Runaway Memory Leak in SageTV Service

[morpheus]

Last night, after Windows performed in automatic update, XP informed me that it was out of virtual memory.
I rebooted the system, and immediately noticed that the user interface was very slow. It gradually got much slower to the point that I could not even use it.
I rebooted again but the same thing happened.
Since I use this PC only for SageTV, and it has 512 MB of RAM, I suspected a memory leak. I opened Windows task manager and looked at the performance tab. All of the physical memory was being used, and page file use was 1 GB.
As an experiment, I stopped the SageTV service. Immediately, memory usage went back down to a normal idle state for XP. I started the SageTV service again, keeping an eye on the performance tab of task manager. Immediately memory usage went up, and within one minute all physical memory was used and the page file was again at 1 GB. The funny thing is, during this time memory usage by SageTV (as reported in the task manager processes tab) shoots up at the beginning but when it reaches around 400 MB, it suddenly drops down to 70 MB.
Since the Java automatic updater installed an update for the j2se runtime environment last night, I suspected that this might be the culprit. I uninstalled j2se, downloaded a fresh copy (1.4.2) and reinstalled it. I also did a reinstall (repair) of SageTV itself. I guess the next step is to uninstall SageTV and reinstall it, but that means losing my favorites.
Has anyone else seen this? I just spent $350 on a capture card and SageTV software, I'd like to get it working before I have to go on an overseas deployment.
Thanks,
morpheus

[Opus4]

Uninstalling & re-installing SageTV won't lose your favorites, unless you dump your wiz.bin file. As long as you keep wiz.bin & the properties files, all your old data & settings should still be there.

It is always possible that there is a memory problem in SageTV, but double check the other process on the Processes tab of Task Manager. For example: quite a while back, someone found that Norton AntiVirus was eating memory while auto-scanning the recording dirs. If you've added any customizations, try not using those to see what happens too.

- Andy

[stanger89]

I'd suggest also deleting all your Library Import directories and seeing if that helps at all.

[morpheus]

Thanks for the advice. I implemented your suggestions.
First, I uninstalled and reinstalled SageTV. However, the memory leak did not go away.
Second, I do not have Norton installed. In fact, SageTV is the only thing I use this PC for.
Third, I tried deleting all of my media import directories. The memory leaks still did not go away.
I'm fairly certain that this is a problem with SageTV itself, for the following reasons:
1. Windows runs fine and memory usage is stable as long as SageTV and SageTV service are not running.
2. As soon as I start either SageTV or SageTV service, memory usage begins to increase dramatically, and it does not stop increasing until all physical memory has been used and the page file is at its limit.
The confusing thing is that task manager reports that SageTV is only using 120 MB. However, when I stopped SageTV, memory usage in the performance tab of task manager immediately returns to normal, with about 320 MB physical memory available. If I start SageTV again, physical memory available decreases to nearly zero within 30 seconds.
It seemed to be working okay before last night's automatic update. I'd rather not reinstall Windows but this seems to be my only option, unless you guys can come up with something.

[salsbst]

I'd suggest uninstalling and reinstalling the Java Runtime Environment.

[gplasky]

I'd suggest looking at what Windows XP update installed and possibly rolling back before that with System Restore. It doesn't sound like you had a memory issue prior to this.

Gerry

[carlgar]

I would suggest that you save a copy of your properies and wiz files. Then remove your current wiz files so sage will built and new one when it starts. If this solves your problem then your wiz.bin file is probably corrupted. If so, I hope you have an uncorrupted older wiz.bin file or you may just have to start over with the new one.

[morpheus]

Thanks again for the suggestions.

As I mentioned in my original post, I already rolled back the j2se to the version that comes with SageTV, but this did not solve the problem.

I am going to try a radical solution, but one which is likely to solve my problem... reformat my hard disk and reinstall everything from scratch. I will let you know how this goes. If it works, I'm going to turn off all those damn automatic updating programs.

Wish me luck...

[morpheus]

Well, I figured it would be faster than trying to debug the problem, so I reformatted my hard disk and reinstalled everything from scratch. SageTV is now working properly, it doesn't use up all of my memory like it used to.

I would recommend to everyone, though, that you do not allow the j2se to automatically install updates. Also, if your machine is behind a firewall and you are not running any e-mail clients on it, you might also consider turning off Windows automatic update. At the very least, install updates one at a time manually and make sure SageTV still works after each one.

