Bugs in v3alpha8
Posted by: mlord
Bugs in v3alpha8 - 14/07/2004 19:33
The "Lavatory Floor" visual crashes the player in an infinite loop until "player -i" is entered at the serial port. BIG problem. The release notes suggest that this is a known issue, but also that this visual wasn't supposed to be present in alpha8 -- it is present.
Also, on Mk2a with 32MB, the long buffering from disk at the start of each track causes the UI to become completely non-responsive until the buffering from disk has completed. Some voluntary scheduling points in the code could fix this -- I may hack it into the syscalls within Hijack if need be.
Cheers
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 14/07/2004 20:25
Hijack v397 is now released, and incorporates a workaround to prevent the infinite crash loop that otherwise results from selecting the Lavatory Floor visual.
Cheers
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 14/07/2004 21:35
The AnnaVU and other spectrometer type visuals all seem "muted" in v3alpha8 -- much less dynamic movement than in v3alpha7 and earlier releases.
???
Posted by: peter
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 11:55
Quote:
The "Lavatory Floor" visual crashes the player in an infinite loop until "player -i" is entered at the serial port. BIG problem. The release notes suggest that this is a known issue, but also that this visual wasn't supposed to be present in alpha8 -- it is present
Yeah, that seems to be my fault -- I was sure I'd disabled it, but CVS tells me differently. 
Still, that's why these hastily-prepared releases (the datestamps on the CD are genuine) get a limited rollout to start with. I've already fixed the thing about the Receiver Edition not dealing with static IP addresses.
Peter
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 12:36
Quote:
Receiver Edition
I believe you just filled in one of our Bingo card slots in the release notes.
Posted by: robricc
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 12:51
On my 56kbps MP3s which are about 1 hour long a piece, they don't resume anywhere near where I left off when shutting the car. I think they seem to resume about 10 minutes behind or where the track starts.
Posted by: Daria
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 13:01
Quote:
Still, that's why these hastily-prepared releases (the datestamps on the CD are genuine) get a limited rollout to start with.
If I'm willing to bend over, the onus is on me...
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 13:16
The AutoEQ does not maintain a flat curve when run with NO MICROPHONE connected. This may or may not be a bug, but it kinda makes it difficult for me to tell if my MIC jack is actually hooked up or not.
Also, I'm not sure, but I belive the "PrevVisual" buttoncode from v2.00 is STILL missing from v3alpha8. Whenever somebody has a second or two, it would be very nice to have it back in there again!
Cheers
Posted by: peter
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 13:30
Quote:
Also, I'm not sure, but I belive the "PrevVisual" buttoncode from v2.00 is STILL missing from v3alpha8. Whenever somebody has a second or two, it would be very nice to have it back in there again!
Yes, there's now been a fair amount of development on car v2 since it was branched from the trunk, including Previous Visual, making the play counter optional in Track Info, and a huge amount of RDS code which I don't personally understand. We indeed really ought to merge all that stuff into v3 sometime.
Peter
Posted by: alex25
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 15:41
In Antwort auf:
and a huge amount of RDS code which I don't personally understand.
Is it possible that the karma 2 includes a RDS tuner?
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 15:52
Quote:
We indeed really ought to merge all that stuff into v3 sometime.
Including a whole bunch of bug fixes made to 2.0 since the time of the branch split. I'm really looking forward to having all the old pre-2.0 bugs re-fixed in 3.0 so I can start using it as my daily driver. Any chance of that happening sometime?
Posted by: peter
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 17:42
Quote:
Including a whole bunch of bug fixes made to 2.0 since the time of the branch split.
Well, yes and no. Almost everything was merged a long time ago, it's just the few last fixes for 2.00final and 2.01 which haven't been. Are there any particular bugs you're talking about? I didn't think you got RDS in the US...
Peter
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 17:43
In the past year, RDS has even shown up here in my part of Canada! But currently just the RDS display part, not the TA or AF functions.
Cheers
Posted by: Daria
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 17:46
Send me a copy of 3a8 and I'll tell you what's still broken
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 17:50
Quote:
Are there any particular bugs you're talking about? I didn't think you got RDS in the US...
We get so little RDS that it's not a factor, correct. I was talking about non-RDS stuff. Things like... Player is unresponsive when it is reading from the disk, certain visuals crash the player if left up and running, the menu font is misalingned with the menu borders, that sort of thing. My memory is extremely fuzzy on what bugs I noticed in 3a7 that were leftovers from 2.x betas, but a peek through the old bugbase (if it's still there) would probably refresh my memory. Also a lot of us reported leftover 2.x bugs in the bugs forum here on the BBS during the alphas, someone should look through those probably and see if there's still there in the latest alphas.
