Uptime issues and Memory leaks...

[Eckwell]

Can you explain what allow_periodic_explicit_gc is?

[Motofreak75]

this seems to allow GC or Garbage Collection to run more than normal to keep memory usage low.

[taylormadearmy]

I think I am seeing a similar issue.

Using SageMC plugin and advanced miniguide - everything else stock and 3 HDXs.

Running on WHS. Recently increased system ram from 1Gig to 2Gigs. Seems to have helped no end.

So far been up for 3 Days, 22 Hours, 25 Minutes, 34 Seconds... Which is about double the time it could have managed before without grinding to a halt. I guess time will tell if this is a definite fix for me or if I will start to run into issues again - just after a longer time.

How much memory are others here with problems running with?

T

[jrog]

My system in the last two weeks has become so un-reliable, I'm about ready to rebuild from scratch. I put in a reboot script to reboot the box every morning at 5 AM. I can't hardly go a full day anymore.

I had Java 6.10, but uninstalled that and went down to 7, and still it has issues. Uninstalled antivirus, and just about every application that's not crucial to the system. Changed my ethernet settings to not allow TCP offload. Uninstalled Hauppauge drivers, and re-installed just the HD-PVRs.

I have 2GB Ram, updated the Heap size, and still... this thing falls apart fairly rapidly now. I had been running months at a time, and almost 2 months reliably since I last updated it. Mostly it's on the HD-Homerun, but if I bring it up with VLC, there are no issues.

Last night I went down to check on it while it was recording the office, and the whole PC was locked up, had to pull the power plug. Missed all of the recordings last night. Basically, it's been barely usable all week.

Not sure what to do now, I probably should turn on the debug logs.

[taylormadearmy]

Originally Posted by jrog

My system in the last two weeks has become so un-reliable, I'm about ready to rebuild from scratch. I put in a reboot script to reboot the box every morning at 5 AM. I can't hardly go a full day anymore.

I had Java 6.10, but uninstalled that and went down to 7, and still it has issues. Uninstalled antivirus, and just about every application that's not crucial to the system. Changed my ethernet settings to not allow TCP offload. Uninstalled Hauppauge drivers, and re-installed just the HD-PVRs.

I have 2GB Ram, updated the Heap size, and still... this thing falls apart fairly rapidly now. I had been running months at a time, and almost 2 months reliably since I last updated it. Mostly it's on the HD-Homerun, but if I bring it up with VLC, there are no issues.

Last night I went down to check on it while it was recording the office, and the whole PC was locked up, had to pull the power plug. Missed all of the recordings last night. Basically, it's been barely usable all week.

Not sure what to do now, I probably should turn on the debug logs.

If it has become that unreliable it could well be a hardware problem. Have you run a memtest recently?

T

[jrog]

Originally Posted by taylormadearmy

If it has become that unreliable it could well be a hardware problem. Have you run a memtest recently?

T

Are you suggesting a dos based Memtest, like http://www.memtest86.com/ ?

I have not, I suppose I will do some diagnostics this weekend. I've run hard drive tests, and they seem to be fine, but then again, hard to say for sure. I also have a PCCheck disc I could throw in there.

[taylormadearmy]

Originally Posted by jrog

Are you suggesting a dos based Memtest, like http://www.memtest86.com/ ?

I have not, I suppose I will do some diagnostics this weekend. I've run hard drive tests, and they seem to be fine, but then again, hard to say for sure. I also have a PCCheck disc I could throw in there.

Yup - I tend to use http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ thats boots off a CD and has lots of other useful diags too.

memtest86 is very thorough - if you see any errors with it time to try some different RAM.

Dodgy memory can cause really very strange issues so is certainly worth ruling out.

T

[jjstok]

Is anyone getting this in their logging? I just sent it in to support yesterday so I will wait to see what they have to say.

"Thu 11/6 20:33:45.250 EventThread-000dfe0c5e2a Hang Detected - hang time = 239603"

Restarting the service - You can just run this script manually using psexec if you are on a remote machine or schedule it as well in a bat file:
psexec \\192.168.1.111 net stop sagetv
psexec \\192.168.1.111 net start sagetv

I'm not scheduling it at this point. I want to make sure I know when it fails until I am sure it is fixed. I find nothing in the event logs in Windows except when I stop and restart the service. When it hangs, the service appears to still be running. I find no evidence of a memory leak. Perhaps my issue is different but the symptoms are the same as the rest of you described.

[md2020]

I was having a similar problem a while back. When I looked into the processes that were running on my system I noticed a Media Center service that wasn't there before.

I'm sorry I can't remember the exact name of it, but once I stopped it from loading up my SageTV performance returned to normal. It's a longshot, but worth look.

[Crashless]

Originally Posted by jjstok

Is anyone getting this in their logging? I just sent it in to support yesterday so I will wait to see what they have to say.

"Thu 11/6 20:33:45.250 EventThread-000dfe0c5e2a Hang Detected - hang time = 239603"

I'd be willing to bet that's the MAC address of an extender you're using, right?

