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V. 1.15.0.2 slow down till stop in 5/10 mins...

Honey Lean
Registered User
Join date: 11 Jan 2007
Posts: 9
05-07-2007 06:15
I don't know what happen, but between client 1.13 and 1.15, something happened!
With 1.13 no problems for me but till 1.14 and now with 1.15 the client will perform slower and slower until it just halts.....in 5/10 mins!

I had to log-off and reenter to obtain new 5/10 mins of life..(second Life life...)!

My System is Suse 10.0 with:
Intel CPU at 2.5 GHz
512 Mb RAM, Kernel 2.6.x
KDE 3.5
ATI Radeon 9550 128 Mb (ATI linux driver 8.36.5)


Last time.....ALL WAS GOOD WITH VERSION 1.13.x.x !!!
Katrina Bekkers
Gentooed
Join date: 30 Mar 2007
Posts: 66
05-07-2007 10:02
Try this. Before you start the client, open a shell and keep it around and easily accessible.

Launch the client, and "play" as usual - if 5 minutes can be called playing.

When it slows down noticeably, or halts altogether, launch the command "free" in the shell. Copy and paste the results.

I strongly suspect you're hitting virtual memory, and the disk thrashing after your memory cache fills up with texture grinds to an halt the whole system. That output could prove me wrong.

Solution? Shell out 30EUR (or $40, if you live on the wrong side of the pond), and buy another 512MB RAM stick. :D
Honey Lean
Registered User
Join date: 11 Jan 2007
Posts: 9
05-07-2007 13:49
Ty for your help!
Here are the results:

Before secondlife starts:

FREE
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 515776 508784 6992 0 15804 176200
-/+ buffers/cache: 316780 198996
Swap: 1036152 3112 1033040

VMSTAT
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
1 1 181104 6552 9732 72120 0 9 54 52 404 1804 7 2 89 2

When SL was near to stop

FREE
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 515776 506456 9320 0 16968 89352
-/+ buffers/cache: 400136 115640
Swap: 1036152 190416 845736

VMSTAT
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
4 0 217232 7468 17812 99924 2 10 55 53 406 1757 9 3 86 2

As you can see no major difference......

TY again for your help!
Hinkley Baldwin
Registered User
Join date: 13 May 2004
Posts: 77
05-08-2007 00:42
Have you got VBO turned on in the Advanced Graphics section?

I also have an ATI card and find that it grinds to a halt after a few minutes with VBO turned on.

Also I find if I set my graphics card memory to 128Mb (which should be correct) then SL will start to pause for 1-2 seconds after a few minutes of play. I'm starting to thing it might be a bug in the fglrx drivers as it wasn't apparent prior to version 8.28 and when it happens it makes the whole system sluggish for 1-2 seconds, not just SL (though it only happens when SL is running). The workaround (though this results in slightly blurry textures) is to set the memory to 64Mb in SL.

To be honest I'm thinking of just tossing the ATI card as I spend more time tinkering with the settings than actually playing SL.

Hope that's of some use.
Katrina Bekkers
Gentooed
Join date: 30 Mar 2007
Posts: 66
Further tests
05-08-2007 03:25
From: Honey Lean
Here are the results:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 515776 508784 6992 0 15804 176200
-/+ buffers/cache: 316780 198996
Swap: 1036152 3112 1033040

[...]

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 515776 506456 9320 0 16968 89352
-/+ buffers/cache: 400136 115640
Swap: 1036152 190416 845736
[/html]

Yes, not much. But still, before SL, you have no swap use at all (3MB is just physiological), then your swap usage goes to 190MB, which seems a reasonable indication that your physical memory is full. As Hinkley said, try fiddling with advanced graphics settings, so to reduce the memory footprint, especially of textures, required by the client, and see if it improves.

Also, just to be sure, try starting SL totally alone in the system. First by removing any other program you could be running at the time of playing with SL, then (*gasp*) by starting it without KDE at all - which is a notorious memory hog.

