcessor.py` is large (probably still holding the CLIP/torch model), and Python 3.8's `subprocess` uses fork, which needs memory headroom the droplet doesn't have. After the first failure every later one fails immediately.

The driver already has a timeout and retries on the next run, which is good. But each run hits the same memory ceiling, so the retries never succeed.

To size the fix, please run:

free -m; swapon -s; nproc; ps -o pid,rss,vsz,cmd -p 11722; cat /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory; dmesg | grep -iE 'oom|killed process' | tail -5

The likely fix, in order of preference:

Release CLIP/torch before the caption phase in MediaProcessor.py, or run captioning as its own lightweight pass. The parent then shrinks and forking stops failing. This fixes the cause.
Raise the caption timeout from 60 s to about 180 s, and pass -t <nproc> so llama-mtmd-cli uses every vCPU.
Add a swapfile if swapon -s shows none. This is the same safety margin we gave Clone, and it's cheap insurance against the OOM kills.

Numbers 1 and 2 are code changes to MediaProcessor.py, so I need the file. Upload it along with the output above and I'll deliver them as a versioned update. The current run can't succeed on the remaining images. Stopping it will only lose captions that were going to fail anyway. Whether and when you stop it is your call.

Andrew

i canned this, i am tired !!!

 Live  root@forum:06:07:55:/bin# grep -cx 2144 /tmp/missing_captions.txt; grep -n -m5 -e '\b101\b' -e '\b1007\b' -e '\b2144\b' $M
1

^C
 Live  root@forum:06:09:00:/bin# ^C
 Live  root@forum:06:09:01:/bin#

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--08:09:25:149 AEST]

Fair enough, it's a good point to stop. The grep did finish before you cancelled it: the 1 means 2144 is on the missing list. That's consistent with the log, which shows the driver retrying the 129 images and failing on every one.

Where things stand, for next time:

The 129 images don't get captions because the box runs short of memory: fork fails with ENOMEM, the OOM killer sends SIGKILL, and the 60 s timeout is too tight for this CPU. Nothing is corrupted. The 1267 existing captions are safe, and the driver retries the 129 on every run.
The fix will go into MediaProcessor.py as a versioned update: release CLIP before captioning, raise the timeout to about 180 s, add -t <nproc>, and possibly add a swapfile.
To pick it up, bring MediaProcessor.py plus the output of free -m; swapon -s; nproc.

Get some rest.

Andrew

 Live  root@forum:06:09:01:/bin# file /var/www/html/attachments/101_* /var/www/html/attachments/1007_* /var/www/html/attachments/1009_*
/var/www/html/attachments/101_2390c18c5efb48e8e971f5f349c233f62db37284:  PNG image data, 1090 x 1500, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced
/var/www/html/attachments/1007_d1fbcce54abb770edf95b6729127b7b68504edb2: PNG image data, 1500 x 1500, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced
/var/www/html/attachments/1009_5e951f9183dfeb982aebdd6c6c5d302ee9a8a32e: PNG image data, 1405 x 1500, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced
 Live  root@forum:06:09:33:/bin#

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--08:09:45:066 AEST]

That's a useful clue. The three missing images are all valid PNGs, all around 1500 px and all RGBA. None of them is corrupt.

That points to a likely cause rather than just a lack of memory. SmolVLM tiles large images into several 512 px crops, so a 1500×1500 image becomes roughly 9 or more tiles. That's many times the tokens, time and RAM of a small image, which fits both the 60 s timeouts and the memory failures. My guess is that the 1267 images that did get captions are mostly smaller ones.

If that's right, the main fix is cheap. MediaProcessor.py would downscale each image to about 512–768 px and flatten RGBA to RGB into a temporary file before passing it to llama-mtmd-cli. Captions of 7 words or fewer lose nothing at that size. The other items (a longer timeout, -t, releasing CLIP before captioning) become secondary.

When you're back, one line confirms it by comparing dimensions for a sample of missing images against captioned ones:

cd /var/www/html/attachments; for k in $(head -5 /tmp/missing_captions.txt); do file ${k}_* ; done | cut -d, -f2; ls | grep -E '^(2|5|10)_' | head -5 | xargs file | cut -d, -f2

Send that output along with MediaProcessor.py next session.

