Crash goes the extender(s)

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Narflex

I fixed this now and uploaded the fix to GitHub.

There's also another change I did which will help reduce the size of the database a little bit (and have a minor effect on Intelligent Recording, which I think will bother nobody).

HOWEVER, if you REALLY want to reduce your database usage there's another thing you can do. Mine was getting way too large (I have the oldest database as you'd expect, it's over 18 years old...has data from December 2002 in it when I first wrote SageTV)...my RAM usage was generally about 1GB, and I've almost cut it in half now.

If you set this in Sage.properties:
wizard/retain_airings_from_completed_recordings=false
wizard/last_maintenance=0

and you have a really old DB, that'll clean out LOTS of things. But you'll then want to put that first one back to true after it loads it and does the daily maintenance (which it'll do right after startup...but it may take awhile to complete). What that'll do is remove all the Airings from the database that were for recordings you made at one point in time but it no longer has....normally, those are useful if you move files around so SageTV won't delete the metadata for those files if they aren't in the right place or other things went wrong. But after years, it'll just be storing tons of data it doesn't really need at all.

My 50% reduction was based on the new JAR with the Wasted cleanup change along with setting the above property once. My system has limited RAM and I didn't feel like building a new one, so this was an easy way to make it fast again w/out losing my 18 years of history.

I think I'm misssing something here. I went to Github and saw the entry for the fix. It looks *to me* like it is just the file(s) needed to compile a new version?? I downloaded the zip file, but it is a bunch or files.
I'm lost. I was looking for a file or a couple files to replace existing files in my SageTV installation but it doesn't seem to be that from what I can see.
Then again I'm a complete NEWB at the whole Github website.

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I think I'm misssing something here. I went to Github and saw the entry for the fix. It looks *to me* like it is just the file(s) needed to compile a new version?? I downloaded the zip file, but it is a bunch or files.
I'm lost. I was looking for a file or a couple files to replace existing files in my SageTV installation but it doesn't seem to be that from what I can see.
Then again I'm a complete NEWB at the whole Github website.

Yeah, he checked in the code but a new version needs built to get the changes. If I get a minute I’ll see about at least building a new Sage.jar.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by wnjj

Yeah, he checked in the code but a new version needs built to get the changes. If I get a minute I’ll see about at least building a new Sage.jar.

Any update on this? We were scrolling thru the program guide tonight on an HD300, and the cursor happened to land on the Kudlow show on the Fox Business News channel. Mind you, we did not click on the show or anything, just that the cursor happened to land on the show in the program guide. Of course, the extender crashed. Seems like we are dealing with landmines in the program guide, which is not helping with the WAF.

[wnjj]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

Any update on this? We were scrolling thru the program guide tonight on an HD300, and the cursor happened to land on the Kudlow show on the Fox Business News channel. Mind you, we did not click on the show or anything, just that the cursor happened to land on the show in the program guide. Of course, the extender crashed. Seems like we are dealing with landmines in the program guide, which is not helping with the WAF.

Yeah. I built a new jar but since I'm hosting on my Dropbox, I'll share the link via pm. I already pm'd waynedunham but haven't heard back.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by wnjj

Yeah. I built a new jar but since I'm hosting on my Dropbox, I'll share the link via pm. I already pm'd waynedunham but haven't heard back.

Yes, I'll be downloading that PM link this morning. Thanks, and sorry for taking a couple days to get to it. It's that old "life' getting in the way of "living" thing.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Narflex

8< snip...(and have a minor effect on Intelligent Recording, which I think will bother nobody) .....snip >8

Can you give any more info on the "minor effect" to IR? I am one of the few that relies quite a lot on IR (with aggressive negative profiling set to true), so I would like to know just what effect to expect if possible.

And in any case major kudos and thanks for looking into this and hopefully fixing the 4k graphics issue.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by wnjj

Yeah. I built a new jar but since I'm hosting on my Dropbox, I'll share the link via pm. I already pm'd waynedunham but haven't heard back.

I just installed the Sage.jar you sent me via PM and can confirm it does fix the issue with the programs we've mentioned crashing My HD300 extender.

I checked:

Game of Talents
The Barbarian and the troll
Elliot from Earth
Kudlow

I know I happened upon a few more, but didn't take note of the titles at the time since within the last couple weeks programs in the EPG that would crash the extender were showing up more and more frequently.
But the good news is that there is 100% success in looking at those programs that were known to crash the extenders before.

Thanks to you and Narflex of course for implementing the changes necessary. Thanks also to all those who chimed in verifying that it wasn't just me and uploading their log files.
I'm a happy camper again!!

OH, BTW, not sure if it makes a difference, but I'm running the 32 bit version of SageTV, so not sure if that jar file works for both 32 and 64 bit, or just the 32 bit version.

[wnjj]

That’s great news and not surprising since “the man” fixed it. Java jars run on either 32 or 64 bit.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by wnjj

That’s great news and not surprising since “the man” fixed it. Java jars run on either 32 or 64 bit.