To do the latter, return to a console based system (from root, type "init 3";), log in as your user and type:
CODE
cd ${YOUR_SL_CLIENT_PATH}
startx ./secondlife -noinvlib -- :0 -nolisten tcp -br -deferglyphs 16 2>&1
This will start the SL client as a single process in a new X screen, with most of the system resources free. Once done, you can return to a graphical system by issuing "init 5" while being root. Then post your feedback...
Honey Lean
Registered User
Join date: 11 Jan 2007
Posts: 9
05-09-2007 03:10
Thanks Hinkley and Katrina for your help!

Tomorrow i'll try all your indications and as soon as i have feedback i'll post them here!

Ciao!
Honey Lean
Registered User
Join date: 11 Jan 2007
Posts: 9
05-10-2007 23:34
From: Hinkley Baldwin
Have you got VBO turned on in the Advanced Graphics section?

.... The workaround (though this results in slightly blurry textures) is to set the memory to 64Mb in SL.
.....

Hope that's of some use.


THAT WAS THE PROBLEM !!!!!!

Thanks to you all, the problem was solved !

Setting the VIDEO CARD memory to 64 instead of 128 Mb i had no more stops after 5/10 mins....
Now all is ok!

Thanks again
Honey Lean
Hinkley Baldwin
Registered User
Join date: 13 May 2004
Posts: 77
05-11-2007 00:28
Glad that worked Honey, but does anyone know why this is necessary?

I don't need to do it under Windows and it seems a bit of a waste to have a 128Mb graphics card that you're limiting to 64Mb. Is it a Linux thing or an SL thing?
Tofu Linden
Linden Lab Employee
Join date: 29 Aug 2006
Posts: 471
05-11-2007 01:16
I'd be quite interested in whether this is still an issue with the upcoming 1.16.0.1 or 1.15.0.3+, as these feature VRAM detection on Linux, hopefully avoiding some of the possibly-dodgy fallback logic.
Hinkley Baldwin
Registered User
Join date: 13 May 2004
Posts: 77
05-11-2007 01:22
Tofu,

Happy to give that some testing and report back as soon as it's available. I can reproduce it consistently now, any stats or debugging info that would be helpful to you?
Katrina Bekkers
Gentooed
Join date: 30 Mar 2007
Posts: 66
05-11-2007 01:42
Glad it was solved. What about editing your own first post and tagging it with "[SOLVED]" in the title? ;)
Honey Lean
Registered User
Join date: 11 Jan 2007
Posts: 9
05-16-2007 10:14
From: Katrina Bekkers
Glad it was solved. What about editing your own first post and tagging it with "[SOLVED]" in the title? ;)


Done :))
Honey Lean
Registered User
Join date: 11 Jan 2007
Posts: 9
05-16-2007 10:16
From: Hinkley Baldwin
Glad that worked Honey, but does anyone know why this is necessary?

I don't need to do it under Windows and it seems a bit of a waste to have a 128Mb graphics card that you're limiting to 64Mb. Is it a Linux thing or an SL thing?


I don't know....but what i can say is that the same fix (set 64 mb video card instead of 128 mb) in a windows client SOLVED the problem regarding crashes every 5/10 mins !!!!

I think it's a client problem......
Hinkley Baldwin
Registered User
Join date: 13 May 2004
Posts: 77
05-17-2007 09:17
Tofu,

I have some more info on this that may point you in the right direction...

The problem still exists in 1.15.1, however in this version and 1.15.0 it only occurs if GFX memory is set to 128Mb AND terrain detail is set to high. Everything else can be turned on and cranked up high, but as soon as I click terrain detail to high, FPS plummets.

If I set GFX memory to 64Mb I can run with terrain detail set to high.

Hope this is of some help
Tekki Korhonen
Registered User
Join date: 17 May 2007
Posts: 1
must be the client
05-17-2007 14:53
Ani case, like Honey Linn said at the beginning of the line, in 1.13, didn't happend.... And realy, I make the mistake of erasing my 1.13 files, and I would prefer to use them instead of the new 1.15, that works so badly for me...

I have tried to reduce the memory of the card to 64, as someone said before, but didn't worked... :-( I was frozen in 7 minutes again.... I'll try to set the terrain detail also to low, and more things, but seems wrong to me to have to do duch things when in 1.13 all worked fine......

Ther's something that got broken in the code... I can't help (can't do programming), but I think somebody would have to search for that unfortunate change....

Thanks

tekki