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Indicative of a memory leak?


avionics12

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Hi all

 

I'm running 3.10.14 advanced in my first year.  First, my show is running fine with no known problems outside however I am seeing something I do not understand.  I am using All CPU Meter to "watch" my computer stats.  I have a Core i7 @ 3.4G with 10G of RAM.  I happened to notice that the RAM usage is getting progressively higher.  What I have seen over the last three days is:

 

RAM   LOR Comm Listener   LOR Monitor   LOR Tray

 

Dec10th  

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I do hate not having an EDIT button!

 

Anyway these stats start after a complete shutdown and start:

 

Dec 10th   RAM 18%   LOR Comm Listener-4136K   LOR Monitor-8340K   LOR Tray-5156K

Dec 11th   RAM 24%   LOR Comm Listener-4260K   LOR Monitor-58356K   LOR Tray-6040K

Dec 12th   RAM 26%   LOR Comm Listener-4244K   LOR Monitor-134664K   LOR Tray-6240K

 

As you can see the RAM usage is increasing slowly and the LOR Monitor is increasing somewhat off exponentially.

 

Is this an indication of a memory leak?  I plan to let it run to gather more stats as long as the show is not affected; I do believe I'll have to reboot in a few days.

 

Any thoughts about this?  Thanks.

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There's a new option (on by default) to have LORMonitor restart itself once per day.  This was done as a preventative for problems with memory leaks with large shows.  I was seeing major leaks last year - had to restart the LORMonitor (disable/reenable shows) every day or two or my show would lock up.  This year I've seen no issues (crossing fingers).

I actually had a timed script run last year that manually killed LORMonitor and restarted it so it would continue to run while we were out of town for a few days.  I called the script "LORKiller.bat" lol

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Thanks for the reply Tim.  How can I check the current status of the option to have LORMonitor restart itself?  The show computer is solely dedicated for that task and has been running practically 24/7/365, therefore there has been no need to restart or shutdown.

 

As a first year newbie for shows (been hanging around for years) I've certainly learned a lot and appreciate the great help on the forum.

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I'm at work and don't have a LOR computer handy, but it's under the "light bulb" menu.  Can't remember what the option is called but something like "auto restart..."

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Decided to play hooky from work for the afternoon; I think what you are referring to is the check mark next to "Show Player Memory Restarts".  Mine is already checked.  Since it is already clearing the memory I suspect there is a memory leak or another anomaly.  If the show player does restart, the LORMonitor should not be incrementing as it is after four days.  Would appreciate some input from the LOR folks on this; or anyone else for that matter!

 

Thanks for helping me learn something new Tim.

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If you look at your control panel log, do you see it restarting at some point of the day?  Mine does it right after my main show quits for the night.

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I had not noticed anything there out of the ordinary, but then again I wasn't looking for a restart log.  I have it up and running throughout the show and by the time I see it the next afternoon it has cleared itself.  I'll make it a point to go and look at the log tonight after the show finishes the shutdown sequence.  Thanks!

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Those indications are certainly a memory problem in software terms. Usually, I would imagine its an "array" that doesn't get emptied when it should, therefore it keeps on filling up. Trying to find that is a huge problem for the programmers. One program I wrote a long while back, had this happening and it took a long time for me to find it as that particular code was considerably complex, but I did find it and resolve it.

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Well the show has finished for the night and I did not see a restart on the log.  According to the help files if no show is playing and no show is scheduled to start playing within 60 seconds a shutdown and restart will occur if the show player is using more than 100M of memory.

 

The current readings are:

 

Dec 10th   RAM 18%   LOR Comm Listener-4136K   LOR Monitor-8340K   LOR Tray-5156K

Dec 11th   RAM 24%   LOR Comm Listener-4260K   LOR Monitor-58356K   LOR Tray-6040K

Dec 12th   RAM 26%   LOR Comm Listener-4244K   LOR Monitor-134664K   LOR Tray-6240K

Dec 13th   RAM 27%   LOR Comm Listener-4244K   LOR Monitor-191396K   LOR Tray-15552K

 

I'll keep watching but know I'll get the itch to unload LOR, restart the show computer and monitor the processes again. 

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The restarts should be showing up in the log.  Are you running shows (e.g. music only) 24 hours a day?  I run music during the day but not right after my light show ends, so that's when LOR chooses to restart itself.

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I run the show from 1745 (15 minutes musical pre show) until 2315 (15 minute musical post show).  There is no music or lights other than during these times.  Really has me wondering.....

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Hopefully LOR Bob will come on and weigh in.  I think he's the one who programmed all of this.

 

I agree; I'd like to know more.  I'm sure that the LOR folks are quite busy taking care of "seasonal" Customer and show needs and that is certainly a higher priority than this.  I am looking forward to tonight and what may come.  We finally have somewhat decent weather to be out (had lots of snow and ice) and the wife unit and I will go to watch other shows in the area.  I live about a mile away from one of the Christmas Light Fight contestants; watching his show 4 years ago is what led me to LOR.  Go figure......

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It certainly could be indicative of a leak, but no, it's not necessarily one.  As more sequences in your show play, they use more memory.  They are kept in memory thereafter so as to avoid necessitating reloading them (unless memory usage gets too high, in which case it will try to decache some of them).

 

It's strange that the "show player memory restart" seemingly didn't kick in.  Are you by chance using the "4 GB Patch"? I have not checked, but I could imagine that that might interfere with the calculation we do to determine whether the restart should happen or not.

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Thanks for ringing in Bob.  It is interesting to me that I have 8 sequences for one show that repeats during the night.  I spent one night watching this (I gotta get a life!) and the RAM increased after each sequence all night long.  Yesterday I got the itch and unloaded LOR, restarted the computer, and enabled shows again.  The RAM reading was 17% at idle.

 

I've read about the 4GB patch, however I do not fully understand what it is for so I have not applied it.

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