Sage system freezes for about 1 minute each day

[garyellis]

I have 6.4.4. installed..but this has been a problem for a while with all versions...

each day the system locks up or freezes for about 1 minute and then after a minute, it unfreezes and the video goes very fast for about 15 seconds to catch up. Then the system just plays as normal until the next day when it repeats.

No pattern of when or what I am watching.

How can I go about figuring how what causes this? I assume I can use the debug function to see what Sage is doing. Is that the best method?

Thanks,

Gary Ellis

[carlgar]

I would start by checking the processes in the task manager to see what process is using most of the CPU when it happens. It could be another task using all of the CPU. If it is Sage then you should enable logging and maybe the console window. To enable the console window, create a DWORD registry value called "consolewin" at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey Technologies\Common\SageTV and set it to 1. It could be the garbage collection logic that could take a long time. See what the console window shows it doing when the problem occurs. I would look for something like:
[GC 133372K->126110K(192228K), 0.1176689 secs]

Be sure to note the exact time the problem occured and check the sagetv log. See http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...076#post149076 for instructions to enable the log.

[garyellis]

Thanks...I have checked the processes and CPU load while it is happening...The CPU load does not really change - stays around 10%. But the memory keeps increasing until it gets to about 500MB and that's usually when it unfreezes...


Thanks,

Gary Ellis

[stuckless]

There are a couple of things that may be happening here.
First, if the memory is increasing, it may be that the JVM (Sage process) is allocating more memory, and in the process the garbage collection may be getting a little agressive in trying to clean up stale memory blocks.

You can try increasing the your sage heap size, and perhaps even try tweaking the garbage collection settings, if you feel confortable with that sort of thing.

You can check out this tread for some more information about the garbage collection

[garyellis]

Thanks, I changed the heap size up to about 512 several months ago..I didn't change other garbage collection settings, mostly because of ignorance about what to do with them..

Gary Ellis

[stuckless]

You can try to increase you heap size again... If this is a dedicated SageTV server, then the Java Heap size should be close the amount of physical ram in the system.

If you have a multi-core system, then you can try this -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC. This uses a separate thread to do the garbage collection, which reduces pauses. Don't add this option if you have a single core machine, or else it will degrade performance.

[toricred]

Where would I put the -XX:+Use... setting?

[stuckless]

in linux, you can edit the /opt/sagetv/server/startsage script, and put it there. Not sure what you'd do in windows, i'm guessing there's a startsage.bat that you can edit.

NOTE that you will want to look at the existings that are defined there and determine if they will conflict with any other setting that you add.

[toricred]

I'm using Windows and I don't think there is a .bat file (I'm almost certain). You simply launch the .exe file. Maybe Opus will provide some suggestions here.

[garyellis]

I hope so....because I've been lost for the last 4 or 5 posts...


Gary Ellis

[infocus13]

I'm curious about this -XX setting as well... Where does it go on a Windows Sage installation?