Edit: I remember one specific one. Somewhere along 2.0 you made "Plays: x" optional, and it was still permanently in there in the alphas last I checked. Of course, I've still not yet seen the Amersfoort 2004 alphas, so it might have changed in those.
Edit: This thread has a few 3a7 bugs that we might want to check again to see if they're still there in the 2004 alphas.
Edit: Another one I *seem* to remember existing in 3a7 that was fixed in 2.0, was the thing with the codec/bitrate sometimes not showing up on the track info screen because the number of lines on that screen was variable.
Posted by: peter
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 18:16
Quote:
Edit: I remember one specific one. Somewhere along 2.0 you made "Plays: x" optional, and it was still permanently in there in the alphas last I checked.
Yes, I mentioned that above. That list I posted above was from the code diff, so anything else wrong with v3 either wasn't fixed in v2 or (more commonly I suspect) wasn't applicable to v2. (Well. We also added a screen for setting the time in AM/PM as opposed to 24h, fixed a bug where inserting or appending into a playlist always unpaused the player if paused, and changed the confirmation message for "Hate Artist" to be less confusing. But those seemed too minor to mention.)
The caching code, for instance, got completely rewritten; if there was a bug in early v2 that had the same symptoms as the current v3 unresponsive-during-caching bug, then it's just a coincidence.
Edit: I'm not saying there're no bugs in v3 alpha 8, of course, I'm just saying that a v2-to-trunk merge is only going to fix one or two of them.
Peter
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 18:19
OK cool.
Posted by: genixia
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 15/07/2004 18:23
Quote:
changed the confirmation message for "Hate Artist" to be less confusing
That was one of my requests, and now you come to mention it, has been bugging my subconcious again recently.
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 16/07/2004 12:00
Quote:
the current v3 unresponsive-during-caching bug
I have a fix for this now, yet another ugly hijack hack!
Look for v398 shortly.
Cheers
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 16/07/2004 12:07
On a related note..
v3alpha8 is rather slow at startup (compared with v2.01), expecially during its initial read of the database and playlist files.
This looks easy to fix: the player currently reads database and playlist a sector at a time (512 bytes), which is rather inefficient. Simply switching to a larger buffer size (eg. 4096) should greatly improve the startup time.
Cheers
Posted by: Daria
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 16/07/2004 12:17
emacs the binary!
Posted by: pim
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 16/07/2004 12:33
Quote:
Simply switching to a larger buffer size (eg. 4096) should greatly improve the startup time.
Oh, yes, I would love a fix for that. With 20.000 or so tunes, it takes me three or
four blocks before any sound is heard.
I assume this needs to be changed in the player, no hijack hacks possible there.
Pim
Posted by: pim
open sourcing RDS tuner code - 16/07/2004 12:42
Quote:
Is it possible that the karma 2 includes a RDS tuner?
I've always wondered whether the tuner software is shared at all
with other products. If not, how about open sourcing the tuner code?
With RDS circumstances so different across the world, the
official development team will never be able to address all issues.
The hardest part, I guess, for this would be to implement the
tuner code into a shared library, like was done for the WMA code.
Pim
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 16/07/2004 15:30
My 16MB Mk2a here repeatedly crashes at about the same spot on a certain track. Setting ReserveCache=12 fixes it.
Crashlog attached.
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 16/07/2004 15:35
Ooops.. spoke too soon. It crashed again just after posting.
Second crashlog attached.
No crashes at all on my 32MB Mk2a, with ReserveCache=64.
EDIT: MMmmm.. not so sure about this crash -- the autochange visual was 0x18, one before "Lavatory Floor" -- perhaps it was crashing just as the visual was trying to change to the LF crasher..
So, I stopped the player, and loaded a modified Hijack which automatically deselects 0x18 (as well as 0x19), and now it's not crashing (yet).
???
Cheers
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 24/07/2004 20:40
Another bug today:
Total tight-loop lockup of v3a8 while attempting to play a specific tune (available if needed). No messages, just load average of 7.82, stuck in a real-time priority thread somewhere. Recovery impossible without "player -i".
Cheers
Posted by: drakino
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 24/07/2004 23:39
Hijack wish, can we get a way to do "player -i" on the road?
Posted by: Daria
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 25/07/2004 00:02
How did this behave? Unresponsive UI?
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 25/07/2004 13:47
Quote:
Hijack wish, can we get a way to do "player -i" on the road?
Absolutely brilliant idea.
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 25/07/2004 15:54
It's called the ;@MENU_EXEC macro, which is currently half-implemented. Someday I'll tackle the more difficult half.
Cheers
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 31/07/2004 19:09
The "memory detection" logic used in v2.01 and v3a8 could be improved.
