Utility: DirMon2

[Stuntman]

Originally Posted by flachbar

Same here ... A fix for this would be great

Dirk

I see this too.. I have to stop and start dirmon to clear it..

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Wirenut

I've had the same thing happen with Comskip. When flipping through channels, a show must not get deleted by Sage fast enough on exit, and Dirmon2 triggers Comskip.... then.... I think.... Sage deletes the file that comskip is operating on and the current job "hangs." Then I see a PID of 0 and maybe a couple of other jobs in the queue waiting on the "hung" job.

Wirenut

Sounds like what may have happened to me yesterday also. Found that everything recorded last night hadn't been processed. Fired up Dirmon gui and found a job with a PID of 0 and all the recordings sitting in the queue. Problem was there was no mpg for the file being "processed" so it just hung there.

[Wirenut]

Anybody got a fix or work-around to this?

I tried changing the intervals for checking on if a file has stopped growing, and a few others... and have had no luck. I also have adjusted the time for "timeout" and have had no luck.

Still have DirMon hung on a job with a PID of 0 and no mpg file in place... I'm thinking about setting the black out time again, so I can flip channels after work.

But I really would like the show to be processed like five minutes or so after the recording has finished.

Wirenut

[bcjenkins]

Hope everything is alright with him.

B

[Jere_Jones]

I'm here.

The new baby takes up a lot of time and I've been hard at work on the SchoolHouse.

There is good news for the above gripes. I won't promise anything, but I'd recommend a visit over to the SA thread.

Jere

[Wirenut]

Well... I guess I'll have to pony up some money and get SA. I was kinda thinkin' this problem might be better solved in the target program.

Suppose I'll start naggin' over at the comskip board to see if anything could be resolved there. ... or maybe there's a parameter I need to look at in the ini file.

Wirenut

[Jere_Jones]

Don't forget that you can always get a couple weeks of trial time to make sure it does work for you. The place to get a trial key is here: http://www.dragonglobal.org/trialrequest.htm

Jere

[ID10Tbox]

Greetings. I am new to Sage and to Dirmon. (this is my first post! )
I'll try not to come across as being thick...

Here is my situation:
I have two jobs set up in Dirmon2. The first is to run comskip from a batch file. The batch file uses start /low comskip.exe %1 to give the process a low priority. The second job is another batch file called comclean which will run mencoder on the files to remove the commercials previously detected by comskip. mencoder is started with a start /low as well. As far as the triggers go, they seem to be working fine - I have mpg as target "must not exist" edl for comskip and mpg as target and "must exist" edl set up for comclean. I set up my polling for 300s (5min). The priority boost on comskip is set to 99 and for comclean to 0 to make sure comskip will always run on the files first. Both jobs are set to work the older files first. Resources required is set to 100 for each of the jobs (with global set to 100) because I don't want comskip and comclean running at the same time - on each file I want to run one and then the other.

Now, if I start the service the first job starts as expected, running comskip on the oldest file in the dir. But what invariably ends up happening is that when comskip finishes (file has been processed and cmd window disappears) it remains in the Active jobs list with a PID of 0. At that point there are jobs in the queue, but they never move to active since they are waiting for the resources supposedly in use. I get this result with the service enabled so I decided to try the Dirmon2 hidden instead. I seem to get the same result - it starts the comskip job on a file, that finishes and closes, then nothing. I look in task list and Dirmon2 (hidden) is still running, but nothing is happening. I thought it might be the polling time, but I waited 5 minutes... 6,7,...still nothing happened so I launched the GUI version and found the finished job still sitting in the Active list. Now, if I am running the service, and I stop then start the service, Dirmon2 will process the next job in the queue. Similarly, if I am running the Dirmon2 hidden, if I kill the task and launch it again, the queue starts to process again.

Last night I left the machine on and it was running comskip on an episode of SouthPark that had just finished recording. Overnight Sage recorded an episode of FamilyGuy and in the morning the mpg was sitting in the folder, but no processes had been run on the new mpg file. There were no .edl or .txt or anything besides the mpg. I thought about setting a timeout but since I am running these at low priority (so I can continue to watch live TV) and recording length may vary anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hrs I am worried that the processing time will not be very predictable

Another thing I have seen a couple of times - and I do not know if it is related - is a file that has been deleted getting into the queue and then popping into the active list and staying there for good, preventing items in the queue from ever making it to the active list. Again if I stop/start the service or kill/start Dirmon2 hidden it goes away and the queue processes.

And one more I cannot explain, occasionally Dirmon2 will just start processing several jobs at once (comskip on 2 or 3 files, comclean on another) even though I have each job set to require 100 resources available and global is set to 100.

I am on Windows XP Pro SP2. I would love to have this work and I appreciate any input. I can post screen shots, ini files, logs, whatever you need. I have only been playing with it for about a day now but it would be great to get this working - I'd like to have it manage archiving/compressing new files as well.

Thanks Jere and anyone else who responds.

[Humanzee]

Jere said something about that 0 PID problem in the showanalyzer thread. The new SA .8xx should address it. So it may not be a dirmon2 issue. I dont know about comskip though.

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by Humanzee

Jere said something about that 0 PID problem in the showanalyzer thread. The new SA .8xx should address it. So it may not be a dirmon2 issue. I dont know about comskip though.

I think it might be a good idea to not only fix it in SA, but also in Dirmon2. It doesn't help those who use comskip, and it also really seems to be a Dirmon problem. Once Dirmon2 is getting stuck at this 0 PID process, there is actually no scheduled process running any more. This could happen with any process which gets kicked off by Dirmon, and it should be able to detect this situation and reset itself. Of course I have no idea if this easy or possible at all, Jere will know better.

