V7 to V9 few questions

[Stu Gare]

Wondered if anyway to set up a poll to see how many have people have made the jump to v9

Also I've read about some optimisations to some of the DB operations in v9 but cant really gauge if this makes a noticeable difference to day to day running.
Less spinning circles (I don't really suffer from these too much)

Is it on a par to an ssd upgrade from a non ssd drive ?

Looking for a reason to make the jump, but some risk involved even if minor...

[SageWizdom]

I'm not sure about others thoughts, but if your current setup is working without issue, I would wait. I run into occasional things that don't work quite right and I'm not sure if its my setup or V9. If I had had everything running in V7 and all the licenses I needed to rebuild what I was doing, I probably would have just experimented.... My jump was need based.

[nyplayer]

I have put my SageTV on freeze ... it appears that most of the work is being done on Linux ... which I do not run. There is really nothing new and release notes etc.. do not get updated. Most of the work being done is by user preference nothing new has been added to detect new hardware etc. I will not be updating anymore plugins or SageTV 9 Versions.

[Stu Gare]

Thanks for the replies. I will hold fire on upgrading.
Cheers

[tvmaster2]

Someone here was attempting a Windows install package for V9, but I haven't seen the thread pop up lately, so maybe he's having troubles...

[maceie]

I updated to V9, but only as my V7 install was crashing all the time and was pretty much unusable so I thought "why not?" and went ahead with a whole new build.
I don't run lots of plugins, but the OTA TV and video playback works fine, so I'm quite happy with it.

Ask yourself this - If it's not broke, why fix it?
If you just wanna play, run it as a 2nd server in a VM.

[phelme]

the big reason for me would be to jump to v9 would be a 64-bit version for increased Java memory capacity. then I could go back to using Gemstone, et al and have artwork. can't do that now as I run out of Java space every day and a half and have to restart the service if I do.

...but, since I run Windows and have a lot of support gibblies that currently work on it I don't feel like moving to Linux. guess if I ever feel not-lazy I'll fork the source and see if I can help get the 64-bit version working.

[SageWizdom]

I would add to my reply above, I think we're just starting to dig into the open source release. Once we get our hands around some of the key issues and items (upgraded ffmpeg / mplayer, the android frontend client, etc), I expect we will identify new and key features and where to take things next. I have ideas (easy appliance), but I'm not ready yet to try and add or adjust anything, and I imaging that other folks are not quite ready yet either.

TL;DR; Don't give up on a future upgrade, just wait a bit for things to mature.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by phelme

the big reason for me would be to jump to v9 would be a 64-bit version for increased Java memory capacity.

Any idea what kind of increased Java memory capacity we're talking about? I think the current Windows limit is 1024, what would the limit be under Linux?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

Any idea what kind of increased Java memory capacity we're talking about? I think the current Windows limit is 1024, what would the limit be under Linux?

When I tested my Linux VM SageTV setup for V9 I used 3G (3072) for the java heap.

[jusjoken]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

When I tested my Linux VM SageTV setup for V9 I used 3G (3072) for the java heap.

And I use 2048 on my prod linux VM. I also have noticed that the heap under linux is much smaller used than under windows with the identical set of plugins and extenders.

I am NOT a linux person, but i am very pleased with the results over the past 2 months.

k

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by jusjoken

And I use 2048 on my prod linux VM. I also have noticed that the heap under linux is much smaller used than under windows with the identical set of plugins and extenders.

I am NOT a linux person, but i am very pleased with the results over the past 2 months.

k

I was going to say the same thing myself. In my testing on Linux I don't think I NEED more than 1G (1024) unlike Windows where 3G (3072) might be needed based on my experiences. Especially when I had a corrupt Wiz.bin and my heap was running 750MB+ most of the time.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

I was going to say the same thing myself. In my testing on Linux I don't think I NEED more than 1G (1024) unlike Windows where 3G (3072) might be needed based on my experiences. Especially when I had a corrupt Wiz.bin and my heap was running 750MB+ most of the time.

