Spinning circle when STOPPING playback

[sflamm]

There is an 'optimize' tab to the tool that turns on/off windows services to optimize SSD performance.

[Skirge01]

@razr: I had the hang occur again. Here's the log.

@sflamm: That's one of the many which are disabled; see attached image.

[razrsharpe]

From what i can see in that log it doesn't look like its hanging in the middle of loading TVE data. You may want to temporarily stop using all plugins (TVE included) and see if the hangs go away...

Mon 1/7 0:00:02.880 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] Display ImportedTV = true
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.880 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] LimitSearchPaths = None
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.881 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] TCED: Non-null TVImportFiles 222
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.882 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] Get Imported TV Files - Done
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.882 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] Get Recorded Files - Start
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.913 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] Get Recorded Files - Done
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.914 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] Get Scheduled Files - Skip
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.914 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] Start applying filters
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.914 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] Done applying filters
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.914 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] Start Grouping: TitleAlpha
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.948 [Fork-JREkiwi-615771@cadab3] Shutting Down Comskip Playback v2.0.14 Thread: Thread[Fork-JREkiwi-615771,5,main], on UI Context SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.950 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] Done Grouping
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.951 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] Starting EpSorting
Mon 1/7 0:00:02.951 [AWT-EventQueue-0@117353b] Done Episode Filtering

[Skirge01]

Thanks, razr. I'm currently running it that way and will report back in a week or so. I just got a new TV and that's thrown some other things off, so I need to get those resolved before I go hunting this issue down again.

[rickgillyon]

I'm getting this same problem (spinning when hitting stop) also on a new build. Did you get yours fixed?

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

I'm getting this same problem (spinning when hitting stop) also on a new build. Did you get yours fixed?

Nope. We've just been dealing with it. I can't seem to make it happen on demand by starting and stopping playback, but it seems to happen regularly when we finish with a recording. Now that you brought it up again to remind me, I'm going to try disabling one plugin at a time for a while and see if it still occurs when we watch TV like normal.

[rickgillyon]

I've tried disabling network tuning on Win7 in an admin command prompt, problem hasn't recurred so far:

netsh int tcp set heuristics disabled
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

[Skirge01]

Thanks for the tip. I've set those on both my storage server and the PC client. SageTV service is running under XP, so I can't set it there, but we'll see how this plays out.

[ojosch]

I have this same latency seen on my SageTV HD300 when pushing stop after watching shows from the file browser.

Here's some background about my system and my observations:

My platform is ESXi 5.1 w/ latest patches.


VMs relating to SageTV:

-NexentaStor Community Edition v3.1.3.5 storage SAN (using PCI passthrough to the SAS/SATA HBA). 8-drive ZFS raidz2 dual parity protection w/ 2TB sata drives. Have an iSCSI LUN mapped to SageTV server which is around 10.9 TB.

-Win7 Ultimate x64 - runs SageTV v7 server, connects to storage via iSCSI to LUN on the above NexentaStor SAN, via internal VMXnet3 (10gb/s) virtualized Ethernet adapters.


Background about environment:

The vSwitch I created for the iSCSI TCP link is dedicated to only the iSCSI, and the 2 VMXnet3 10g adapters (no physical interfaces to outside world).

The SageTV HD300 clients all connect to the SageTV server via other vSwitch over e1000 adapters (using Intel 1g physical interface on ESXi).

I capture the recorded TV over an HD Homerun (IP based capture) dual tuner, and I have a separate Intel 1g physical interface on the ESXi host going to a different vSwitch for all that traffic.

I have made a few TCP tweaks on both the NexentaStor SAN (Solaris-based OS) VM, and the Win7 Ultimate VM, and using iPerf, and have proven those tweaks to produce the highest possible bandwidth across all interfaces. I do also have the above tweaks set for 'heuristics disabled', and 'autotuninglevel=disabled', but either way you set those it does not make a difference as far as the hang-on-stop in my testing.

The SageTV server Windows VM has 5GB memory and quad cores given to it, while the NexentaStor SAN VM has 7GB memory (is memory hungry) and dual CPU cores given to it. Perf tools have proven that there are no bottlenecks caused by memory OR lack of CPU resources.

