LMS and Squeezelite working on RPI3 and Raspian but get errors

[Bas Horneman]

Could the disk be at fault:

The RPI3 freezes up sometimes....especially when I play 24/96 files. But not when I connect to my other LMS server on a rpi2...so must be disk?

Some errors I got:

ar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread error reading '/2 meter sessies vol 2/08 - James - Sit Down.flac' at offset 0: 4096 <> -1: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: Failed to read vcn 0x1: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread error reading '/2 meter sessies vol 3/08 - Rick DeVito - Tower Of Babylon.flac' at offset 0: 16384 <> -1: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread error reading '/2 meter sessies vol 3/08 - Rick DeVito - Tower Of Babylon.flac' at offset 0: 4096 <> -1: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error

 

[Dr Jim]

Could the disk be at fault:

The RPI3 freezes up sometimes....especially when I play 24/96 files. But not when I connect to my other LMS server on a rpi2...so must be disk?

Some errors I got:

ar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread error reading '/2 meter sessies vol 2/08 - James - Sit Down.flac' at offset 0: 4096 <> -1: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: Failed to read vcn 0x1: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread error reading '/2 meter sessies vol 3/08 - Rick DeVito - Tower Of Babylon.flac' at offset 0: 16384 <> -1: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread error reading '/2 meter sessies vol 3/08 - Rick DeVito - Tower Of Babylon.flac' at offset 0: 4096 <> -1: Input/output error
Mar 29 22:22:57 raspberrypi ntfs-3g[236]: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error

Certainly looks that way - I've had zero issues using either an RP2 or RP3 as a server, but typically use a network-attached disk for storage + a camera-rated fast 64Gb micro-SD card to hold the LMS database & indexes.

It looks like these are disk I/O errors during the file prefetch/read process - my hunch is that you're using a USB disk and maybe just exceeding the Pi's USB bandwidth - or are running into conflicts with the network stack if you're streaming large files from the RP3, or possibly CPU binding if transcoding.

Do an update/upgrade cycle - there's been some fairly significant changes to the RP3 base in the last couple of weeks - then install one of the system monitoring utilities - I'm so crude that I use htop, be there are some decent newer tools out there.

The RP3 does seem to have better USB bandwidth & reduced latency compared with the RP1 & RP2, but it's still sharing an interrupt with the LAN (oddly enough, the WLAN may have its own interrupt, and seems very stable streaming 96kHz audio out to a Schiit Modi on USB..)so there may be some rather dramatic bandwidth limitations.

Cheers
Jim

 

[Bas Horneman]

Thanks Jim,

I've done the update/upgrade cycle. I really suspect my hd. Will try another disk.

I've had zero issues using either an RP2 or RP3 as a server

Same here with the RP2. But the RP2 is only LMS and SMB server. Now I'm trying to do the client and server on the RP3.

then install one of the system monitoring utilities

Will do..

my hunch is that you're using a USB disk

Correct.

What OS are you using by the way? I think my whole post is moot anyway since the latest picore release now also has the ability to run LMS.


Kind regards

 

[Bas Horneman]

Don't think it was the disk after all. Installed a different one. Still the same. Play a 24/96 file...and it does not take long...then crash.

Installing htop is not working for me: sudo apt-get install htop

message: E: Unable to locate package htop

So I tried top. And that's already installed..when the pi crashes/freezes....this is the last I see.

 

[Bas Horneman]

Compare that with streaming from another LMS server...virtually no load.

Or even when playing on the same LMS but with a "normal" flac.

 

[Bas Horneman]

Does not seem to be a load problem either. When connect my rpi3 to the rpi2 lms...and I start the 24/96 file....bam! freeze. So it seems like a driver/configuration thingy?

 

[Dr Jim]

Does not seem to be a load problem either. When connect my rpi3 to the rpi2 lms...and I start the 24/96 file....bam! freeze. So it seems like a driver/configuration thingy?

Agreed - suspecting the USB stack as the primary culprit, with the I/O resources and/or LMS +Perl as the other Unusual Suspects.

I just looked at my /etc/apt/sources.txt and it's very simple-minded:

"deb Index of /raspbian jessie main contrib non-free rpi
# Uncomment line below then 'apt-get update' to enable 'apt-get source'
#deb-src Index of /raspbian/ jessie main contrib non-free rpi


So I'm running Raspbian Jessie with no extra sources and it's quite stable, am surprised that htop wasn't in the apt-cache, it came right up on my distro.

One ugly thought is that the higher bit-rate files may be requesting large buffers at load time & you may be sending the system into swap - which could be unfortunate if your low on the microSD card space.

