slow UI and high java mem usage...

[jbuszkie]

I'm trying to diagnose/fix my slow UI issues.

On my extenders the menus, at times, are slow and unresponsive. Also
sometimes starting a show takes a while and I get the spinning circle of death for a bit. Navigating my video library is excruciating!

The server is an older core2duo (I believe). I'm running win7 32 bit with 4GB (DDR2!) ram. The OS drive is an SSD and I'm running 4 recordings drives as 2 drives in mirror mode (intel software based).
I've upped the java heap, in the past, to the max it will accept (I think) -1152MB.
I still get the java heap warnings occasionally. My wiz.bin is about 25MB (years and years worth!) I'm running the stock STVI with a small amount of plugins.
BMT - web interface
infopupup/callerid
jetty webserver
sagealert
SAD
SJQ
SJQ webui
SRE
sage mobile web
sage web interface
java heap monitor
comskip playback
phoenix fanart
Plus a couple more..

What are the big users of the heap? Is the fan art killing me? I know the fanart directory is about 2.3GB

What's the best way to diagnose this?

I'm tempted to upgrade to a newer system MB with DDR3 and more memory and win7 64. I'll lose my firewire recording... but I think I can live with that.

A weird possible problem I do see on one of my recording drives is it takes a long time to do any sorting in explorer. the other drive is fine! I was never able to get to the bottom of it.

I'd really not like to upgrade the dedicated sage machine if I can do something else! Would I have to live without fan art?



Jim

[ojosch]

I had that same issue on mine, so as per advice found someplace here, I disabled all plugins, and it fixed the lag, then I re-enabled them one by one and figured out which one was causing it.

I don't remember which it was now as it was awhile ago but at any rate, that is how I isolated the cause.

Hope this helps...

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

I'm trying to diagnose/fix my slow UI issues.

On my extenders the menus, at times, are slow and unresponsive. Also
sometimes starting a show takes a while and I get the spinning circle of death for a bit. Navigating my video library is excruciating!

I still get the java heap warnings occasionally. My wiz.bin is about 25MB (years and years worth!) I'm running the stock STVI with a small amount of plugins.
What are the big users of the heap? Is the fan art killing me? I know the fanart directory is about 2.3GB

What's the best way to diagnose this?

I'd really not like to upgrade the dedicated sage machine if I can do something else! Would I have to live without fan art?



Jim

I too am noticing this behavior...and my system/plugins/wizbin size are all similar to yours. I'm also getting lots of blue screen crashes, which mostly occur when fast forwarding recordings on the server (as opposed to when FF from emxtenders). I haven't been able to solve it. What's your video card on your server - an on-board, ATI card, on a Gigabyte MB? Because that's my system, and I think there's possibly a problem with the ATI drivers, or some kind of memory issue between resources.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

I'm trying to diagnose/fix my slow UI issues.

On my extenders the menus, at times, are slow and unresponsive. Also
sometimes starting a show takes a while and I get the spinning circle of death for a bit. Navigating my video library is excruciating!

The server is an older core2duo (I believe). I'm running win7 32 bit with 4GB (DDR2!) ram. The OS drive is an SSD and I'm running 4 recordings drives as 2 drives in mirror mode (intel software based).
I've upped the java heap, in the past, to the max it will accept (I think) -1152MB.
I still get the java heap warnings occasionally. My wiz.bin is about 25MB (years and years worth!) I'm running the stock STVI with a small amount of plugins.
BMT - web interface
infopupup/callerid
jetty webserver
sagealert
SAD
SJQ
SJQ webui
SRE
sage mobile web
sage web interface
java heap monitor
comskip playback
phoenix fanart
Plus a couple more..

What are the big users of the heap? Is the fan art killing me? I know the fanart directory is about 2.3GB

What's the best way to diagnose this?

I'm tempted to upgrade to a newer system MB with DDR3 and more memory and win7 64. I'll lose my firewire recording... but I think I can live with that.

A weird possible problem I do see on one of my recording drives is it takes a long time to do any sorting in explorer. the other drive is fine! I was never able to get to the bottom of it.

I'd really not like to upgrade the dedicated sage machine if I can do something else! Would I have to live without fan art?



Jim

I run most of what you are running, with the exception of SJQ and callerid. I run at 764MB heap.

