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Terr · "Ace High" Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 14

I am running mepis 3.3.1
java 1.4.2-? crap cant remember but it is the latest distro

I seem to have a memory leak somewhere. Is there anyone else out there running this program on any flavor of linux that has had problems like this. Not sure how many of you are running tournaments the size that we do but there has to be someone.

drneau · Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 10:37 pm Post subject:

What makes you think you have a memory leak? Please provide data.
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Terr · "Ace High" Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 14

Ok so while you where asking for details I ran a little test under XP and get the same thing. The reason I think it is some type of memory leak is I can watch my resources drop through the floor big time as a tournament goes on.
I eventually start running out of memory. I think that I may have it narrowed down a bit though.

I setup a two hundred person tournament.....not inconceivable for me to have

I setup as I would normally do. left console alerts and such set at default.

left player elimination off and rebuy option off as I will always have it.

and ran the tournament. Once I had eliminated around 25-30 players the program just hangs for up to two minutes after I remove a player.

Test #2

setup the same tournament but this time I turned off console alerts and sounds all together. Nothing will ever flash on the screen.

player elimination tracking is off and rebuy is off.

ran the tournament again and so far everything is looking good. It seems to me that this is related to the screen messages that come up. If this is the case I am fine with it. It would be nice for it to show when someone is removed from the tournament but it is more important to me that it just keep running without slowing down.

drneau · Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 3:12 am Post subject:

Process size? Memory leak = process size going bloop bloop bloop. More details please.

If there is a leak, I want to fix it...but I need data to dignose.

I know for a fact that 5th street consistently uses this 30 person tournaments networked to 3 clients with customized consoles without issues...so what's different about you?
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drneau · Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 10:58 am Post subject:

Well, I did some testing this morning with a memory analyzer and I'm pretty sure there's no leak.

In my test, the app never gets above 57MB process size. The test was a tournament with 45 players.

The other thing I noticed in my test is that while the app was seemingly sitting there doing nothing (just the timer counting down), the memory usage fluctuated continuously between 30MB and 56MB...kept ramping up and dropping back to 30MB. This indicates a lot of objects being created and then thrown away...over and over again. Since the only thing that was going on was the timer counting down I'm going to attribute this to the console I had displaying...the console had a component that rotated between 3 images, another that rotated the chips and another that scrolled through the payouts.

If (and only if) you are seeing slow performance on a particular platform, the first thing you'll want to do is see if getting rid of any of the following on the main console helps:
- Image components that scroll through images (loading a new image creates a LOT of processing)
- Animated components like rotating chips, scrolling marquees, etc. Redrawing these takes more processing.
_________________
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Dr. Neau (not a real doctor)
http://drneau.com
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Terr · "Ace High" Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 14

I was able to recreate this situation on both winXP and linux last night. I was also able to solve the issue as described below.

Both working and non working.
Modified the console to remove images and other information I do not need. Most information is static as we do not use rebuys, addons, breaks, or track chip stack. Most of the information on the console is straight as packaged. (This is something I want to change but later when I have more time.)

Everything else is pretty much a straight forward tournament setup with no rebuys, addons etc.

non working
console alerts and sounds were default.

When I would remove a player from the tournament everything would be fine for a while. After that the screen would start taking longer to refresh. eventually the timer would actually stop while there was just an outline of the last remove player confirmation on the screen. After a while up to two minutes at one point that would drop off the screen display the alert saying a player had been eliminated. While this was happening on the linux box I was getting java out of memory errors on the mepis konsole. Also checking the memory resources every once in a while it started at about 76% free memory and in the end would drop to around 21% or less. I could leave it alone and not remove anyone for at least 20 minutes and never recovered any more memory.

Working

Turned console alerts and sounds off all together.

Everything seems to be fine.

I am hoping this helps you out. With the alerts off everything runs fine and I can really live without them for now anyway. I have much bigger things to deal with for the short run anyway. I had already tried removing the scrolling player standings on the bottom of the console and such and had no luck. That is what led me in the direction of the alerts system. Being as my problem seemed directly related to the action of removing a player I figured it had to either be the alerts or something to do with the way the history file is written. I am not a programmer so I know nothing about the process of this. Just seemed more reasonable to me that the alerts would be causing the issue. Let me know if you need any more information. I will add my yahoo ID to my profile so if you have any more specific questions you can get ahold of me. Honestly it seems as though I am the only one having this problem which makes me wonder if I am doing something wrong because that is on two different computers with two different operating systems.

Terr · "Ace High" Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 14

Ok something is still not right. It is still doing the same thing. We started thinking about what we were doing different in an actual tournament from what I am doing during my testing. So I have started displaying the seating chart for two minutes when I disolve tables, Buying in a few players after the start of the tournament, and the other director has a bad habit of right clicking to select eliminate players. Now that I am doing that I am once again having the same problem. I am trying several things right now. Will let you know if I can narrow this down some.

jalsing · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 10:42 am Post subject:

I have the same problem, I've reported it before. towards the end of my tourney, every time I eliminate a player, it takes longer and longer each time for the app to return to the console screen and continue the countdown. It's also not 'running in the background' because when the timer does continue, it's from where ever it was prior to the elimination. So if there's 10:30 left and I eliminate a player, then the eliminate player dialogue takes 45 seconds to clear, the timer starts right back up at 10:30, not 9:45..my remote console also freezes at this time.

I've taken to just restarting the app during my second break to avoid this. Are you networking as well? Not sure if this is an issue.