Suggestions for improving LMS performance?

[skibler]

Here is my free

patrick@crudora:~$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       6114028    4509140    1604888          0      38064    1085272
-/+ buffers/cache:    3385804    2728224
Swap:      2095100     513052    1582048

Sure, that is a lot of used, but it is also a lot of free .

All system partitions, including swap and /home are on the SSD. The only data not on SSD is the music itself which is in a btrfs pool.

The system otherwise feels very snappy.

It is interesting that some one mentioned that it feels slower when using the web interface on the server itself (vs connecting from another machine). I would have to say the same is true for me. If I simply click to go to the next track while on the server, it usually takes at best a full second and at worst many seconds. If I use the android squeezebox app to skip a track it is only describable as instant, which is pretty lol considering all the networking/wifi going on in-between.

[aubuti]

You're right that there's a lot of free memory, but what's going on with the swap? I would expect swapping that would slow things down, even with an SSD.

Re your last paragraph, I'm pretty sure that Mnyb was comparing the web ui on the server vs the web ui on another machine on the network. Your comparison of the web ui with Android SB app is completely different, and it's not at all surprising that the Android app is much more responsive, because it's a native app. Despite the networking involved, almost any native app -- whether pc-based or mobile device-based -- is going to be zippier than the web interface. The sole advantage of the web interface is its universality: it works easily on any device with a web browser. But that universality comes with a lot of compromises in terms of performance because it's all HTML and JS. Just about any interface, including the IR remote, is going to be quicker than the web interface, and that is consistent with one of the main ideas of SBs, which is to control your music without having to sit at your computer.

[epoch1970]

If I simply click to go to the next track while on the server, it usually takes at best a full second and at worst many seconds.

Mhh. That bad, could it be a DNS issue ?
There is I think a simple test to see if memory management is part of the problem or not : see if the machine performs significantly different before and after a reboot. Right after the reboot, memory won't be fragmented and nothing will be in the swap.

[skibler]

Whether the OS was recently reset or not seems to make no difference.

A few minutes ago it was doing its usual "2 seconds to respond to pressing next track" thing, but right now it is near instant, and I certainly haven't done anything major in that time frame.


I appreciate that maybe a native app would be better, but for linux the only option I can see is The squeezeplay program. The pre-compiled version is barely functional, and I am having trouble getting the source to compile .

[aubuti]

What distro are you using now? There are various threads with instructions for compiling Squeezeplay on *nix -- I had no problem following one such thread to compile for Ubuntu.

Two more things. First, we've seen your memory situation in post #10, but what about your CPU? In other words, what else is running on this machine? The hardware you have is at least 10x what is needed to run LMS effectively. Second, this is avoiding the problem rather than solving it, but what about using the infrared remote instead of your computer? I don't see any place where you have mentioned which model(s) of SB you have, but except for the Duet Receiver they all support IR remotes. Moreover, if you get the same kind of lags when using the IR remote that would also tell us something about the source of the problem.

[skibler]

I do not have heavy CPU usage, if that is what you are asking?

This computer is just my home desktop, running Fedora 17. Squeezebox server is the only full time daemon on here that isn't a default part of an F17 install.

I have a Squeezebox v3/squeezebox classic and also I listen to music on the home desktop by running squeezeslave.

The only way I have to control the squeezeslave is the web interface or the android app.


I have found the thread here http://forums.slimdevices.com/showth...eezePlay/page4 discussing compiling squeezeplay. Hopefully I can get some help in there, thanks!

[aubuti]

Yes, I was asking if you had heavy CPU usage.

Ah yes, squeezeslave -- that's the other SB (besides Duet Receiver) without IR support. I hope you get SqueezePlay running. Or you may even want to consider SoftSqueeze; it is out of date compared to SqueezePlay, but it may be better than your current headaches.

Still puzzled about why your very well-spec'd pc is struggling so much with LMS.........

[skibler]

Yes, I was asking if you had heavy CPU usage.

Ah yes, squeezeslave -- that's the other SB (besides Duet Receiver) without IR support. I hope you get SqueezePlay running. Or you may even want to consider SoftSqueeze; it is out of date compared to SqueezePlay, but it may be better than your current headaches.

Still puzzled about why your very well-spec'd pc is struggling so much with LMS.........

What I have noticed really kills it, is if I rate a track using the Custom Browse plugin. That holds the entire interface up for a few seconds, minimum.