Andrew

 Live  root@forum:06:09:33:/bin# cd /var/www/html/attachments; for k in $(head -5 /tmp/missing_captions.txt); do file ${k}_* ; done | cut -d, -f2; ls | grep -E '^(2|5|10)_' | head -5 | xargs file | cut -d, -f2
 1500 x 1500
 1405 x 1500
 1090 x 1500
 1090 x 1500
 1500 x 1125
Usage: file [-bchikLNnprsvz0] [--apple] [--mime-encoding] [--mime-type]
            [-e testname] [-F separator] [-f namefile] [-m magicfiles] file ...
       file -C [-m magicfiles]
       file [--help]
 Live  root@forum:06:10:02:/var/www/html/attachments#

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--08:10:14:382 AEST]

All 5 missing images are 1090–1500 px, so the pattern holds. The second half of the command returned nothing because attachments 2, 5 and 10 don't exist, which made file print its usage message. My mistake. This version takes a sample straight from the captioned set instead:

cd /var/www/html/attachments; python3.8 -c "import json,random;print(' '.join(random.sample(list(json.load(open('/var/www/html/ISE_Data/captions_store.json'))),8)))" | tr ' ' '\n' | while read k; do file ${k}_* | cut -d, -f2; done

If the captioned images come back mostly under about 1000 px, the cause is confirmed: SmolVLM tiles large images and runs out of time and memory. The fix is to downscale to about 768 px and flatten to RGB before captioning, inside MediaProcessor.py.

That's a good place to leave it for tonight.

Andrew

 Live  root@forum:06:10:02:/var/www/html/attachments# cd /var/www/html/attachments; python3.8 -c "import json,random;print(' '.join(random.sample(list(json.load(open('/var/www/html/ISE_Data/captions_store.json'))),8)))" | tr ' ' '\n' | while read k; do file ${k}_* | cut -d, -f2; done
 JFIF standard 1.01
 JFIF standard 1.01
 JFIF standard 1.01
 JFIF standard 1.01
 JFIF standard 1.01
 JFIF standard 1.01
 version 89a
 JFIF standard 1.01
 Live  root@forum:06:10:29:/var/www/html/attachments#

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--08:10:43:541 AEST]

That's a sharper split than size. The 8 captioned images sampled are 7 JPEGs and 1 GIF. The 5 missing ones sampled are all RGBA PNGs. (cut hid the JPEG dimensions, so the size question is still open.)

There are two possible triggers:

PNG/RGBA itself: the alpha channel, or PNG decoding in llama-mtmd-cli's image loader, might be what's expensive or failing.
Size: the PNGs might also be the larger images, and tiling does the damage.

One fix covers both. Before each caption call, MediaProcessor.py converts the image to RGB, downscales it to at most 768 px, and saves it as a temporary JPEG. That temporary file goes to llama-mtmd-cli, and it's deleted afterwards. The originals and the embeddings stay untouched.

When you pick this up, this one command gives the full breakdown for both sets (format, colour mode and size):

cd /var/www/html/attachments; python3.8 -c "
import json,glob,collections;from PIL import Image
c=set(json.load(open('/var/www/html/ISE_Data/captions_store.json')));m=open('/tmp/missing_captions.txt').read().split()
def s(keys):
  r=collections.Counter()
  for k in keys:
    f=glob.glob(k+'_*')
    if f:
      i=Image.open(f[0]);r[(i.format,i.mode,'big' if max(i.size)>1000 else 'small')]+=1
  return dict(r)
print('MISSING ',s(m));print('CAPTIONED',s(list(c)[:300]))"

Upload MediaProcessor.py next session and I'll build the versioned fix around whichever trigger that output confirms.

Andrew

[Uploaded: MediaProcessor.py (ISE v9.19)]

Andrew

just fucken fix ti so i can go have a showed and BED !

Andrew

SHOWER !

Andrew

then BED

Andrew

 Live  root@forum:06:10:29:/var/www/html/attachments# cd /var/www/html/attachments; python3.8 -c "
> ... (breakdown script as above) ...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 11, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 9, in s
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PIL/Image.py", line 2958, in open
    raise UnidentifiedImageError(
PIL.UnidentifiedImageError: cannot identify image file '1120_9e7f4faaf06587691213230718740266bffc5703_thumb.tmp'
 Live  root@forum:06:11:54:/var/www/html/attachments#

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--08:12:44:741 AEST]

It's fixed: MediaProcessor.py is now ISE v9.20. It passed a local test using a stand-in for llama-mtmd-cli and a simulated out-of-memory error, not the real model on Live.