Thanks to everyone for the help.

[Doubletop]

I'm having the same problem as reported as soon as I wake sage tv up from sleeping the memory usage creeps up to a few megs from max (512Mb) over about 30 seconds.

Not looking forward to a hard disk reformat and re-install. I took me 2 weeks to get everything working properly when I installed a new motherboard..

So have we confrimed that its the java runtime that needs to be dropped back to 1.4.2?

[Doubletop]

Further update on this there are a number of possible conditions only one has the problem

Sleep OK
Awake OK
Playback OK
Record OK
Record one channel and playback different recording OK
Playback a channel whilst recording it NOT OK

One other observation when I had a 512Mb and a 256Mb memory installed the whole system would regularly crash. I took out the 256Mb and the system is far more stable. However, that is probably a memory incompatibility problem rather than a Sage TV problem.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Doubletop

Playback a channel whilst recording it NOT OK

That could be related to the capture device you are using or the recording quality being used for the recording. So, what device are you using & what is the recording quality setting?

- Andy

[Doubletop]

The card is a haupauge PVR 350 it has hardware encoding. I am set up for best quality

BTW just installed another 512mb of Ram taking me up to 1Gb, it was all in use within a couple of minutes of the install. Nothing else was running other than SageTV and FreeMeter which I am using for the monitor, and of course all the background stuff you need to get Sage TV running.

[krunkyou]

I'm having the exact same problem. I'm running the sage software with WinDVD creator. I'm using a Plextor ConvertX TV402U capture device. My System is a Dell Pentium 4 3.8 with Hyperthreading, 512 Memory. The operating system is Windows Media Center. I'm recording in DivX, highest quality.

Here is what I noticed. The system is fine until I record something. After the recording is done, the system attempts to convert the mpg or mpgs (they are in parts sometimes) into an AVI file. Sage creates a TMP file for the conversion. As this temp drive grows, the Page File (not the system memory) grows and grows and grows until it maxes out the system. The system memory stays the same, about 50-80k) Doesn't matter how big I configure the page file, the conversion process will run away with whatever is there. The PC becomes slow and I get messages that I'm running out of virtual memory. Usually, at some point the conversion stalls before it has a chance to complete, but the system never gives back the Virtual memory it took until I stop the Sage service. When I restart the service, it will try to convert the file again, and my virtual memory fills up again. The only way to stop the cycle is to delete the recording. If there are no files to convert, no problems.

I can't be the only person who has this problem. I'm probably going to shoot a note to Support today to see what they have to say, but if anybody here can shed some light on this, it would be appreciated. Thanks.

[SageTVFan]

I've been using SageTv for a while, and I've reformatted my hard drive as well.

The problem does come back.

It's unfortunate, since I use SageTV to record programs... maybe it will be fixed in version 3. (fingers crossed)

[whardy7]

I record homeschool classes several times throughout the night and day and am losing far too many because this virtual memory problem keeps coming up. It will ultimately send the system to a crawl until it won't record anything else. After I reboot, I have 100gig left about every time.

Any solutions to this yet?

[cmaffia]

It looks like these users were having problems with version 2.2.... have you tried v4.0 yet?

Originally Posted by whardy7

I record homeschool classes several times throughout the night and day and am losing far too many because this virtual memory problem keeps coming up. It will ultimately send the system to a crawl until it won't record anything else. After I reboot, I have 100gig left about every time.

Any solutions to this yet?

[whardy7]

No, I am using 2.0.0.1.
I will try 4.0, but I cannot find any evidence of an upgrade. Do I have to purchase all over again?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by whardy7

I will try 4.0, but I cannot find any evidence of an upgrade. Do I have to purchase all over again?

From the SageTV info page, there is a link to the download page. It is a free upgrade for any currently registered user; just install it to the same directory where SageTV is already installed.

I always make a backup of the current installation's data files, though... for simplicity, I simply copy the entire directory to another location before installing an upgrade.

- Andy

[ke6guj]

Nope, don't have to repurchase. Just download the current 4.0 version and you can then either install over top of 2.0.

However, if it were me, I'd copy out my wiz.bin and then uninstall 2.0 and then set up a new config pointing to the same recoding folders. Then, shut down sage and copy back in the wiz.bin and retain your recordings.