Currently I can't really use Dirmon2 any more because it gets stuck almost every day, and I might have to try an earlier version again

Dirk

[blade]

Originally Posted by flachbar

Currently I can't really use Dirmon2 any more because it gets stuck almost every day, and I might have to try an earlier version again

I don't know what version introduced the problem, but I'm using v0.5.5 with the latest version of comskip without any problems.

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by flachbar

I think it might be a good idea to not only fix it in SA, but also in Dirmon2.

Short version: DirMon waits on any given job to signal its completion. This signal is something Windows does when a process ends. A process that crashes doesn't get that signal emitted. Hence, DirMon never knows when the job ends.

Long version: Umm... too long to type.

Result: I've added yet another method to determine if the job is still running and will upload it shortly.

Jere

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by Jere_Jones

Short version: DirMon waits on any given job to signal its completion. This signal is something Windows does when a process ends. A process that crashes doesn't get that signal emitted. Hence, DirMon never knows when the job ends.

Long version: Umm... too long to type.

Understand... It's just strange that I never had this problem with earlier versions of Dirmon

Originally Posted by Jere_Jones

Result: I've added yet another method to determine if the job is still running and will upload it shortly.
Jere

Awesome, thank you so much ...

Dirk

[Jere_Jones]

Originally Posted by flachbar

Understand... It's just strange that I never had this problem with earlier versions of Dirmon

I think the problem is actually caused by Sage. I think Jeff found a way to delete files even if other programs have open handles to them. (If I'm wrong, I apologize )

Try it. Run SA on a show and try to delete it. You shouldn't be able to. I know I can't. The only way I've been able to duplicate it is by sharing a local drive and then mapping it to another drive letter. Then while SA is running, I disconnect the mapping. And even then I get a stout warning from windows that I may be doing something bad.

Jere

[Jere_Jones]

Ok. A new version of DirMon is up. As always, you can find the link in the first post of this thread.

0.6.1 - 14 September 2006
- Added another method to determine if the job is finished. This should prevent jobs that crash from holding up the queue.

Enjoy,
Jere

[geogecko]

Originally Posted by Jere_Jones

I think the problem is actually caused by Sage. I think Jeff found a way to delete files even if other programs have open handles to them. (If I'm wrong, I apologize )

Try it. Run SA on a show and try to delete it. You shouldn't be able to. I know I can't. The only way I've been able to duplicate it is by sharing a local drive and then mapping it to another drive letter. Then while SA is running, I disconnect the mapping. And even then I get a stout warning from windows that I may be doing something bad.

Jere

Ah, ha! I wondered why sometimes I couldn't delete a file. Sage would let me delete it, but it would still show up. Only later, would it actually delete when I tried it. Must have been because of this. Interesting.

[ID10Tbox]

I don't know if what I was seeing is a Sage problem per se, as several times I tried it when Sage was not running and it did the same thing (not recognizing that a job had finished and getting stuck active jobs list). I don't mean I had it sleeping or anything, I had exited STV completely and was trying to get Dirmon working with the mpg files I had in the folder from earlier. So it was not working on any files that were being written to or should have had access locks from anything else.

Could it have something to do with the fact that I am using Dirmon to call batch files and not an exe? Are others using them successfully? Or could it have to do with the fact that I am using the start command to set the priority? Right now I have both comskip.exe and mencoder.exe set to run with start /low /wait in the batch file. They both run fine if I run the batch file by itself.

I will check out the new version when I get home though, hopefully the new detection method will resolve this.

Thanks everyone and Jere especially!

[ID10Tbox]

Jere,

That certainly seemed to take care of my problem with completed jobs remaining in the active jobs list and holding up the queue! Very much appreciated, indeed!


The only odd thing that I have noticed still happening which I mentioned before is a file going into the queue then being deleted (in this case by Sage) yet remaining in the queue. When the active job finishes, Dirmon still tries to process the job for the already deleted file in the queue. Are the target conditions (must exist mpg) checked again before a job is moved from the queue into the active jobs list, or does the program just assume the file is still there? Because the deleted files do not automatically drop out of the queue... I have my polling set to five minutes so I thought maybe after that period of time it would check again and the ones that were no longer there would drop out of the list. But I waited and the deleted file that was in the queue moved up to the active jobs list, and the deleted file(s) that were in the queue remained there. All of the deleted files that showed up in the queue were the result of changing channels while watching liveTV in Sage. Otherwise, it is working great!... I don't know what you did to fix the "completed job" issue, but it worked a charm! Thanks again and I won't be too upset if you don't come out with a new version right away! Maybe it is just my settings and I should adjust my polling time or something? ...but it sure was nice to see it work like intended when I tried the new version tonight!

[chadwolcott]

well I had high hopes that this was going to fix my problem as well, but alas it has not. Every day sage records 2 soaps for my wife and dirmon simply hangs there with one job "running" but never actually doing anything and the other in the queue. Same PID of 0 as the other people, but the latest versions of SA/Dirmon2 simply won't start the job. Stopping and restarting the service will start the processing just fine.

[Wirenut]

Yeah... 0.6.1 still hangs for me when used with comskip [latests release].

i might try an older version of dirmon2 and see what happens then.

peace,

Wirenut

ps. where can i find the old releases of dirmon? I've been all around the Dragon Global Forums and site.