Is the reduced heap because you are running on Linux, or because v9 has fixed some memory usage issues (would v9 on Windows also use less heap)?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Is the reduced heap because you are running on Linux, or because v9 has fixed some memory usage issues (would v9 on Windows also use less heap)?

For me I was comparing V9 windows to V9 Linux.

Edit: Also for me the heap went UP in V9 not down. It was about 100-200GB increase even after I blew away the Wiz.bin and started over. I don't think the v7 Wiz.bin got converted correctly is why the heap was always sitting between 700MB and 1GB used (I.E. 800/1038/1038) when I first started to use V9. Also it appeared to be repeatable as I blew away the V9 and used the V7 wiz.bin twice and both ended up in the same state. With V9 wiz.bin created from scratch and existing recordings imported with only a couple deleted because the guide data was wrong it is at 527/947/1038. Another server still on V7 is 344/559/1038 but that one also has < 1/3 the number of scheduled recordings in the next 360 hours (91) verses 345 on the V9 server.

[SageWizdom]

I'm going to ask the dumb questions. Why does the Java heap size matter to Sage? Specifically, making it larger than the default Sage setting? Does this improve recording quality? I think read that the whole DB is normally in memory, is this to allow it to be larger and still functional?

Are there any best practices for amount of ram, per tuner, for the db, per client, etc? I did a couple of searches but did not manage to find any good answers.

[jusjoken]

Originally Posted by SageWizdom

I'm going to ask the dumb questions. Why does the Java heap size matter to Sage? Specifically, making it larger than the default Sage setting? Does this improve recording quality? I think read that the whole DB is normally in memory, is this to allow it to be larger and still functional?

Are there any best practices for amount of ram, per tuner, for the db, per client, etc? I did a couple of searches but did not manage to find any good answers.

Every miniclient, placeshifter, extender use the server's heap so if you have more than 3 connected you quickly exhaust at 1024 heap. 4 may work if you do not use many plugins but basically 3-4 is the max without filling the heap and causing hangs.

I am sure under linux 4-5 may work with 1024 heap but of course under 64 linux you can easily use a larger heap.

The higher heap will also allow some plugins like Gemstone to cache more things in memory and improve the user experience.

k

[wayner]

I have 8-9 extenders depending on the time of year and I run out of JVM all the time, even when just using a few of the extenders. It also appears that not all of the memory may be released when an extender disconnects from the server.

In my experience under Windows with 1024 of Java Heap you might be able to have 4 extenders running but that is really pushing it. I use Gemstone with lots of Fanart.

I am currently running two servers with V7 and V9 but I haven't tried to push things on V9. I only have an OTA tuner on V9 - an HDHR that is network connected. Eventually I will go fully to V9, but for now I have a couple of my clients pointed at the V9 server and that helps spread the load, but that means that they can't access recording or just recorded content from the V7 server.

[KarylFStein]

Ever since I moved to v9 and Gemstone I've started running out of heap, (set to the max on Windows). I may have 2 connections at once sometimes 3 max, (HD300s/Placeshifter/Android clients). It is not what I would call frequent, (maybe 4 times in the past 3 months), but I never had heap problems before. Given the time period between incidents I suspect some sort of memory leak. If so increasing heap size would just delay things.

[NetworkGuy]

I also have a very stable V7 installation and have decided not to upgrade to V9 until we get to a stable release.

Although I am thinking of replacing SageDCT with OpenDCT in the V7 release.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by NetworkGuy

Although I am thinking of replacing SageDCT with OpenDCT in the V7 release.

I imaged my system before doing that just in case, but I've never looked back. The developer for OpenDCT is so active here in the forum, responsive, and just plain friendly that I wouldn't hesitate to make that upgrade again. He is extremely detail oriented and will help *anyone* struggling with their OpenDCT install.

Still on V7 here.