Needing to reboot server periodically... seems to be getting worse

Channels DVR Server
#1

I'm running Channels DVR on a 2012 Mac Mini with 3 external USB drives dedicated to Channels, and 2 x 4 tuner HDHRs. I have Philo and sometimes YTTV setup as sources, in addition to OTA. I also have Pluto setup in Docker. I have a lot of passes running. We have a couple of Apple TVs and a couple of Android TVs and occaisional iOS viewers.

I am always touting how will the Mac Mini keeps up with all this, but something seems to be going on that is impacting performance. Nothing that I'm aware of has really changed in terms of subscription, number of recordings, etc. So I don't think usage has caused additoinal load. In the past when the main external drive started to fill up it seemed like I'd see some slowness to respond when viewing and reboot the Mac Mini and all was good... and I'd move some recordings to the other drive while during that process.

The last couple of weeks, nothing is full on the drives. I have started noticing that when I go into All Movies, it isn't filling all the thumbnails, or takes a minute or more. When hitting skip commercials, it will take a very, very long time to continue and sometimes just never do it. Same with trying to skip forward... I go a couple and it seems to get hung up. For the last couple of days, I have rebooted and it still seemed to be a little wonky and have rebooted 4 times in the last couple of days.

As I said, I don't think anything has dramatically changed int terms of the number of recordings, usage, etc. recently. In fact over the last couple of months I had pruned the library a bit and got rid of some passes that I decided we'd never watch and deleted the recordings. The last thing I added was Pluto back about a month or so back and that has been pretty solid.

Any ideas what I might want to look at, or should I just plan to reboot the Mini every day. There isn't anything else really happening on the Mini... Plex Server is on there but I never use it. And the Pluto Docker. I guess I can try removing Plex to see if that is maybe trying to index something and slowing things down..

#2

Just took a look at Activity Monitor and Commercial Skip seems to take about 94% of CPU when its running... when its not, DVR is taking 24% and there is a lot of headroom. I'm going to try and spot check when its seeming to be sluggish if Commercial Skip is running.

#3

Yep that was going to be my question. With the number of recordings you are doing it may be running comskip almost constantly.

#4

The strange thing is that I have been running a similar number of recordings, probably more, since I've had it setup for over 6 months, but it just recently started doing this thing where it needed a reboot. It was probably running more in the past. Its too bad there isn't a way to limit how much CPU percentage processing comskip can use.

#5

why not set a number of cores? this would effectively cap the processing usage, albeit haphazardly.

#6

I’ve noticed things have become quite sluggish in the last few days. I wonder if it is linked to the most recent update? When I tap on things in my library, eg, ‘shows’ or ‘kids’, the delay is quite noticeable. I quite often now find myself thinking it hasn’t registered the click and trying again only to find I’m clicking on something else due to the lag.

For the last few months, I’ve had a daemon set up to force restart my mac at the same time every morning (5am). This time seems to be a sweet spot when almost nothing worth recording is on TV so it’s not really been an issue. Before setting up this regular restart, I was having numerous issues with failed recordings. Since, it’s been almost flawless.

A number of the problems I had were around the mac server losing connection to my NAS drive where my recordings are saved. By restarting regularly, it forces a new connection so it minimises the harm from a lost connection which otherwise might have going unnoticed for several days previously. I also have another script running that checks for the connection regularly and reconnects if lost. Both things that are really helpful.

#7

I’ve prepared a video showing the lag when clicking ‘recordings’. Unfortunately, I cannot upload it. It’s specifically when selecting ‘recordings’ that the lag occurs and then there are no thumbnails shown.

This is definitely a very recent issue. As the most recent update seems to have been 15th Jan, I suspect it was around then that the problem started.

#8

Please email the video to [email protected]

#9

Is this happening consistently?

With the latest dvr release images are now loaded by and cached on the dvr server. It may be slower the first time an image is loaded, but should be fast after that and also allow images to load even when you lose internet access.

Perhaps your disk is spinning up after not using Channels for a while, and that's causing the delay in the images being loaded off the disk cache?

#10

With my old setup, this was indeed the root cause of many initial delays. It would also cause TVE streams to fail when trying to tune from a client when the hard drive was asleep; subsequent attempts to tune would work.

#11

Up until about a week ago, I never noticed cover art missing. It was pretty instantaneous. For about the last week its been terrible. Last night I tried several times over several hours going into library for movies, even in Search for upcoming movies. Most of the cover art never showed up at all. I'm on an Apple TV 4K. Something is definitely different about this recently. (this hasn't got anything to do with the reboot original post here.)

#12

Could you submit diagnostics from the dvr web UI while the app is stuck without thumbnails loading

#13

I will try to do it tonight.

#14

Sent. I wonder if this is linked to the issue I’m having today with it not loading at all.

#15

Sent diagnostics last night. At the time I was pretty much only able to watch OTA live. Thumbnails weren't coming up. It appeared from the Guide that some recordings were going, but looking at the Recordings tab, it indicated that none had run that day and none were running presently. Trying to replay anything from the library was kind of hit or miss.

#16

No diagnostics came through under your account.

Does the Log tab show errors? Sounds like something more serious is going on

#17

I don't see any. Here is the entry where it did diagnostics...
2021/01/21 20:01:23.378900 New diagnostic log submitted under 4456240b-467e-457a-a1d3-2121eecc3524

1 Like
#18

Thanks. Please try the latest pre-release which has some fixes based on your diagnostics.

#19

You mean prerelease on the server, right?

#20

Yes