Either way, IIRC that's a fairly normal line to see. I think it's just waiting on the extender to ask for more data.

[MrD]

Java heap is not the only resource that can be leaked.

I have always noticed that the SageTV service consumes a large number of handles, on my system 1055 so far after 5 hours of uptime. I have no idea why Sage consumes so many resources.

It could be the way Java releases File objects.

Is there a rule of thumb for how many handles the process should have?

Also if you have a Java memory leak, eventually you will see "Out of memory" exceptions. I have never seen these in my Sage logs (if they are output).

[Nadim]

How I fixed my problem.

I got tired of the slowdowns, so it was time to investigate. I set up all types monitors to monitor memory, net usage, disk usage, everything in realtime.

After replicating a slowdown, I noticed that on the slowdowns, for whatever reason the Sage process was accessing the paging file. This was weird for me since I still had like 1Gb of memory free. Anyway, every time I had a slow down this was happening. As I said in a previous post, it wasn't my processor because it is hardly at 10% usage. Anyway, I manually disabled my pagefile, and rebooted.

Problem Solved. Everything is responsive been up for a few days.

Still this might not be a solution for people without enough ram. This also raises a new question, Why is that this happened until now? and not before?

[jrog]

I've tried disabling the page file, NIC settings, memory tests, hard drive tests, nothing seems to make a difference. I can't watch TV from the HD Homerun for more than about 10 minutes before it breaks up and becomes totally useless. I've lost over a weeks recordings. This works fine in VLC. I have a log file, and I stopped the SageTV service once it started falling apart. This has only been a problem in the last two weeks. HD Homerun and HD-100s have been great for almost a year now, but I'm ready to seek alternatives.

I'm back to coax hooked up to my TV directly with clear QAM, and I've been buying the shows I missed from Apple for this week. So frustrating.

Attached is my log file, and I've submitted a bug request.

[taylormadearmy]

Originally Posted by Nadim

After replicating a slowdown, I noticed that on the slowdowns, for whatever reason the Sage process was accessing the paging file.

How do you see that SageTV is accessing the paging file? Is there a way to look back and see when it accessed it in the past?

Thanks
T

[Nadim]

I used the following utility

Filemon
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb896642.aspx

That will tell you what files are open in real time and what process is accessing them, and any errors encountered.

Hope it helps

[Flash69]

Ok, I would like to keep this subject updated as I have new information.

I kept reading that everyone was talking about Java 1.6 (Java 6) Update 10. I checked my server and noticed I was running Update 7. I tried the Java update program and it kept telling me I had the latest version. So I went to the Java web site and tested for updates and it said I needed to update.

So I let it perform the update and rebooted. Since updating to Jave 1.6 Update 10 I have had worse performance on all of my systems (including my HD100s). My PC client has crashed several times and my HD 100s have locked up several times while watching a show. These events have not happened in the past. My PC has always been rock solid and Sage client is crashing so bad I have to kill several Dr Watson processes.

I am considering removing Java and loading an older version to see if this resolves the problems. Being in the I/T business I have seen MANY times where Java causes application problems. It would not surprise me in the least to find out that Update 10 is causing some or all of the problems we are seeing with Sage.

If I get time this weekend I will try to roll back to an older version of Java and report back. If anyone else wants to test this please let us know your findings.

[gplasky]

Make sure to remove all previous versions. Updating java does NOT uninstall any previous versions.

Gerry

[ThePaladinTech]

If you're looking for Java 6 update 7 you can get it here:

https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP...tionTypeFilter

[tmiranda]

Here is another clue. I run my Sage server under Windows in application mode. The UI on the server sits in windowed mode almost all of the time.

I checked the memory usage at 6:30 AM this morning and it was in the 265K range. At 11:30 AM I checked it again and it was in the 450K range. I minimized the Sage window and the memory usage immediately dropped to 25K and then slowly started to rise again. I restored the window and that had no effect, the memory usage continued to climb. When it got to about 80K I hit the minimize button and the exact same thing happened, memory usage went down to 25K and started to rise again.

This is totally reproducible on my system. The memory usage slowly climbs and minimizing the windowed server UI frees up the memory.

[tsitalon1]

Originally Posted by jrog

My system in the last two weeks has become so un-reliable, I'm about ready to rebuild from scratch. I put in a reboot script to reboot the box every morning at 5 AM. I can't hardly go a full day anymore.

I had Java 6.10, but uninstalled that and went down to 7, and still it has issues. Uninstalled antivirus, and just about every application that's not crucial to the system. Changed my ethernet settings to not allow TCP offload. Uninstalled Hauppauge drivers, and re-installed just the HD-PVRs.

I have 2GB Ram, updated the Heap size, and still... this thing falls apart fairly rapidly now. I had been running months at a time, and almost 2 months reliably since I last updated it. Mostly it's on the HD-Homerun, but if I bring it up with VLC, there are no issues.

Last night I went down to check on it while it was recording the office, and the whole PC was locked up, had to pull the power plug. Missed all of the recordings last night. Basically, it's been barely usable all week.

Not sure what to do now, I probably should turn on the debug logs.

Heat issue ??