It currently does stat("/proc/kcore") and takes the returned st_size value as the basis for memory size, which is good. But the way it uses that value is not always the best.
It appears to first determine the type of unit (Mk1, Mk2, Mk2a) it is running on, and then assumes a certain base memory size based on that. It then subracts this base amount from that reported by stat("/proc/kcore"), and calculates cache size based on the difference.
But it does NOT check for a negative number here, which means that if the kernel under-reports the size, the player will try to allocate HUMONGOUS amounts of cache (gigabytes), and die a horrible death.
It would be better if, for Mk2/Mk2a, the player software could simply accept the value from stat("/proc/kcore") and subtract it's fixed overhead (and ReserveCache setting) from it, and calculate cache size based on this result.
Background: Hijack would like to obsolete the need to twiddle with ReserveCache settings, by providing a menu function for this instead, which simply tweaks the reported memory size returned from stat("/proc/kcore"). This would allow Hijack to account for its own overhead automatically, hopefully reducing the incidence of mysterious player crashes.
Cheers
Posted by: genixia
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 08/08/2004 18:20
Another one - don't know whether it's in earlier alphas (anyone with v3a7 care to test??).
When 'repeating all' of a shuffled playlist, at the end of the running order, the 'next' track appears to be selected before the running order is reshuffled and de-dup'ed. This means that you are never at 1/XX in the playlist, but at some random position (eg 56/XX) based upon where the new track ended up in the shuffle.
I guess that for a purely random shuffle this shouldn't be too much of an issue. But for weighted shuffles (eg 'newest first', or emphatic's 'favorites') it is a problem.
Why is the order reshuffled when repeating anyway?
Posted by: mcomb
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 07/09/2004 21:47
One more (at least I haven't noticed anyone mention it)...
The volume Auto Gain seems to be significantly more aggressive in b8 than b7. It ramps the audio drastically at the beginning of a song so it starts really loud and then backs off over the course of the next couple seconds. Even happens with gain control on low. Its annoying enough that I've gone back to using hijack's voladj for now.
-Mike
Posted by: oliver
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 28/10/2004 20:58
I know a9 didn't work for many people, but I’ve been using it for quite some time now. I'm about to go back to a8. But I figured I’d post this first.
In the car, my player always seems to lockup after a playlist ends. The UI will still function, well mostly. The track title usually always is locked on the last track in the playlist, but the play/pause icon toggles on top button press. The TrackNumber area does update on left/right presses, but the Title remains frozen with no audio output.
I'll hold the top button down to get into standby, then remove and insert back into the cage.
Another thing is it seems, in the car, the drives are always spun up, even with the latest HiJack. The Disk Icon is the gray background one with 3 dots on the right of it.
I also didn't loose a single playlist on upgrade from 2.0 -> a9
I also haven't been using the player at all on AC recently so I’m not sure if these bugs are present on AC.
Posted by: oliver
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 19/11/2004 19:32
Ok, I know I still shouldn't be running alpha 9, but i just haven't had any time to downgrade my empeg lately.
Anyways, Last night I was adding a new album onto my empeg. This time i used jEmplode for the first time to modify my database. It uploaded the album, but the playlist wasn't where I put it, nor was it any visible place on the empeg. Trying to load it with the set PIN number caused the player UI to crash (sitting at the hourglass). However hijack was still working for a long knob press.
After about 4 attempted syncs with jEmplode, each time I did something it would screw up my playlists even more. At one point last night all my "G" albums disappeared. Finally I installed the USB driver (I was using ethernet), and loaded up emplode, and it decided to do a disk check.
So that was at about 4am, I left the empeg syncing and went to bed. When I woke up, the error that it lost the connection during the reboot, so I unplugged the power to see if it at least built the database and it didn't (had to wait around for 5+ minutes for the manual empeg db rebuild)
After a few more sync's I had all my G items back, minus the album i was trying to add. Emplode saw it, but the empeg would never display that playlist under g, or anyplace else. So I deleted that album, and added it again with Emplode. Worked perfectly, well almost, still the same connection timeout message after the reboot, but at least the new album in on my a9 player.
So, now I’m at work... had to bring my cables with me today so I could have music on the way home. So I figured I’d use the http web server to steam some tracks. This is where I’m a bit scared.
HiJack doesn't see/display my actual playlist structure. Which is at the root level "!", "#", "A-E", "F-J", "K-O", "P-T", "U-Z", what it does display is each letter of the alphabet, and a "VA" item which I’m guessing is for Various Artists. The only catch is i don't have that structure at all.
I'm also sure that fidsift'ing my fids probably wasn't the best idea while running alpha software, but either way, my fids are sifted, with noticeable speed improvements for browsing playlists, and DB rebuilds.
