JRE Versions?

[drewg]

Hi,

I'm wondering what JRE versions people have had the best luck with?


I'm running 6.4 on Ubuntu 8.04, 64-bit, dual-core athlon64 and doing all my viewing via an HD100. I've tried the following java versions:

Sun JRE 1.6.0_4: Unstable, locked up within hours. But it was stable on my old server, which was a uniprocessor.

Sun JRE 1.5.0_16: Stable. However, HD100 is painfully slow. It takes ~15 seconds to get into my "Recordings" menu the first time after I turn the extender on. When recordings are in progress, they get glitches which correspond to the times when I'm navigating the HD100 menus.

Sun JRE 1.6.0_11: Unstable, locked up after 2 days. However, it seemed to speed up accesses by the HD100 by roughly a factor of 2. The glitching problem seemed to go away too (but it was a small sample size).

Has anybody had better luck than me with 1.6? If so, how did you make it stable? What about alternative JREs, like IBMs?

Thanks,

Drew

[cenwesi]

I have being running jdk_1.6_11 and not one issue.
I recall i had issues with jre_1.6_10...sage crashes.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by cenwesi

I have being running jdk_1.6_11 and not one issue.
I recall i had issues with jre_1.6_10...sage crashes.

Did you modify the arguments at all in the startsage script? What OS / hardware are you running?

Thanks,

Drew

[cenwesi]

yes, you have to modify the startsage script. I run the linux version and you need to add

PATH=/opt/jre-1_6_0_11/bin:$PATH
export PATH

to the 2nd line of startsage file.

I am running Ubuntu Intrepid and on an AMD 64 Athlon. I have pvr-500mce,HVR-1800 (can't seem to get it working with linux--driver issue), and HDHomeRun.

[bastafidli]

I run 1.6.0_04 for over a year without any isses (see my setup of CentOS in Linux section). I have upgraded to 1.6.0_11 this week and so far no issues either.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by bastafidli

I run 1.6.0_04 for over a year without any isses (see my setup of CentOS in Linux section). I have upgraded to 1.6.0_11 this week and so far no issues either.

Hmm... Centos is not exactly cutting edge. I wonder if it is something about Ubuntu's new kernel or libraries. I was stable on 1.6.0_04 for a few months on my old machine, which was an older Ubuntu (6.10, I think, which is the same timeframe as RHEL5 / Centos5). I had thought the difference was that the new machine is 2x as fast and is SMP, but maybe it has something to do with the kernel and/or libraries in newer distros.

Edit.. Ah, from your signature, it looks like you have similar hardware to what was working for me (P4).

Drew

[drewg]

I just installed the IBM JRE (ibm-java-jre-6.0-3.0-linux-i386) and it seems as fast or faster than the Sun JRE 1.6.0_11. I'm just hoping that it is more stable..

Drew

[bastafidli]

BTW, my kernel on CentOS 5.2 is
Linux 2.6.18-92.1.22.el5 #1 SMP Tue Dec 16 12:03:43 EST 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

[stuckless]

I would think that the amount of memory that you give the jvm would have an impact on stability, especially if you are running other plugins. Are you running the default memory settings? Or have you increased them?

My server (p4) is running java 1.6 (1.6.0_06), but I also give sage 1g of memory. I'm running 32bit unbuntu 8.04, and I only install packages from the package manager... that includes java.

On my desktop (quad core), i'm running 8.10 and java 1.6.0_10 (again installed via package manager). I usually have an eclipse ide (java) open for weeks on end without shutting it down. On both environments I rarely have lockups.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I would think that the amount of memory that you give the jvm would have an impact on stability, especially if you are running other plugins. Are you running the default memory settings? Or have you increased them?

The only plugins I'm running are the Nielm web server, and comskip. In the past, I increased the memory to 512MB. I can easily increase it to a GB or more if that's what it takes to avoid lockups. I've got 4GB of ram, and this board can take 4GB more

When I see SageTV lockup with the Sun JRE, the typical symptom is that "something" stops working. Like I couldn't access the web interface. The hd100 mostly worked, but it hung up getting into the favorites manager. And I have to kill java with kill -9 (eg, stopsage does not work).

I tend to avoid the package manager for SageTV related things because I don't want the system changing out from under me. FWIW, I ran a P4 with 1.6._04 for months without issue. My java problems only started when I moved to an dual-core athlon64, and upgraded ubuntu from 32-bit 6.10 to 64-bit 8.04.


Drew

[bcjenkins]

I am running 1.6.11 32bit java on 64 bit OS with 1GB given to SageTV. No issues to speak of. I used to have issues with 1.6 so I am wondering if the extra RAM has done the trick

B

[jpappas]

I just updated to openSUSE 11.1 and it runs JRE 1.6.0_11 as well. No issues thus far with the JRE. VLC on the other hand, now enforces running as non-root by failing if run as root.

[ChePazzo]

I had aggravating issues where every now and then the Wiz.bin got corrupted, losing all of my favorites as well as the db of recorded shows, etc. I don't remember what version of JRE I was running other than it was a 1.6. After searching the forums for a few days, I found someone with similar issues that were solved with a downgrade to 1.5. I downgraded and have yet to see any issues.

I am running Ubuntu 8.10.

Of course, my problem is that the sage .deb package requires 1.6, so aptitude upgrading the system is an issue. I have since learned to backup my favorites via the web plugin whenever I make changes, so I may give 1.6 another go. If so, I'll try to post results.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by drewg

Sun JRE 1.6.0_4: Unstable, locked up within hours. But it was stable on my old server, which was a uniprocessor.

Sun JRE 1.5.0_16: Stable. However, HD100 is painfully slow. It takes ~15 seconds to get into my "Recordings" menu the first time after I turn the extender on. When recordings are in progress, they get glitches which correspond to the times when I'm navigating the HD100 menus.

Sun JRE 1.6.0_11: Unstable, locked up after 2 days. However, it seemed to speed up accesses by the HD100 by roughly a factor of 2. The glitching problem seemed to go away too (but it was a small sample size).

FWIW, I tried two IBM JREs available from http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ja...download.html:

IBM Java SE Version 6: Unstable, locked up after a day. It was blindingly fast, and sped up the hd100 by more than a factor of 2, and the glitching went away. When it locked up, it was stuck in some sort of busyloop, and both CPUs on my server were pegged at 100%

J2SE Version 5.0 (ibm-java2-sdk-5.0-9.0-linux-i386.tgz): Stable so far (about a week). It is not quite as fast as the IBM Java 6, but still faster than any Sun JRE. The glitching seems gone, and the HD100 is more than 2x as fast as with the Sun JRE 1.5

For now, I'm going to stick with the IBM Java 5..

Drew

[kbyrd]

Originally Posted by ChePazzo

Of course, my problem is that the sage .deb package requires 1.6, so aptitude upgrading the system is an issue. I have since learned to backup my favorites via the web plugin whenever I make changes, so I may give 1.6 another go. If so, I'll try to post results.

If the deb is giving you trouble, don't use it. I haven't used it so what I'm suggesting is just guessing, but I believe it only has the Java dependency and not a dependency on the other things Sage needs. Plus, the install instructions are pretty easy. The only other nice thing I imagine the package would give you is a better Ubuntu-ish init.d script.