2012-09-26, 23:09
Hello folks,
I'm experiencing two issues, which I believe are related. The first is that I get choppy playback when watching videos over the network (clients are windows 7, VLC, WMP, Winamp experience the same issue, but handle it differently). Every few minutes (random; sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes up to 10 minutes between occurance), the video/audio will typically freeze for several seconds and resume playback. In WMP it will fast-forward the video to catch up with the audio, VLC will resume both tracks at the same time, and Winamp will just stop playback. This is happening very frequently, to the point where we generally end up copying videos to the client machine before watching them. No issues with local playback of the same file.
All client machines are running the same spec, and are wired via gigabit ethernet. There's one laptop in the mix, but I'm ignoring that because of the potential of wireless issues.
The same issue occurs, albeit much less frequently, when watching video over the xbmc interface. (Maybe once every few hours) Pausing for a few seconds and resuming playback will typically resolve it temporarily, but that's not really a solution. I believe we can rule out network issues as nothing else is affected at the same time, though I'm willing to test if anyone has any suggestions. I have run Wireshark, but nothing jumped out at me; I cleared out some extra master browser traffic by setting the master browser level for the smb server to a higher priority, but no change.
The same issue also occurs when watching videos over ps3mediaserver (for the tv without the xbmc frontend), but I'm going to ignore that one since I'm betting none of you care about ps3mediaserver
)
I doubt this is a reproducible issue, as I'm thinking it is something with my media server setup. Looking at the machine when these issues occur, there doesn't seem to be any jump in processor utilization or memory usage by any process. Temps are stable, and fairly cool. I was thinking it could be a disk issue, but so far all smartd reporting has come back clean on all the disks. They are JBOD; no array, and it doesn't seem to matter which disk the file is located on. Other processes running on this machine: ps3mediaserver so content can be played on another TV in the house without an xbmc frontend, rtorrent, and calibre-server. Again, nothing ever seems to break 3-4% utilization when the issues occur.
HDD space is around 80% used across the board, except the SSD system drive, it's around 50%.
Server Specs
Is there any way I can force smbd and the xbmc front end to run at a higher process priority, just to make sure it's not a cpu issue? Alternatively, is there anything I can do to monitor disk usage to see if there are read errors or something SMARTd isn't picking up?
SMBd log for one of the machines: http://pastebin.com/UJ9ndF5a (I've since disabled printing): To me this looks like a network issue, as the client is getting disconnected. But with the same issue seeming to occur on the xbmc frontend and no other network issue discovered, I'm not sure.
I'm experiencing two issues, which I believe are related. The first is that I get choppy playback when watching videos over the network (clients are windows 7, VLC, WMP, Winamp experience the same issue, but handle it differently). Every few minutes (random; sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes up to 10 minutes between occurance), the video/audio will typically freeze for several seconds and resume playback. In WMP it will fast-forward the video to catch up with the audio, VLC will resume both tracks at the same time, and Winamp will just stop playback. This is happening very frequently, to the point where we generally end up copying videos to the client machine before watching them. No issues with local playback of the same file.
All client machines are running the same spec, and are wired via gigabit ethernet. There's one laptop in the mix, but I'm ignoring that because of the potential of wireless issues.
The same issue occurs, albeit much less frequently, when watching video over the xbmc interface. (Maybe once every few hours) Pausing for a few seconds and resuming playback will typically resolve it temporarily, but that's not really a solution. I believe we can rule out network issues as nothing else is affected at the same time, though I'm willing to test if anyone has any suggestions. I have run Wireshark, but nothing jumped out at me; I cleared out some extra master browser traffic by setting the master browser level for the smb server to a higher priority, but no change.
The same issue also occurs when watching videos over ps3mediaserver (for the tv without the xbmc frontend), but I'm going to ignore that one since I'm betting none of you care about ps3mediaserver
)I doubt this is a reproducible issue, as I'm thinking it is something with my media server setup. Looking at the machine when these issues occur, there doesn't seem to be any jump in processor utilization or memory usage by any process. Temps are stable, and fairly cool. I was thinking it could be a disk issue, but so far all smartd reporting has come back clean on all the disks. They are JBOD; no array, and it doesn't seem to matter which disk the file is located on. Other processes running on this machine: ps3mediaserver so content can be played on another TV in the house without an xbmc frontend, rtorrent, and calibre-server. Again, nothing ever seems to break 3-4% utilization when the issues occur.
HDD space is around 80% used across the board, except the SSD system drive, it's around 50%.
- Linux Version: Ubuntu 11.10 - XBMCbuntu Eden Linux 3.0.0-22-generic-pae
- Architecture: i686
- Install Method: XBMCbuntu install via usb stick
- SVN Rev: Git unknown, compiled may 2012
- Debug Log: (was not able to replicate playback issue) http://pastebin.com/XKvCH8wH
Server Specs
- CPU: Intel Core2Duo E4500 @ 2.20 GHz
- MEM: 4GB DDR2 (not sure brand/speed offhand)
- HDD1: Crucial SSD M4-CT064M4SSD2 64GB
- HDD2: Seagate ST1000DM003-9YN162 1TB
- HDD3: Seagate ST1000DM003-9YN162 1TB
- HDD4: Seagate ST1000DM003-9YN162 1TB
Is there any way I can force smbd and the xbmc front end to run at a higher process priority, just to make sure it's not a cpu issue? Alternatively, is there anything I can do to monitor disk usage to see if there are read errors or something SMARTd isn't picking up?
SMBd log for one of the machines: http://pastebin.com/UJ9ndF5a (I've since disabled printing): To me this looks like a network issue, as the client is getting disconnected. But with the same issue seeming to occur on the xbmc frontend and no other network issue discovered, I'm not sure.