Posted by: pim
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 26/01/2005 23:36
Quote:
v3alpha8 is rather slow at startup (compared with v2.01), expecially during its initial read of the database and playlist files.
This looks easy to fix: the player currently reads database and playlist a sector at a time (512 bytes), which is rather inefficient. Simply switching to a larger buffer size (eg. 4096) should greatly improve the startup time.
Thought I might bring this up again. I'm really very happy with v3a8, especially after having had a memory upgrade, but this slow startup is what's really bugging me. It takes 1:25 before I get sound.
It has been suggested to just binary edit the player binary to get around this. Has anyone looked into this? Can this be done without overflowing a static buffer?
Pim
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 27/01/2005 00:25
Quote:
It takes 1:25 before I get sound.
...
Has anyone looked into this?
Try this, and report back here.
(right click, and "save as..").
Cheers
Posted by: pim
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 27/01/2005 21:38
Whoaaa!
1 minute 25 seconds is now 18 seconds!
But something else is wrong; the player is forgetting some of its
settings, like info mode and current playlist. Maybe more, I'd need
to check.
Pim
Posted by: pim
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 27/01/2005 22:20
Hmm, very strange.
I was running v412 before trying the test image. Then went to plain v417
and then back to v412. The playlist amnesia seems persistent now.
All the time I was using a playlist with some 5500 entries. This has
always fit, unlike the root playlist with 20063 entries.
Pim
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 28/01/2005 00:12
Yeah, I think something's wrong there.
I'm actually on the road here this week, and so testing stuff is difficult for me.
But I'll take a close look and see what turns up, and try another test kernel in a day or so perhaps.
Cheers
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 28/01/2005 00:28
Okay, found the bug, fixed it.
http://rtr.ca/v3a8-hijack-zImage
Cheers
Posted by: pim
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 28/01/2005 13:03
"Elk nadeel heb z'n voordeel"
This is a famous saying by Johan Cruijff (Holland's best ex-soccer player ever)
which is bad Dutch for "every disadvantage has its advantage".
Now that my player forgets the current playlist no matter what kernel
I use, I might as well use the one that starts up fast ...
There's no need to hurry, I'm at home with a flu anyway.
Thanks,
Pim
Posted by: pim
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 28/01/2005 13:33
Oops, hadn't seen your fix when I posted my previous message.
Are you sure you made the right image available?
Startup time is back to 1:15 and playlist amnesia is still there.
Here's the md5sum:
768c8282d1c15b879bc260f92d97bc8a v3a8-hijack-zImage
Pim
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 29/01/2005 12:11
Yeah, the right one is there, and yes, it still has amnesia..
Does it (latest) also improve your startup time? If so, I'll fix the amnesia and then do a proper release of it.
Thanks!
Posted by: pim
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 29/01/2005 12:31
Like I said, the startup time is now 1:15, so only slightly faster.
BTW, all startup times mentioned are from power on.
Pim
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 29/01/2005 13:13
Ah, well nevermind it then. The first (faster) version was faster because it was buggy.. didn't actually work correctly.
For the amnesia, my player went back to normal when I reloaded stock Hijack onto it, and then selected a small playlist from the menu, put player into standby, powered off a few seconds later, and rebooted.
If yours persists in forgetting about it's playlist, then I'd suggest a wipe of the dynamic data partition should cure it; somewhat extreme, I know, but if it persists..
Cheers
Posted by: pim
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 30/01/2005 22:48
Quote:
The first (faster) version was faster because it was buggy.. didn't actually work correctly.
Yes, it wouldn't start in the car at all. It hung on "start radio failed".
Quote:
For the amnesia, my player went back to normal when I reloaded stock Hijack onto it, and then selected a small playlist from the menu, put player into standby, powered off a few seconds later, and rebooted.
Fortunately, playlist amnesia went away the second time I loaded v417.
Quote:
If yours persists in forgetting about it's playlist, then I'd suggest a wipe of the dynamic data partition should cure it; somewhat extreme, I know, but if it persists..
I'd hate to lose my EQ settings. Luckily, this wasn't necessery.
What did you try in hijack? Some sort of in-kernel stdio buffering?
Maybe we should look back into hacking the player binary. It's so
frustrating not being able to fix something very possibly caused
by one single #define. Otherwise we'll have to wait for july ....
Thanks anyway,
Pim
Posted by: mlord
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 31/01/2005 01:57
If it's a #define in the player, then it would be very difficult to patch.. they probably use the #define to statically declare a buffer of appropriate size.
Cheers
Posted by: pim
Re: Bugs in v3alpha8 - 31/01/2005 17:14
Yes, that's what I was afraid of.
Let's hope this gets fixed in july ...
Pim