Absolutely, Narflex IS "The Man"! A true SageTV hero.

Also great to know the Jar's are interchangeable between 32 and 64 bit SageTV.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Narflex

I fixed this now and uploaded the fix to GitHub.
>8snip

I just wanted to thank you again, the fix seems to be working great.

It's nice to see you throw some love at your creation all these years later!

[dgschoel]

Originally Posted by wnjj

Yeah. I built a new jar but since I'm hosting on my Dropbox, I'll share the link via pm. I already pm'd waynedunham but haven't heard back.

I am also having this problem and not sure what I need to do to install the"fix".will thereby a new install package do I need to get the new jar file from you?

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by dgschoel

I am also having this problem and not sure what I need to do to install the"fix".will thereby a new install package do I need to get the new jar file from you?

All I had to do was install the JAR that WNJJ compiled (with SageTV and/or SageTV Service are stopped).
Hopefully either a new build can be done quickly for Windows or he can find a spot to host the JAR file so it doesn't hit his dropbox too hard if a lot of folks need this fix. Seems like anyone still using Sage HD Extenders do/will need it as they hit those crashing programs.

[KeithAbbott]

Just a thanks to Narflex and wnjj for version 9.2.4. It looks like it fixed the crashing extender problem, and has also shrunk my wiz.bin file a bit (after following the steps outlined by Narflex). Unfortunately, it only shrunk mine by 9%; but hey, anything helps.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

Just a thanks to Narflex and wnjj for version 9.2.4. It looks like it fixed the crashing extender problem, and has also shrunk my wiz.bin file a bit (after following the steps outlined by Narflex). Unfortunately, it only shrunk mine by 9%; but hey, anything helps.

I haven't made the sagetv. properties file change to clean up my wiz.bin yet. I was making sure this fixed the crashing extender problem first.
I wonder if the cleaned up wiz.bin will do anything for lowering my java heap use so I can stop having to restart SageTV one or more times a day for "Java heap has exceeded the warning level" messages, or worse yet exceeding the "critical level".

[peternm22]

Originally Posted by Narflex

If you set this in Sage.properties:
wizard/retain_airings_from_completed_recordings=false
wizard/last_maintenance=0

I tried running this and it only reduced my wiz.bin from 52.9MB to 52.1MB. Should I have expected a larger reduction? I think I've been using this wiz.bin since version 3 or 4, so it's been well over a decade. I don't use intelligent recording so I wonder if that might have something to do with it. I looked through the log and it looks like the maintenance did occur.

Sun 4/18 17:36:17.123 [EPG@814b9d] Performing maintenanance type: FULL
....
Sun 4/18 17:36:19.472 [EPG@814b9d] Wizard removing 5662 old airings of 135232 total...

I was just expecting something more substantial. I'm still not sure what it is removing and what it is keeping?

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by Narflex

...my RAM usage was generally about 1GB, and I've almost cut it in half now.

Congratulations, Wizard. You might be the one programmer left on the planet that understands what it means to limit memory usage.

[phelme]

for reference, my "killer TV show" was "Chef Boot Camp" on Fieri... er, Food Network. Thankfully we didn't really like the show so spared one of my HD300's from seizing all the time.

[Opus4]

As I've posted in the Schedules Direct EPG topic, the real issue here are the extremely large show images that the EPG grabber is getting, instead of the smaller ones that SD could provide. I'm asking there if anyone is interested in looking at the SD EPG grabber code.

Alternatively: My SageTV PC is getting older and slows down while displaying show images anyway. Not sure if anyone else has this problem, but I find that if I play video on the schedule or recordings menus instead of displaying the show images, response is greatly improved.

I'm starting to feel like I have no interest in seeing show images and am debating adding the ability to turn such images off in the UI. Am I the only one interested in this kind of solution to the very large images, potential crash issues, and UI slowdowns?

Maybe if I changed to a more modern PC and OS, I wouldn't have this issue, but... I can't find a shrug emoji. Oh well.

Andy

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by Opus4

As I've posted in the Schedules Direct EPG topic, the real issue here are the extremely large show images that the EPG grabber is getting, instead of the smaller ones that SD could provide. I'm asking there if anyone is interested in looking at the SD EPG grabber code.

Alternatively: My SageTV PC is getting older and slows down while displaying show images anyway. Not sure if anyone else has this problem, but I find that if I play video on the schedule or recordings menus instead of displaying the show images, response is greatly improved.

I'm starting to feel like I have no interest in seeing show images and am debating adding the ability to turn such images off in the UI. Am I the only one interested in this kind of solution to the very large images, potential crash issues, and UI slowdowns?

Maybe if I changed to a more modern PC and OS, I wouldn't have this issue, but... I can't find a shrug emoji. Oh well.

Andy

I stopped displaying images a while ago. I have no images in the guide and also no thumbnails.
I setup a thumbnail symlink... and Sage no longer uses thumbnails.or channels Icons.

[Opus4]

If I do it in the STV, the extra space would be used for the show description unless video was playing on the menu.