Are you guys absolutely and positively sure you don't have player memory leak? I listened for some 30 tunes (perhaps with an intervening sync), and the player developed this behaviour:

VM: killing process player

buffermem       : 249856

page_cache_size : 374

nr_free_pages   : 61

num_physpages   : 3072

Restored terminal settings

Remounting first music partition read-only

Remounting second music partition read-only

No secondary hard disk

Abnormal player termination

Player received signal 9

Starting player

empeg-car 2.00-beta3 2001/10/17.

3bd099da DHCP name = lo

3bd099da DHCP index = 1

3bd099da DHCP flags = 0x8

3bd099da DHCP addr  = 0.0.0.0

3bd099da DHCP bcast = 0.0.0.0

3bd099da DHCP mask  = 0.0.0.0

3bd099da DHCP name = eth0

3bd099da DHCP index = 2

3bd099da DHCP flags = 0x1043

3bd099da DHCP addr  = 192.168.0.29

3bd099da DHCP bcast = 192.168.0.255

3bd099da DHCP mask  = 255.255.255.0

3bd099da DHCP Adding interface eth0

Prolux 4 empeg car - 1.1090 Oct 17 2001

Vcb: 0x405d5000

E !! mp3_decoder.cpp    1052: Failed to seek to offset 1620419, error=0xc0044000

E !! mp3_decoder.cpp    1047: Failed to find valid sync after seeking to offset 1620419, error=0xc0044000

etc every few seconds. I advanced to the next file: it kept restarting. I rebooted the player: the problem cured. (The database conversion went without a hitch prior to the first sync.)

OOPS: Can't be simple memory leak, as it persists over player restarts. Do you exaust some other resource?

I will leave it play for an hour or so to see what happens.

Update: Nothing so far... I will let it play overnight.

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Edited by bonzi on 18/10/01 09:58 PM.

Update: the phenomenon did not reapear . I hate irreproducible bugs!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Another update: the player does not like me!

1) I was using emplode's new features to discover duplicates among my tunes. I was playing with a set of three tracks (used emplode to replace the current playlist with just them). Stuttering as described here appeared, and I think one tune was quieter than it should be.

2) I rebooted the player. Stuttering disappeared, but the quiet track become so loud that is started clipping, similar as described here. I don't have anything installed to pull the file off the player and try Tony's remedy at the moment. Rebooting did not help.

3) I tried to play the most of the player (~4000 tunes list) with shuffle on, from the remote. The player died, restarted, continued with a original short list, with one track still clipping. Serial log:

VM: killing process player

buffermem       : 249856

page_cache_size : 374

nr_free_pages   : 38

num_physpages   : 3072

Restored terminal settings

Remounting first music partition read-only

Remounting second music partition read-only

No secondary hard disk

Abnormal player termination

Player received signal 9

Starting player

empeg-car 2.00-beta3 2001/10/17.

3bd0786e DHCP name = lo

3bd0786e DHCP index = 1

3bd0786e DHCP flags = 0x8

3bd0786e DHCP addr  = 0.0.0.0

3bd0786e DHCP bcast = 0.0.0.0

3bd0786e DHCP mask  = 0.0.0.0

3bd0786e DHCP name = eth0

3bd0786e DHCP index = 2

3bd0786e DHCP flags = 0x1043

3bd0786e DHCP addr  = 192.168.0.29

3bd0786e DHCP bcast = 192.168.0.255

3bd0786e DHCP mask  = 255.255.255.0

3bd0786e DHCP Adding interface eth0

Prolux 4 empeg car - 1.1090 Oct 17 2001

Vcb: 0x405ae000

E !! mp3_decoder.cpp    1052: Failed to seek to offset 1518378, error=0xc0044000

This is similar to the symptoms in the post opening this thread, but the context is different.

4) Short list played, but I think quieter than normal.

5) I used emplode to start the same large playlist. The player loaded it, showed the first track info, and blocked with drive icon showing access (and disk actually spinning). All quiet on serial. The player did not respond to remote or 'q' from serial (I forgot to try the buttons), but dutyfully died on ctrl-C.

6) Upon return from the shell the player started with the first tune of tha large list displayed, in paused state. I pressed 'play', and it seems to be working.

7) I used search to insert those three tunes from the beginning. The player showed hourglass and froze, but continued playing for a while (presumably until buffer got exhausted). Does not react to front panel, remote or serial. Upon reboot I see that those three tunes were not inserted into the playlist (or that the list wasn't saved).

I tested memory yesterday, All OK.


Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green