CPU resource on XP: Firefly svn-1696 & iTunes 7.6.1.9

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  • #2469
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I’m running Firefly svn-1696 and iTunes 7.6.1.9 on an XP PC.

    I’ve got approximately 4000 tracks in FLAC served by Firefly.

    Problem: I get a situation where Firefly consumes an unexpectedly high CPU resource.

    Scenario: I open the shared Firefly library in iTunes (where there’s one .m3u playlist per CD that I have ripped). After requesting & streaming the initial track the % CPU for the Firefly process goes up to abt 30% and stays there even if I stop the stream. Even if iTunes isn’t playing/streaming anything from Firefly the %CPU consumption reamins elevated. If I close the Firefly shared library in iTunes the CPU consumption by firefly goes back to <1%.

    Does anyone else see this behaviour?

    I do intend moving Firefly on to an Ubuntu system as a shared resource for the house but while I’ve been setting up, ripping, etc, it was easiest to host it on my main XP box.

    Replies appreciated before I start some diag/debug.

    Thx.

    #17092
    fizze
    Participant

    iTunes behaves rather weird with DAAP shares. It tends to synchronize the information constantly.

    My guess is you have “always scan” turned on in firefly? This way iTunes would always update the database?

    #17093
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    fizze, thanks for the reply.

    The “Always On” parameter is set to “No” on the config page.

    If I move Firefly to an Ubuntu server then I might be able to do some more debug on this thru logs and actually looking at the LAN traffic but for now it seems that it’s “iTunes rather weird [behaviour] with DAAP shares” that is the problem.

    If anyone else is seeing this elevated Firefly CPU hogging it’d be good to know.

    #17094
    fizze
    Participant

    Ok, so it has to be something else.
    What database backend do you use? Sqlite2 / sqlite3? SQLite2 is known to have some issues with svn-1696….

    You can still try to set the debuglevel to 5 before iTunes connects. This will give you quite some info. There is no need to go all haywire with debuglevel 9 already 😉

    #17095
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    The mt-daap.conf file in “c:program filesfirefly media server” has:
    db_type = sqlite3
    configured. But the Server Status page on the Firefly web interface says:
    DB Version 2
    I’ve got both sqlite.dll and sqlite3.dll in the “c:program filesfirefly media server” folder and both have exact same access time stamps.

    I’ve also looked the ‘always_scan’ and ‘rescan_interval’ parameters in the config file, they are 0 and 3600 resp so I read these to mean that Firefly will only scan if a client is conected and scan at 1 hour intervals. Looking at the log file that seems seems to perform as configured.

    BTW, fizze, my music library is all FLAC encoded and Firefly’s encoding to WAV. Am I right in assuming that artwork can’t be streamed with art? Most of my FLAC’s do have artwork embedded now but I don’t see any in iTunes.

    Thx

    #17096
    fizze
    Participant

    You’re right about the artwork. Generally, when transcoding, no artwork is being transmitted.

    The “DB version” doesn’t have anything to do with the backend, unfortunately. But 2 is alright.

    Well, if it’s all flac, then I assume that the transcoding plays a part in this.
    Maybe it is iTunes that tries to prefetch album art and then firefly has to do transcoding – I don’t know. But it’s very likely theres a connection between the transcoding and the cpu spikes. 😉

    #17097
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    fizze, thx for the responses.

    It’s not CPU utilisation spikes – it’s consistent and it happens whether I’m streaming music down from Firefly to itunes or playing has finished.

    I must just copy some MP3s or Fairplay-less AACs to Firefly’s media path to see what happens when they are played.

    Time is tight at the moment so I really don’t have much time for diagnosis myself.

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