Suggestions for reducing random freezes on RadioDJ?

[bdclaus]

Did you tick the Repeat Rules boxes in the rotation.

Yes I have them checked. I also thought there could be an IP conflict so I rebooted my whole network. the delay for the info seems to be reduced about 1 - 2 sec. between titles, Refreshing the playlist, the time has been reduced to about 5 to 7 sec. but this could be due to more data is being pulled down (i.e. Album Covers and more exact rules filtration etc.). So far I have not seen the double artist problem but the test bed is only been running about an hour after reboot.
Thanks He-j for your question. made me use the grey matter a little more.
Brian

[golf97fm]

Hello bdclaus

I had the same Problem freezing after 2 Jingles and Song etc,  from a few seconds to 7-10 seconds only started with version 2

Maybe try increasing your concurrent Max SQL Connections

This seems to have sorted mine out hopefully, doing some testing now

Set it to 150 or if ya DB is large 250

mine was set to 15 i think


Phil

[ghm72]

@Golf97fm Have you got instructions on doing that not a lot of people are used to tinkering with MySQL.

[golf97fm]

Hello

On Windows:

Make sure your SQL is running

Check Find out where your SQL is running and version depends on your db version MySQL Server 5.4 / MySQL Server 5.5 / MySQL Server 5.6 etc

Then open CMD windows

Run C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\Bin\MySQLInstanceConfig.exe


Select Reconfigure Instance - Click Next

Detailed Configuration - Click Next

Select Server Machine - Click Next

Select Multifunctional Database - Click Next (default)

InnoDB Table Settings - Click Next ( Nothing to configure / change )

Here is where you configure connections - Select Manual Settings and enter 150 into the box or 250 if you have big DB. Then Click Next

Networking Options - Choose options appropriate for you. Box ticked as Default Click Next


Character Set. Choose option best for you and click Next


Windows Options. Same as above. Click Next


untick  Security Settings. Same as above. then you don´t have to change any Passwords etc  Click Next


Execute.


My database seems allot smoother and has reduced freezes times
also check track leadins I have found afew with very quit and long leadins which seem like freezes,  but is quiet audio

Hope this helps

Phil

[golf97fm]

Also forgot to mention

install MySQL workbench then you can see the connections to DB and also check your logs etc

Its a handy tool you can see what happening with SQL server Realtime

[golf97fm]

Hello Guys

After a few day testing and monitoring my station

Radiodj seems a lot smoother after mod to database increasing the Max Concurrent Connections to 200

Less Freezing after playing Jingles etc then a music track ...

Track Manger seems faster for searching for tracks etc

well worth the Performance increase less choking of the SQL Server less lag

Phil

[bdclaus]

Sounds interesting. Since I am running Maria db not too sure this will work for me.

[golf97fm]

Also worth updating your SQL to the Latest Version..

Just updated from 5.5.54 to 5.5.59 with the 5.6 updater dashbaord

Just seems allot smoother

Phil

[xanaftp]

I sincerely apologize for not replying until now. I don't get notified of forum replies for some reason.

I want to point out a couple changes to our set-up since when I first made the post. However, despite these changes, the issue still persists.
*The RadioDJ MySQL database now resides on a separate high-performance CentOS 7 server provided by the University.
*The Node.js application now runs on this server as well.
*The periodic freezing now happens on both the OnAir computer and the Engineering computer RadioDJ.
*Now, when the freezing occurs, it happens after the track starts playing; there IS audio coming out during the freeze now. So it's not the audio hard drive. I suspect now it's a MySQL performance issue or some other performance related issue.
*Rebooting the computers and RadioDJ does no good.
*The freezes happen about 7 times per day... and they're enough to cause Node.js to think it lost connection with RadioDJ and attempt recovery, since the freezes make REST unresponsive.
*For about a month or so after switching things to the new server, the freezes stopped happening. But just a couple days ago, they started happening again.

5-10 seconds is way too much time to load a track. On my test setup with a gigabit connection with the files residing on a Zyxel NAS the files are loading in less than a second, so something is happening there. I understand that you have a high speed network, but are you sure that in some moments the network is very busy?

The network can become busy sometimes. Our university is known to have very unreliable wifi, but also sometimes unreliable Ethernet. I don't know if that is the issue though because we have far less issues browsing the web etc than we do RadioDJ freezes.

Tracking the freezes via Task Manager is not a plausible option. We are too frequently live on the air with DJs, and I cannot pull open task manager whenever there is someone in the studio. I would need to have some sort of background running application that routinely logs performance every few seconds instead.

It does do the same for local files, since the Engineering computer RadioDJ has been freezing as well in the same manner as of lately, to which the files are local to that computer.

Do you use the auto DJ feature? And how many tracks are added with your rotation?

Good point. Rotations can cause a delay adding tracks into the queue. There is one rotation that adds about 20 tracks. From my observations though, the freezing isn't always attributed to RadioDJ adding tracks to the rotation. It has also happened in Playlist mode (this is a mode run by Node.js where it takes a playlist from RadioDJ and plays it a couple tracks at a time). And since in that mode, only 2 tracks are queued at a time, I wouldn't think that would be the cause. It also happened once in break mode, which again, only 2 tracks are in the queue in that mode.

Have you updated to the latest version of RDJ? I would make sure your MYSQL is optimized. Make sure you have the latest network card drivers. Just make sure everything is up to snuff.

I can update RadioDJ (But we're only off by a couple very minor versions... 2.0.0.1 versus the current 2.0.0.3) and the drivers, though finding an open window of time is not easy. I have been denied my request as an engineer to have 2 hours of maintenance window every week. So now I have to play needle in a haystack and just try to catch a moment when there won't be anyone on the air for 2 hours. It's very frustrating. I can't do weekly virus scans, back-ups, disk cleanups, etc. because of my denied request.
I optimized the database about a week ago, so I don't think that's the issue. But I'll optimize again to be sure.

Maybe try increasing your concurrent Max SQL Connections

Ooh, good idea. I did not think of that. I will check into that.

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I will try to keep up to date and implement some of these. It's just a matter of finding the time to do so since there's literally no maintenance time scheduled out at our station.

[golf97fm]

Hello Xnaftp

" Do you use the auto DJ feature? And how many tracks are added with your rotation?"

1 things i noticed today while i was looking at Tracks rotations,

Is that the rotations with repeat rules unticked load faster then with ticked

so when repeat rules ticked 12 tracks are very slow to be selected  maybe 6 - 8 seconds

When unticked they load in about 2 seconds

This could be a factor in the issue.. since i have unticked repeat rules less freezing

Phil

[xanaftp]

Thank you for the suggestions.

I think it ended up being a university firewall issue that persisted for a long time. As of the beginning of the month when I was informed by networking they identified and fixed a firewall issue, we no longer experience these issues. Furthermore, since we heavily rely on a Node.js server doing the queuing in RadioDJ, I have Node delaying about 0.2 seconds between each track queue/removal, which has also helped avoid freezing.

I would say this issue is resolved. Thank you all for your helpful feedback