Problem with beta firmware "20110506 0"

[sflamm]

Help!

Upgraded to beta firmware "20110506 0" - now once a day I need to restart SageTV because my two HD300 extenders start stuttering on all video.... I'm running the 7.1.9 release candidate.

Does anyone have a solution for this issue?

If I rollback firmware to a different version I have the following questions:

1. Is there any reason NOT to rollback all the way to the last official release 20101007 0?
2. If I rollback to another beta firmware version I need to load the firmware manually correct?
3. If I rollback to another beta version which one should I rollback to?

Thanks in advance.

[gplasky]

1. No reason. If it works for you. Each beta firmware release usually fixed issues. I have the latest and do not have the issue you are reporting.
2. Correct-manual load. Follow the instructions in the FAQ.
3. WHich one? Which ever one works for you. What were you running before you updated to the latest? What was the issue you were trying to fix?

Gerry

[sflamm]

I wasn't trying to fix any specific issue - I update to 7.1.9 (from 6.6.2) and wanted the extender firmware to match.

The problem seems localized to the extenders (my SageTV PC clients do not have the issue).

Looks like the problem may not be the extender firmware. I checked the registry settings on the SageTV sever and the upgrade seems to have changed the JVMMaxHeapSizeMB to 0H (which is 256MB I believe). That would explain why it works for a while then starts to stutter until the service is restarted...

Just increased it to 300H (768MB). Will see if the problem remains over the next day...

I tried to increase to 400H (1024MB) but I dont seem to be able to get a contiguous allocation from the OS... not sure why as I am running a Win 2003R2 32-bit server with /PAE and 8GB of memory... Does anyone know how to make sure I get a larger contiguous allocation?

[gplasky]

I don't think you can arrange that contiguous memory because it is based on services and processes that load at startup and those may be written to load at certain segments. (And they may load randomly/different at each startup.) There are some utilities that will allow you to set the order in which they load and can delay the loading and that may help. I could never set it for more than 896MB no matter if my system had 2GB or 8GB of system RAM.

Gerry

[sflamm]

Agreed.

The one thing that should work is to enable the /3GB flag in conjunction with the /PAE flag - should greatly increase the chances of reserving
a larger contiguous block since the virtual pool will now be 1GB greater per process.

I will try that later when I get a chance. Before I do I want to assess whether it is necessary as 768GB might be satisfactory to support the two media extenders sharing the server's Java Heap (I do not run the SageTV client on the server usually - only when debugging). If not necessary it is better to not do this since it significantly affects the kernel resources etc for the server.

[sflamm]

Just a followup, Heap @ 768MB is plenty - no issues anymore (after 2 days). Average usage runs around 450-500MB.

No need for /3GB option.