# Slow performance with 512Mb cachecard/250Gb drive



## itm (Aug 12, 2001)

I upgraded my Series 1 with a Cachecard, 512Mb of RAM and a Samsung 250Gb disk last November. Recently the performance (e.g. menu selection) has been really poor. This is with 25% disk usage (about 40 scheduled recordings in "Now Playing" and a couple of hundred suggestions).

I run tivoweb, endpad and freespace. Are any of these likely to account for the poor performance??


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

itm said:


> I upgraded my Series 1 with a Cachecard, 512Mb of RAM and a Samsung 250Gb disk last November. Recently the performance (e.g. menu selection) has been really poor. This is with 25% disk usage (about 40 scheduled recordings in "Now Playing" and a couple of hundred suggestions).
> 
> I run tivoweb, endpad and freespace. Are any of these likely to account for the poor performance??


Do you mean autospace rather than freespace?

I can't think of any reason why your Tivo should be running slowly with so few Now Playing items.

You have tried rebooting your Tivo I imagine both via a power off reboot and a warm reboot through the menus? If not do so now.

Also have you edited the tivoweb (no extension) file in the var/hack/tivoweb-tcl directory with joe or another unix editor to change the setting of the TIVOSH_POOLSIZE = line to 3244068 which should help a bit with any slow down and rebooting issues. You need to reboot the machine again after doing this edit.

My Tivo with Cachecard and 512MB of RAM and 2 x 250Gb Samsung HA250JC drives changes menus rather slowly but only because there are 600 hours of Basic recordings on the disks. When I only had 40 it was lightening fast.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Have you enabled the cachecard stats? I think that it's an option in nic_config_tivo.

This writes periodic entries into one of the logs, and shows the counts of cache hits and misses over the preceding period.


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## itm (Aug 12, 2001)

I have TIVOSH_POOLSIZE set to 3244032 - is that OK?

Also I wasn't able to find nic_config_tivo - which directory is it located in??


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

itm said:


> I have TIVOSH_POOLSIZE set to 3244032 - is that OK?
> 
> Also I wasn't able to find nic_config_tivo - which directory is it located in??


3244032 is the correct replacement setting in the tivoweb file that reduces any problems with Tivoweb sometimes causing the machine to reboot when you are using it.

You type nic_config_tivo at the Telnet prompt. Its not a file in a directory.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Pete77 said:


> Its not a file in a directory.


Yes it is. 

It's in /sbin, but /sbin should be in your path, so you don't need to specify it. Otherwise, try ...

/sbin/nic_config_tivo


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## itm (Aug 12, 2001)

Thanks - I found it. What interval would you recommend for cache stats reporting? (it's currently set to zero). Will it write to tvdebuglog?


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Have you tried just restarting the TiVo? Sometimes it can work wonders!


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## itm (Aug 12, 2001)

Actually it seems to be restarting itself every few days at the moment - I'm still not sure why!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

itm said:


> Actually it seems to be restarting itself every few days at the moment - I'm still not sure why!


Sounds as though your swap file on your hard drive may perhaps not be large enough for the size of disk involved?

What command line did you use to carry out the upgrade or did the drive come from TivoHeaven or TivoLand?


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## itm (Aug 12, 2001)

The drive came pre-installed from TivoHeaven. How can I check the swap file size??


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

It's on the info page in TiVoWeb - although unless you have suffered drive corruption it should be OK. Lack of swap doesn't cause reboots anyway IME. 

The cachecard stats are written to kernel log. 

Have you tried disabling all your hacks?


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

itm said:


> The drive came pre-installed from TivoHeaven. How can I check the swap file size??


The swap file size should be correct if the drive comes from TivoHeaven.

To check the swap file size at the Telnet bash prompt type:-

cat /proc/meminfo

Then report the results of what you get back here.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> The swap file size should be correct if the drive comes from TivoHeaven.


Thanks 

Of course, if the swap had been missing then the daily call wouldn't have been working since November!


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## itm (Aug 12, 2001)

Here's what it shows...does the swap file look OK from this??

TiVo Bash:/var/tmp> cat /proc/meminfo
total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
Mem: 14151680 13488128 663552 830791680 98304 3465216
Swap: 419422208 8359936 411062272
MemTotal: 13820 kB
MemFree: 648 kB
MemShared: 811320 kB
Buffers: 96 kB
Cached: 3384 kB
SwapTotal: 409592 kB
SwapFree: 401428 kB


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

itm said:


> Here's what it shows...does the swap file look OK from this??
> 
> TiVo Bash:/var/tmp> cat /proc/meminfo
> total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
> ...


You have a huge swap file of 419MB in size so that can't be the problem.

When you say your Tivo is slow do you mean deleting items and selecting them to play in Now Playing? You don't mean when changing channels do you?