With everything loaded and ready to play what does df report?

Another ugly thought looks towards the LMS server (mine is 7.90 - armv7l from February) and it relationship to Perl (mine uses Perl 5.14.2 - arm-linux-gnueabihf-thread-multi-64int) - normal Perl failures happen at load time, but I've seen it fail catastrophically when its I/O resources are unexpectedly constrained.

I gave up on Picore some time ago and went to Squeezeplug as a mindless install distro, not because Picore wasn't functional, but because I got weary of hacking through Tiny Core's hoops just to do simple things - Debian is obtuse enough, it doesn't <need> a ringmaster...

Cheers

Jim

 

[Bas Horneman]

Thanks Jim....

Looks like the rasbian and diy road is not for me as a noob. I'l try some other things like max2play and moodeaudio.

It looks like max2play is doing the squeezeplug things now.

Cheers,
Bas

 

[Bas Horneman]

I gave up on Picore some time ago

PicorePlayer has been good to me as a client for the LMS.

 

[Dr Jim]

Thanks Jim....

Looks like the rasbian and diy road is not for me as a noob. I'l try some other things like max2play and moodeaudio.

It looks like max2play is doing the squeezeplug things now.

Cheers,
Bas

The Max2Play LMS distro incorporates much of the work that went into Squeezeplug and because it's pretty plain Raspbian is both easy to use and relatively easy to hack - I can say that the current M2P release works very reliably as a SQueezeLite player feeding a Schiit Modi/Vali stack via USB and its onboard wireless.

Just for giggles, I used M2P to load up LMS 7.9 nightly, attached to a WD MyCloud NTFS disk via Ethernet, and am industriously building a database from the 100K+ tracks in my library - the first 10K tracks took the RP3 3:28, so it's gnawing its way through as well as a single-core Windoze machine does - which ain't shabby for a 30 Euro computer.

If you do go with Max2Play - pay them the pittance to activate the blessed program, they've certainly added enough value to justify the cost and their extensions can make your setup & configuration much easier.

OK - got enough music in the database to run some lightweight tests - a single 24-bit, 96kHz stream played pretty flawlessly, I could attach another player to the RP3's LMS server and similcast for about 60 seconds before there were obvious digital errors - but the stream never halted and recovery was graceful - so this felt more like a saturation (possibly the wireless network) issue rather than a driver crash.

One more piece to this puzzle - the errors you captured, where were they from - linux's dmesg file, the LMS server error files, or somewhere else?

The reason for asking is that your SD card is both memory and a virtual disk - I'm wondering if pulling the card reformatting it on a sector-by-sector basis (e.g. not 'Quick Format') and re-imaging it might catch a weak set of memory cells.

Cheers
Jim

 

[Dr Jim]

Another thought....

I just took a closer look at the top output you posted:

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/attachments/pc-based/540850d1459366833-lms-squeezelite-working-rpi3-raspian-but-get-errors-top.jpg

Note that the second highest resource hog is 'FLAC' - this doesn't show in the top output from your RP2, and neither do I see it on my top output:


805 pi 20 0 38680 14600 7080 S 16.9 1.7 24:27.02 squeezelite
14042 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 7.9 0.0 0:13.86 kworker/0:0
6891 squeeze+ 20 0 53500 46080 6320 D 3.3 5.2 8:40.30 perl
10161 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 3.3 0.0 0:14.79 kworker/u8:1
5941 squeeze+ 20 0 110808 103040 8780 D 3.0 11.7 2:43.00 squeezeboxserve
6764 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 2.0 0.0 0:23.82 cifsd
203 root -2 0 0 0 0 S 1.7 0.0 0:35.36 ksdioirqd/mmc1
14361 pi 20 0 6808 2480 2128 R 0.7 0.3 0:00.51 top
188 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:05.72 brcmf_wdog/mmc1
1 root 20 0 5500 3924 2724 S 0.0 0.4 0:06.33 systemd
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:02.76 ksoftirqd/0
5 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0:0H

You may want to take a longer look at the LMS setting Advanced/File Types/FLAC - it looks like you're set to transcode to another format rather than use FLAC as a native output to SqueezeLite.

This would be a rather unnecessary waste of CPU resources I think.

Cheers

Jim

 

[Bas Horneman]

Thanks for all the help Jim. But I've put this diy LMS and Squeezelite on Rasbian on hold.

Just to answer your remark.

- it looks like you're set to transcode to another format rather than use FLAC as a native output to SqueezeLite.

I thought about this as well. But it also happened when I still had it not set to transcode.

Since its is both on one machine....I guess there is no point doing it..either squeezelite or lms has to do it...with the same processor.