A few things will affect the amount of heap used/required.
1. Number of extenders. Extenders are basically "server side" client that send their display across to the remote extender... so each new concurrent extender is going to increase the amount of heap being used.
2. Number of plugins. Each plugin is going to require a little extra memory.
3. Fanart. It's obvious that loading images (and loading large images) is going to increase the memory requirements. But, just because you have 2.3 gb of fanart, doesn't mean that you'll be loading ALL of that into memory at once.

In terms of sluggish UI... There are a couple of culprits...
1. Is your fanart local to the server/client? If you are going over the network to access fanart, it will be slow, even on a fairly fast network. There are multiple threads of people talking about caching fanart, using ramdisks, etc.
2. You can remove the entire SAGE_HOME/userdata/Phoenix/cache/ directory, and then allow the fanart to be rebuilt again. There were changes a few builds back in Phoenix (which is used for fanart) that saves the files in jpg instead of png which resulted in the cache being substantially smaller. This won't affect HEAP so much, but will make it faster to load fanart.
3. Try running Phoenix 2, and go into the settings and tell it to prescal fanart. (Just running P2 will probably make you system more responsive)
4. Lots of Disk IO. I've seen occasionally when I'm recordings 2 shows, comskip is running, and then I'm playing back a show, that I'll sometimes get a spinning circle for a few seconds, since there is lots of disk I/O
5. Slow network. I had a faulty network port on a router where lots of packets were being dropped... i replaced the router, and everything has been fine.

Now, if you are seeing BSOD, then you have a hardware problem. There is no way that Java is going to produce a BSOD on it's own. Typically is java fails or SageTV crashes, you'll see javacore files lying around, but the process simply dies, it will not create a BSOD.

[jbuszkie]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I run most of what you are running, with the exception of SJQ and callerid. I run at 764MB heap.

A few things will affect the amount of heap used/required.
1. Number of extenders. Extenders are basically "server side" client that send their display across to the remote extender... so each new concurrent extender is going to increase the amount of heap being used.

I have 3 extenders. 2 are usually powered on all the time. But usually only one is doing anything at a time. If they are just sitting idle, are they still using a bunch of heap? and how much do they use? Is it quantified anywhere? or does it depend on what they are actually doing?
Also.. Does the number of recordings and number of imported videos play into this as well? I have over 3TB of local shows and probably over 8TB more on my unraid NAS.(which is Gig ethernet)

Originally Posted by stuckless

2. Number of plugins. Each plugin is going to require a little extra memory.
3. Fanart. It's obvious that loading images (and loading large images) is going to increase the memory requirements. But, just because you have 2.3 gb of fanart, doesn't mean that you'll be loading ALL of that into memory at once.

Maybe I'll try to disable the fan art..

Originally Posted by stuckless

In terms of sluggish UI... There are a couple of culprits...
1. Is your fanart local to the server/client? If you are going over the network to access fanart, it will be slow, even on a fairly fast network. There are multiple threads of people talking about caching fanart, using ramdisks, etc.

It is local on the OS (SSD) drive and I have a ram disk cache for it as well

Originally Posted by stuckless

2. You can remove the entire SAGE_HOME/userdata/Phoenix/cache/ directory, and then allow the fanart to be rebuilt again. There were changes a few builds back in Phoenix (which is used for fanart) that saves the files in jpg instead of png which resulted in the cache being substantially smaller. This won't affect HEAP so much, but will make it faster to load fanart.

I'll try that too...
Can someone refresh my memory.. Is there an easy way to disable all the plugins such then I can enable them again without having to remember which one I had installed?

Originally Posted by stuckless

3. Try running Phoenix 2, and go into the settings and tell it to prescal fanart. (Just running P2 will probably make you system more responsive)

I didn't know there was a phoenix 2..

Originally Posted by stuckless

4. Lots of Disk IO. I've seen occasionally when I'm recordings 2 shows, comskip is running, and then I'm playing back a show, that I'll sometimes get a spinning circle for a few seconds, since there is lots of disk I/O

The only issue is starting a show.. for the most part it's perfectly fine after that. (well and the UI being slow)

Originally Posted by stuckless

5. Slow network. I had a faulty network port on a router where lots of packets were being dropped... i replaced the router, and everything has been fine.

Since it's fine during playback, I think the network is fine!

Originally Posted by stuckless

Now, if you are seeing BSOD, then you have a hardware problem. There is no way that Java is going to produce a BSOD on it's own. Typically is java fails or SageTV crashes, you'll see javacore files lying around, but the process simply dies, it will not create a BSOD.

