Spinning circle of death and thumbnails??

[jbuszkie]

I'm trying to speed up my whole setup. It seems like I get the spinning circle of death when scrolling through my videos and such more often then I remember.

What is Sage's process for generating thumbnails? I have a lot of videos
on a network drive(s) where they spin down.. The directory listings should be in the remote cache so it doesn't need to spin up the drive for the directory listing.
I wondering if it's trying to access a part of the file to generate a thumbnail?
Could that be my slowdown? Sage on the server is on a SSD so that shouldn't be the bottleneck?

I also saw this thread about a java version which might cause slowdown?

Jim

[doncote0]

I had a similar problem. It went away when I uninstalled all GKusnick plugins. I am sure that it is only a coincidence. You could try it.

[jbuszkie]

I don't think I have any of his plugins installed?? I'll check.. I'll try down grading java and see if that helps..

I was hoping there was something I could do about thumbnails to either disable them or cache them better?? There are like 2200 thumbnails in the generated_thumbnails directory.

[Rezolution]

Try going into your control panel, admin, event viewer, system, and then see if one of your hard drives is dying.

[Savage1701]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

I don't think I have any of his plugins installed?? I'll check.. I'll try down grading java and see if that helps..

I was hoping there was something I could do about thumbnails to either disable them or cache them better?? There are like 2200 thumbnails in the generated_thumbnails directory.

I had a problem once with a system generating "generic" thumbnails (Just the generic icon; no picture from the program on the thumb). This caused the spinning wheel of death until I noticed this was occurring when the Sage Client was trying to create new thumbnails. I had to go in, copy the show title, and use another "dummy" thumbnail for those ones it was mis-generating. I could open my thumbnail directory, launch Sage Client on my PC, and watch it fault as it tried to create new thumbs.

No clue why it stopped, but it did after either a Java update, Client update, or system update.

Just a thought or two...

You could try increasing your Java heap size.

[ranger]

I frequently get the spinning circle when my NAS drives have gone to sleep. Once they wake, response is usually very good. Not sure why Sage needs to check the drive when the cache information is stored locally on a drive that is awake and spinning, but I can confirm your observation and am convinced that the two are linked. I don't think that changing the JAVA heap size will help. Mine is already at 768MB.

[jbuszkie]

I'm really getting fed up with the slowdown! GRR...

But I did notice yesterday that I'm almost out of memory..
I wonder if that could be it?? I'll have to try an experiment
and steal 4GB from my other machine. I currently have 2GB installed.
It's a win 7 32bit so I'll only get.. what is it?? 3.5GB or something like that.. But
it may be enough.

But I'm not too confident because I have an SSD that it pages to.. and some of my delays are seconds! Oh well.. I'll give it the extra memory a try..

On a side note.. I really need to change my avatar!! That picture is like 6 years old!!
Maybe I'll change it to match my google+ avatar! It's hard to match real names to sage names over there...

Jim

[tmiranda]

In most cases slowdowns are caused by the Java Heap getting too full. What's your heap settings and what's the usage?

Search for Java Heap here on the forums, there is lots of data available.

Installing my Java Heap Monitor plugin will give you a quick indication of how full your heap is.

A dying hard drive could also cause slowdowns.

Tom

[jbuszkie]

Right now its 229/779/779
according to system info...

So i'm not sure that's it.
Sage's process is about 635MB. I've seen it in the
700's though.. Right now my mem is (in MB):

Total 2046
Cached 717
Available 695
free 10

Kernel Memory
Paged 179
Non paged 88

The OS is on an SSD that seems to be reporting healthy.
I have some questions about my 'D' drive. Sorting the TV directory is *slow*
The 'E' drive seems to be much faster with about the same amount of files.
'D' and 'E' are raid 1. Intel's Rapid Storage Technology manager reports that its: "functioning normally"

I don't like the fact that my free mem is so low.

Jim

[nyplayer]

Free Mem is always low on Windows 7 it uses the unused memory for SuperFetch. Having free memory means having memory that is not being used and its a waste.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

Right now its 229/779/779
according to system info...

IIRC when the last two numbers are the same (Total Used and Max Used) that means at some point you are maxing out the heap. Boost the heap size to 1 GB and see what happens.

[jbuszkie]

I'll try boosting.. But when would the "max" number get reset?

upon restart? upon reboot? Never??

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

I'll try boosting.. But when would the "max" number get reset?

upon restart? upon reboot? Never??

I think when you restart Sage.

[jbuszkie]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I think when you restart Sage.

It is restart... I put 4GB in the machine (it had 2GB) and I'll leave the heap alone for now. I got the plugin installed so if it does max, I'll get a system message, right?

I think you may be right about the heap being my problem.

I'll try her for a couple days.. then I'll increase the heap and put the mem back to 2GB (it's borrowed anyway from my other machine).

Jim

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by jbuszkie

It is restart... I put 4GB in the machine (it had 2GB) and I'll leave the heap alone for now. I got the plugin installed so if it does max, I'll get a system message, right?

You could put 124GB in and it won't make a difference if you don't increase the java heap size. Java only uses what you allocate to it. Some systems seem to barf if you set the heap size over 1GB so you may have to mess with it a little.

Yes, it will send a system message. I think the default threshhold is 90% usage but you should check. The setup is in the Detailed Setup menu.

[jbuszkie]

yeah. I know about the heap.. I was just wondering if there was something else making the memory fill up outside of java that might have caused the slowdown like comskip or something...

[pjpjpjpj]

I had my first ever OOM error last night. I have been trying to think about what's been different lately, and I realized that I have, in the past week or so, started using the Sage "Convert" function much more (I'm running low on disk space and don't want to buy more until prices come back down again eventually). I have been manually converting many of our recordings, and setting some of our favorites to auto-convert. I'm wondering if that has anything to do with it - curious whether any of you who have seen memory issues also use the convert/auto-convert function?

Unfortunately, I had a crying baby in my arms (and the rest of the family sleeping upstairs) when I realized the system wasn't responding, so I didn't have time to check memory, hard drives, etc. I ran down to the server, used the Sage Service GUI, stopped service and restarted it, and everything worked fine. When it came back up, I had an OOM system message in Sage.

[jbuszkie]

Interesting... with the 4GB of memory.. Last night I didn't seem to notice the SCOD (spinning circle of death) nearly as much...

Might be just a coincidence and I didn't max out the heap yet..

I'm still more inclined to believe my heap is running out.. but so far
it seems to be better with just the extra memory??

I'll let it go the whole week and see..

[jbuszkie]

I think the extra memory if helping. This whole week was *much* better..

but.... I did hit the java heap warning yesterday.

so maybe I have to do both.. I'll increase the heap to a gig and see what happens..


Jim

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I had my first ever OOM error last night. I have been trying to think about what's been different lately, and I realized that I have, in the past week or so, started using the Sage "Convert" function much more (I'm running low on disk space and don't want to buy more until prices come back down again eventually). I have been manually converting many of our recordings, and setting some of our favorites to auto-convert. I'm wondering if that has anything to do with it - curious whether any of you who have seen memory issues also use the convert/auto-convert function?

That would make sense to me. I have 4 servers only one has memory issues. That is the only one I routinely use the Sage "Convert" function on.