memory leak or ????

[raoul]

So, a couple of months ago I started experiencing a problem where after my sagetv system is up for a couple of days, it starts to really drag and become unresponsive. On my extenders or directly on my server, I may click a button and just have to wait 10 seconds (or longer) for it to react. On the server itself, if I am watching video, then it will pause the video every few minutes (audio is fine) for some 5 seconds or so, and then play rapidly the video until it catches up. Even if I am just looking through my list of recordings, it will be scrolling along just fine and then pause for a few seconds, and then continue again. Prior to a couple of months ago, I would leave my system up for months and not notice this happening. If I just restart sageTV (software), then it becomes responsive again for a couple days and just zips along nicely. Note - I do not have to reboot the server... just restart sageTV.

I have my java heap memory size set to 779MB. After it reboots, it usually hits a max value around 650MB, but then drops to 500-600MB being used. I notice that when it has ground down to this slow condition, the JVM memory being used is essentially pegged to the max value. Almost like something is eating the memory and it isn't getting freed up. I don't know if it would start to utilize swap space on a drive when this maxes out? Looking at task manager, sageTV takes a couple hundred MB when booting and then the sagetranscoder.exe process kicks in and takes it up to around 600MB. When the system grinds down to the slow state, windows reports sageTV process to be consuming about 1Gig of RAM.

I am not using this computer for anything else. Just watching sageTV directly and as a server to my extenders. i don't even bother running an antivirus on it. I have updated to the latest version (7.1.9.256) and running java 1.6.0_19.

I am sure the question of plugins will come up. I am getting close to removing them all to help debug. However, i believe I am running a common set of plugins: Playon, commercial detector (comskip, playback), IMDB search, Miniguid, movie trailers, multi function stop, ortus trailers, and all their dependencies. I have played with BMT and diamond in the past, but I think that is all removed now.

It is sort of a strange issue as it acts like hardware, but just restarting sageTV clears it each time. I am sure I will have to provide more information so start asking away.... thanks for any suggestions. I know I could have it just restart sage each night, but i would prefer to solve and not bandaid.

-R

[texneus]

Although I do not have a solution, I find this very interesting as it seems to be the same issue peppered throughout the Colossus thread here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52718

Do you by chance have a Colossus? 'Cause if you don't this suggests Colussus and it's drivers are not the root cause as most have been suspecting. Perhaps a Windows update you applied a couple months ago that the rest of us already have?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by texneus

Although I do not have a solution, I find this very interesting as it seems to be the same issue peppered throughout the Colossus thread here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52718

Do you by chance have a Colossus? 'Cause if you don't this suggests Colussus and it's drivers are not the root cause as most have been suspecting. Perhaps a Windows update you applied a couple months ago that the rest of us already have?

I have no memory leak on my server that contains a Colossus and still have many problems with it. I have another server that does NOT have a Colossus and does have memory problems. I believe it is due to a plugin or a setting from the install that is causing mine. I just haven't had time to re-install everything again on that server. My other 3 servers one of which is installed on exact same hardware have no memory leaks at all. Including (as I mentioned) the one that I have my Colossus installed on.

[raoul]

I do not have a colossus. Unfortunately I did have windows auto updating and didn't realize it until a few weeks ago and got it switched off. I keep thinking a plugin as well but don't think I changed any when this started happening. Guess I could delete them all to start, as I am bored with this problem and want to solve it.

***UPDATE***

I went ahead and deleted EVERY plugin that I had installed, plus all of their dependencies. My system has now been up for a full 5 days and is still snappy and responsive. None of the issues that I describe above. Looking at my JVHM, I can see it still creeping up, but it is still below 700 and it used to max out within the first day. I am not sure why this doesn't ever drop back down, but in any event the stock only system seems to be working solidly which rules out hardware failure and points to plugins. (Andy - do we want to move this thread - sorry)

So my next step is to start adding my plugins - 1 at a time - and keep monitoring it. Either I should find an offending plugin, or perhaps removing them and reinstalling them all will solve my issue. I will continue to update this thread as I go along in case it is of use to someone else. Please let me know if you have any other ideas.

***Plugins added

So far, I have added the following plugins, one at a time, and let them run for 5 days or so. No sign of the earlier problem that I described above.

Commercial Detector UI (with commskip detector and playback)
Playon
Multifunction Stop
Google weather

[raoul]

*ping*

[Paul H]

I put MaxMem on every PC I build, no more memory leaks.

http://www.analogx.com/contents/down...m/Freeware.htm

[Savage1701]

That might be worth a try. I do a "therapeutic" reboot every day or so, as my system begins to behave consistently like others who are describing memory leaks. Thanks for the info.

[raoul]

So, I have this problem solved and just wanted to update this in case someone else has a similar problem. To pick it up from where I left off (a couple posts off), I had the following plugins installed and everything working great:

Commercial Detector UI (with commskip detector and playback)
Playon
Multifunction Stop
Google weather

I then added the Ortus movie trailer Plugin and started having the problem again. Playing around with it and doing some more testing showed that none of the plugins actually had a memory leak. It was just that those plugins plus 3 extenders had memory resource requirements that added up to take the full 780 megs I had allotted for the java heap memory. I went ahead and bumped that up to a full 1Gig, and no more problems and my system has been up for 3 weeks. It is sitting still around the 780 megs level, but no real sign of my symptoms - the system is staying snappy and responsive... no stuttering.

So... when in doubt... increase the JVM!

[lfilomeno]

Originally Posted by raoul

So, I have this problem solved and just wanted to update this in case someone else has a similar problem. To pick it up from where I left off (a couple posts off), I had the following plugins installed and everything working great:

Commercial Detector UI (with commskip detector and playback)
Playon
Multifunction Stop
Google weather

I then added the Ortus movie trailer Plugin and started having the problem again. Playing around with it and doing some more testing showed that none of the plugins actually had a memory leak. It was just that those plugins plus 3 extenders had memory resource requirements that added up to take the full 780 megs I had allotted for the java heap memory. I went ahead and bumped that up to a full 1Gig, and no more problems and my system has been up for 3 weeks. It is sitting still around the 780 megs level, but no real sign of my symptoms - the system is staying snappy and responsive... no stuttering.

So... when in doubt... increase the JVM!

Thanks for your post. My system has become as slow as you mentioned on your above post. Will check the JVM parameters and see if that cures my issues.

[wayner]

@raoul - I sometimes also have the issues that you experience and I think it is related to having multiple extenders. My experience is that when you are using 3 extenders then SageTVService gets up to memory usage of about 850k (according to Task Manager). This is not necessarily the same as JVM usage but I think it is related and it appears to me that when you shut off an extender it may not give up all of the Java memory that it was using.

I started having problem on my system when I got up to 7 extenders. I use 5-6 on a regular basis and it does sometimes bog down. You might want to try downloading the JVM Heap size monitor by Tmiranda as it may help.

Note that the things exacerbating the problem is that I had switched on an option to power on all extenders upon a Sage reboot. You can't do this while having 7 extenders attached to your server as it will cause problems

Here is my post on my problems - pay particular attention to post #15 http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57754

[egeller]

Originally Posted by wayner

it appears to me that when you shut off an extender it may not give up all of the Java memory that it was using.

Can't you force JVM garbage collection (lower Sage memory usage) by going to System Information and then pressing the delete key? I do that, then exit and re-enter System Information and see the reduction in used memory.

[wayner]

I didn't know that forced a garbage collection but that doesn't help much. Even after shutting down all extenders I was still using over 600MB. I restarted the Sage service and I am back down to 272MB. It could be a leaky plugin but I have tried running without any plugins wth similar results.