In general, the system is very snappy and works very good except for this intermittent latency seen when you hit stop after watching a show (from the file browser in 'Search', 'Browse File Systems'). It can take anywhere from 2-5 seconds before the file browser comes back.

Issue does not seem to happen when watching shows from the Recordings, All Recordings browser, just seems to happen when using the 'Browse Files on the SageTV Server' browser.

Shuffling FF, RR, etc are snappy, initially accessing the show is snappy, just when you hit stop it hangs before coming back to browser.

If I hit FF button really fast a few times before hitting stop, it seems to come back to the file browser fast again just for that one time.

Also to note, my physical SageTV server which I used before I virtualized the setup, did not have this problem. So whether or not this is added network latency, Vsphere latency, or what, I am at a loss as to how to further troubleshoot this.


I do tech support for a very large NAS / SAN storage appliance company and I work with enterprise customers a lot whom use VMware with say, virtualized SQL servers (require very low latency storage access), and they are able to meet high demands just fine, so I doubt it is a hopelessly uncurable Vsphere problem. Although it does seem like VMs require some extra tuning because the performance margin is a bit tighter, than when are running on the bare metal.

Anyhow, I just wanted to share my findings to add to this thread in case it keeps moving toward a solution. This is not a huge problem, just more of an annoyance than anything (because I know it never used to do it on the physical SageTV server).

Sorry long post but just trying to be thorough to offer my observations in case it could help in moving toward finding the cause.

[rickgillyon]

Sad to say, even with autotuning and heuristics settings, problem came back. Still an intermittent issue for me.

[bialio]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Thanks for the tip. I've set those on both my storage server and the PC client. SageTV service is running under XP, so I can't set it there, but we'll see how this plays out.

You should try Phoenix 2 on your client for a few days and see if you see it there - since the ENTIRE UI is rewritten there, if it STILL happens then you are probably dealing with something in the Sage Core rather than a plugin...

[Skirge01]

Thanks for the tip. I'll give that a shot in a few days and report back. Although, I'm trying to determine if this issue is still happening or if we just got used to it. If it has stopped, then I know what the cause was and will post that little learning.

[sflamm]

Suddenly I am getting the spinning circle on stop as well...

Any suggestions on how to fix?

[Skirge01]

Check everything hardware related (e.g. reboot everything, hardware stress tests, improve cooling, etc) before considering a possible software glitch. I still haven't tried Phoenix 2 due to time, but intend to. While we do still have the spinning circle when stopping, it gets significantly worse in the summer, which means I probably have a heat issue somewhere, possibly in addition to some other issue. Also, make sure a recent software update (e.g. Java, Windows) isn't the culprit.

[sflamm]

It is clearly not hardware related or temperature related for that matter.
Playback of video works without a hitch - no delay whatsoever and no spinning circles. The issue *only* occurs on stopping a show that is playing. If there was a hardware issue it would not be particular to stopping a show...
Also, there have been no windows updates to my server. One day it was working fine and the next it was not... (yes very odd I know).

[sflamm]

I just put the entire SageTV install on an SSD to see if there was any disk read/write related issues that were causing the spinning circle on stop...
it had no effect. The spinning circle still comes up on stopping playback.

Ideas?!

[ranger]

Try this one out... I have had a spinning circle issue when stopping live TV playback on a client for a while now and just a little while ago, I noticed a time difference of about 4 minutes between the server and the client. I set the time on the client to match the time on the server and the problem appears to have been solved. I'll know tomorrow after a few more trials.

Hope this helps.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by ranger

Try this one out... I have had a spinning circle issue when stopping live TV playback on a client for a while now and just a little while ago, I noticed a time difference of about 4 minutes between the server and the client. I set the time on the client to match the time on the server and the problem appears to have been solved. I'll know tomorrow after a few more trials.

Hope this helps.

Hope it works for you or anyone else, but that definitely isn't my issue. I have scheduled tasks to sync the clock every 14 minutes on every computer. I'm still in search of the cause. Has anyone else tried Phoenix 2, as bialio suggested? I've been dealing with some other things lately and haven't had a chance to install it.

[sflamm]

Time sync cannot be the issue - I have both extenders and software clients and it is happening for both.

I also tried removing the wiz.bin and having it rebuild - no help.

Other ideas ?

[sflamm]

Btw, I tried the sageTV default STV and Phoenix 2.
The issue is independent of the STV.