Big images get shrunk first. Any image over 512 px, or not plain RGB (like your 1500 px RGBA PNGs), is flattened onto white, resized and saved as a temporary JPEG. That copy goes to SmolVLM and is deleted afterwards. Your originals and embeddings aren't touched, and small JPEGs go through as before.
The timeout is now 120 s instead of 60, and you can change it with --caption-timeout.
Out-of-memory errors no longer count against an image's retries. After 3 in a row, captioning pauses for the rest of the run and says so at the end.

The test sent a 1500×1500 RGBA PNG to SmolVLM as a 512×512 RGB JPEG. The out-of-memory failures didn't count toward any image's retry limit, and no temp files were left over.

When you get to it (it doesn't have to be tonight), copy it over the old file, then run this once:

python3.8 -u MediaProcessor.py --log --monitor --max-caption-retries 0

The --max-caption-retries 0 matters for this first run only. Tonight's memory failures probably pushed many of the 129 images to the 3-failure limit, and without the flag they'd be skipped. Normal runs after that don't need it.

The "held in memory" note in my progress report was also wrong. The driver already saves after every image; nothing new was saved because every caption failed. I'll correct the report next time.

Enjoy the shower, and sleep well.

Andrew

what is that - reral code ?

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--08:13:09:922 AEST]

Yes, it's real code. The file is your complete MediaProcessor.py with my changes added, about 160 lines of difference, and all the rest of your v9.19 code is unchanged. It drops straight in over the old file.

What I tested was the code itself, in this workspace, with two parts stood in:

Stand-in: a fake llama-mtmd-cli that returns a fixed caption, and a stub Collabware.core_utils pointing at test images.
Checked for real: a 1500×1500 RGBA PNG really was shrunk to a 512×512 RGB JPEG before captioning. A small JPEG went through unchanged. Simulated out-of-memory errors didn't count against retries and paused captioning after 3. Temp files were cleaned up.
Not checked: SmolVLM on Live. How fast the shrunk images caption there, and whether 120 s is enough, will only show up on your first real run.

Andrew

real code ?

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--08:13:21:486 AEST]

Yes. It's working Python, not pseudocode or a sketch. It compiles cleanly, and I ran it end to end here. The changes are at these lines in the file:

Line 244: RUNTIME_VERSION = "ISE v9.20"
Line 421: _prepare_caption_image(), the new step that shrinks big images and flattens RGBA to RGB
Line 445: the actual resize to 512 px
Line 502: the out-of-memory (ENOMEM) handling
Line 648: the check that keeps out-of-memory failures from counting toward an image's retry limit

To confirm what's running on Live after you copy it in, run python3.8 MediaProcessor.py --help. It should list the new --caption-timeout and --caption-max-side options, and the run banner will show ISE v9.20.

Andrew

 Live  root@forum:06:16:04:/var/www/html/The_ISE_Project# python3.8 -u MediaProcessor.py --log --monitor --max-caption-retries 0
[*] Logging this run to /var/www/html/ISE_Data/mediaprocessor.log (append mode)
[*] Processing 2716 items — CLIP + SmolVLM captions [ISE v9.20 - Collabware]...

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--08:16:42:994 AEST]

v9.20 is running on Live. It will be quiet on screen, because successful captions only print with --verbose. Anything that fails prints with [!].

To check it's working, look at chkindeximages in your watch window. The "Processed" count should now climb above 1267. If the count is moving, the fix is working.

You can leave it and go to bed. Every caption is saved the moment it's made, so even if the run dies or gets Ctrl+C'd, nothing already done is lost. The end-of-run summary will be in ISE_Data/mediaprocessor.log in the morning.

Andrew

i con logoff then ?

Claude

Claude: [24/09/2026--08:17:23:438 AEST]

Only if it's running inside tmux (or screen). A plain SSH session kills the run when you log off.

In tmux: press Ctrl+b then d to detach, then log off. It keeps running.
Not in tmux: logging off will stop it. Nothing already done is lost, but it won't keep going overnight. To let it run, press Ctrl+C (that's safe now), then start it again detached:

nohup python3.8 -u MediaProcessor.py --log --monitor --max-caption-retries 0 >/dev/null 2>&1 &

Then log off. Everything still goes to ISE_Data/mediaprocessor.log, and it'll carry on from where it stopped.

Goodnight.

Andrew

Update MD and PDF transcript instructions: Add this conversation update to the the previous pdf right up to this point in time.