No BSOD.. The server stays running. But I also don't use the server as a display. Had issues with that as well, so I just hooked up my old HD200 instead.

[jbuszkie]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

What's your video card on your server - an on-board, ATI card, on a Gigabyte MB?

I'm not using the server as a frontend. I had the wife kept having issues so I just put an extender. So I'm not displaying shows on the server..

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Now, if you are seeing BSOD, then you have a hardware problem. There is no way that Java is going to produce a BSOD on it's own. Typically is java fails or SageTV crashes, you'll see javacore files lying around, but the process simply dies, it will not create a BSOD.

any idea how to start troubleshooting BSOD? It has been happening ever since I rebuilt my system using a SSD as the boot/Sage drive, but I can't see how that would be a problem. Suggestions on how to troubleshoot hardware to make this go away would really help - thanks.

[samgreco]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

any idea how to start troubleshooting BSOD? It has been happening ever since I rebuilt my system using a SSD as the boot/Sage drive, but I can't see how that would be a problem. Suggestions on how to troubleshoot hardware to make this go away would really help - thanks.

There's an app called Who Crashed that is great for "reading" the dump files. And that can really help finding the culprit. Sometimes a corrupt driver file can cause BSODs as well as bad hardware. I've even seen some very badly behaved software do it.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by samgreco

There's an app called Who Crashed that is great for "reading" the dump files. And that can really help finding the culprit. Sometimes a corrupt driver file can cause BSODs as well as bad hardware. I've even seen some very badly behaved software do it.

ok, so this app is for finding driver errors, as opposed to hardware errors?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

I'm not using the server as a frontend. I had the wife kept having issues so I just put an extender. So I'm not displaying shows on the server..

I am curious... are you by any chance starting the SageTV UI in the server it will share the heap with the service. I know some plugins like CMT require that you run the UI unless you use a client where you can run CMT from.

[jbuszkie]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I am curious... are you by any chance starting the SageTV UI in the server it will share the heap with the service. I know some plugins like CMT require that you run the UI unless you use a client where you can run CMT from.

I'm not running Sage as a service... Maybe I should?? I guess that would save me some heap?

Not sure if I'm using CMT or not... If I have BMT.. am I using CMT?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

I'm not running Sage as a service... Maybe I should?? I guess that would save me some heap?

Not sure if I'm using CMT or not... If I have BMT.. am I using CMT?

CMT is separate. You should try as a service as I have found the service to use less memory.... no rendering of ui etc...

[wayner]

I have similar issues but I have more extenders - about 8 or so currently connected but rarely do I use more than 3-4 simultaneously. IMHO it looks like there is a memory leak and after all of the extenders have been on it can cause Sage to bog down. This can sometimes be cleaned up by shutting down extenders but occasionally a restart of the SageTVService or a reboot is required.

[samgreco]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

ok, so this app is for finding driver errors, as opposed to hardware errors?

No. It reads the dump file created when Windows chokes from a BSOD. It can tell you many things. As longs as Windows writes a dump file, it will read it and give you clues as to what caused it.

It does not test anything. Before you assume that your hardware is bad, check with this app and see exactly WHAT is causing the crash. If it's a hardware driver or an I/O error related to some hardware, replace the driver and see if the problem is resolved. If not, then get a hardware testing app and put the memory, hard drive, mainboard through some tests and see what you get.

[tvmaster2]

thanks

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

I'm not running Sage as a service... Maybe I should?? I guess that would save me some heap?

Not sure if I'm using CMT or not... If I have BMT.. am I using CMT?

I did some testing on my Test Server and Starting the Sage ui used up to 2x the memory of the Service.

[jbuszkie]

I'll have to try this....

Jim

[jbuszkie]

digging up an old thread....

But when I tried to switch to using a service.. I got the ui config thing again?
Why doesn't it remember what I had when I was not using Sage as a service?

Jim

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

digging up an old thread....

But when I tried to switch to using a service.. I got the ui config thing again?
Why doesn't it remember what I had when I was not using Sage as a service?

Jim

Simple when you use the Service the Sagetv UI will use client properties which is created when you use the service not the regular sagetv.properties.... that is created when you run just the UI or the service.

[jbuszkie]

Thanks... I think I just figured that out! Too bad it doesn't copy the server ui properties for the client as a starting point!

I think I got it all straightened out. Hopefully this will get rid of my java warnings

Jim