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## itm (Aug 12, 2001)

I mean in responding to the remote - for example when I click to page up or down the Now Playing list it can take 5-10 seconds to respond sometimes. Right now it's fine - just a little sluggish. The extreme performance problems seem to be intermittent


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

It might be worth following this thread to see if you can implement these settings to help resolve your remote slow response problem.

www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=332017&referrerid=147561

I used to get this issue too but thought it was because I had 600+ recordings but clearly you don't have anywhere near that number. I have a feeling it is in fact endpad or another hack program that may be at fault at certain times

I implemented the setpri change with the ts setting and it seems to have done the trick.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Tivo web and Endpad won't cause a problem. Don't know about freespace.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> Don't know about freespace.


You mean autospace? Its not that either as I had the menu waiting and pausing problem long before I ever added autospace as a hack to the box.

To be honest I think the problem may be caused by Tivoweb itself.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Unlikely; when no module is being actively run by a connecting browser, TW uses no CPU cycles.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

I run autospace with no problem. I used to run one of the red-dot cancelling hacks (noreddot, irblast, or something like that), and that really caused a problem. I don't need it now.


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## itm (Aug 12, 2001)

This is my full list of active hacks:
- Tivoweb
- Endpad
- Autospace
- Bufferhack
- Tytools

Any of these likely to cause problems?

I'll look into Setpri....


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

itm said:


> This is my full list of active hacks:
> - Tivoweb
> - Endpad
> - Autospace
> ...


Bufferhack is of course not a memory resident program. It is merely a one off modification program you run that changes the amount of recording space allocated to the live Tivo buffer.

Of the above the one I would change and not have memory resident would be Ty something server (you say Ty something tools but that is the PC side application) as its own help file says that it is not recommended to be run memory resident all the time. Instead when it is needed you can start it from the menus in Ty something Tools which will tell it to start on the Tivo at that point.

Also do you have the latest version of Endpad by maxwells_daemon (the one in the Endpad thread that is on Page 1 or 2 of Tivo UK). My experience is that my menus speeded up after I installed this updated version instead of the original older version from sanderton.

I would also implement the "setpri ts $$" command in my startup files after installing the other files setpri needs to run mentioned in that thread if they aren't already on your Tivo.


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## itm (Aug 12, 2001)

Hmmm...didn't realise Ty server would be a problem, as it was set to autostart when I got the disk upgrade done at TivoHeaven. I notice that the "Stop Server" option in the TyTools (v9r18) client says "BE CAREFUL", but doesn't say why - nor does the Help file elaborate on this. 

The Help file also doesn't say anything about not leaving the server running either, but it sounds logical to start it only when you need it. Does anyone know if it's safe to use the Tytools client to stop and start the server on demand?


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## Cainam (May 25, 2004)

> Does anyone know if it's safe to use the Tytools client to stop and start the server on demand?


 That is what I do, works fine


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

itm said:


> Hmmm...didn't realise Ty server would be a problem, as it was set to autostart when I got the disk upgrade done at TivoHeaven. I notice that the "Stop Server" option in the TyTools (v9r18) client says "BE CAREFUL", but doesn't say why - nor does the Help file elaborate on this.
> 
> The Help file also doesn't say anything about not leaving the server running either, but it sounds logical to start it only when you need it. Does anyone know if it's safe to use the Tytools client to stop and start the server on demand?


You're right its not actually in the Ty Something or Other Tools help file but I definitely came across this somewhere else on some authoritative Tivo site saying leaving tyserver running full time causes the Tivo issues that were hard to troubleshoot or resolve unless you were a Linux expert.

I can't find that reference today but I found this one instead on what seems to be another handy Tivo site I was previously unaware of.

From www.hunware.com/TivoExplanations.html



> The recommended way to use this (ty something server) is to start it up from a telnet session when needed, not to leave it running full time (though we can set it up that way if you insist)


I personally only use this program's facility once a month or less so leaving the server running all the time seems senseless. As for the warning messages in the program about stopping ty something server from ty something tools I think that relates purely to the possibility that you may still be transferring something at the time and to check this transfer has finished first.


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## itm (Aug 12, 2001)

Just tried to stop it from the client and it said:
"Sorry - you have to have a server processing running to be able to stop it"

Since I had just retrieved the Now Playing list from it, I have to assume that the server was running.

???


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

itm said:


> Just tried to stop it from the client and it said:
> "Sorry - you have to have a server processing running to be able to stop it"
> 
> Since I had just retrieved the Now Playing list from it, I have to assume that the server was running.
> ...


Have not had this message but only tried to stop the server when it has not been doing anything for some time. If it gives you a warning message anyway if stuff is in progress then it makes the other dire warning messages about using the stop function seem even more unnecessary.

Obviously you need to stick a # in front of the line that calls this in rc.sysinit.author or rc.sysinit.author.edit file (the latter edited by Sanderton's startup editor utility) as well to achieve a situation where the offending program is only called from your PC when needed.


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## RichardJH (Oct 7, 2002)

> Just tried to stop it from the client and it said:
> "Sorry - you have to have a server processing running to be able to stop it"


I believe that you can only stop from the client program if you have started the telnet from within Tytools


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

RichardJH said:


> I believe that you can only stop from the client program if you have started the telnet from within Tytools


I only tried stopping it using the menus in Ty Thingamebob after taking the start line command out of the rec.sysinit.author.edit file and rebooting, hence never encountering the problem I suppose.


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