26 replies to this topic

[ElectroMagic]

Hello!

 

I have been running OpenPLi for many years, since I got the VU+ Duo2. In the beginning everything worked well. After a while, though, the box sometimes became very slow in the menu system and EPG. We're talking going from almost instant response to somewhere from 1-10 seconds from RC button press to response. For some time, this was fixed every time I updated the firmware, but for several years now, it is that  slow in the menus / EPG all the time. I'm attaching a screenshot of my top.

 

Are the VSZ values ok here? Is the box swapping too much? I put a 480 Gb SSD into the machine with (if I remember correctly) a really bad cache setup. Could this affect the performance?

 

I made a channel list (or boquet or whatever it's called) somehow using a Windows program, I think, when I first had gotten the box. For some reason the list of channels contains a lot of channels we do not have access to. I would like to create a new list with just the available channels, but I find it a bit hard to find information on how to do this in the OpenPLi forum/wiki.

I would also be very grateful for any help with finding out why the box is so slow in menus / EPG. From what I've read in threads about similar problems, it could be related to an EPG refresh timer that does something that eats RAM more than it should.

 

Currently, I'm connecting with telnet. I set a root password to enable SSH connection, but I just get a message reading "WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!". I would also like to understand a bit more about the box, like is there an internal flash? Where is the OS stored? Is there a Swap partition? Do I have my EPG data stored in the right place?

 

Finally, the actual functionality for pausing live TV and recording shows on the internal HD has been working badly since we got the box. I would like to fix this, but regarding that, it could just be the SSD with the bad cache memories that causes problems.

 

Best regards

Attached Files

•  vuduo2_top.jpg   155.52KB   3 downloads

[tonskidutch]

It might help in answering, to inform us with which Image version you are currently working.

Next to your obvious problems about EPG data end the remote control menu steps YOU DO know that the DUO2 is a slow box compared to the newest models.

 

get yourself the latest Dremboxedit and solve your favorites in the Channellist

get yourselve the new IR300 remote from Vu+

swap partition doesn't really help on the internal SSD, if at all you would notice better performance plugin a separate USB 2.0 stick

EPG, don't load all the EPG via EPGimport or XMLTV

[Taykun345]

DUO2 is quite old and on the slow side. Also its hardware is not very reliable, I had all sorts of problems with my old Duo2.

 

If you use SWAP, do not use it. I would rather made PLi image slimmer. Does your box works better without EPG? If yes, then you know the reason for problems.

Also make sure that all your network shares (if you have them) are working. I experience major slowdowns, if my primary network share which also acts as a hdd for recording, is not accessible anymore.

[WanWizard]

Note that Enigma loads everything in memory. ALL EPG, ALL channel lists, and every image it ever displays (think picons).

 

But even then, it is not normal, a 10 second response to a keypress. Is a spinner shown when you do? Any plugins that may have replaced the infobar code?

[tonskidutch]

As previous members noted, you can do some things to improve.

But the remote that came with the DUO2 is crap, get a new one the IR300 model

[ElectroMagic]

I just flashed (from the on-display menu) this one - nice christmas greeting, by the way:

 

openpli-9.0-release-vuduo2-20231225_usb.zip

 

I will install Dreamboxedit and try to make a better channel list.

 

Taykun345, when you say "Does your box works better without EPG?", do you mean there is a way to disable the EPG entirely? Or just to not use EPG refresh? We do want to use an EPG, so disabling it entirely is not a solution for the long run, but if you tell me how to do it, I can try it to see if it solves the speed problems. Also "if you use Swap, don't use it" - what do you mean by this? Should I disable Swap altogether? If so, how is that done?

 

Yes, I think a spinner is shown for the most, when the box is processing a keypress for long.

[tonskidutch]

EPG can be searched and loaded in the intern memory everytime you zap or you use an appropriate EPG downloader with a timer for loading EPG over several day's

The amount of data wich is being processed depends on how much channels are included in your in the channellist ( Settings editor ) but also the EPG default settings in which is called upon verious types of EPG data.

 

Channellists can be optimized in favorites or bouqets to prevent huge data read or write.

And if something is not found instantly you'll get spinners in the top corner of the tv screen, that says enough

 

applying multiple bouqets also adds to the problem.

thus restrict the ordered abo channels and FTA which you do really watch often

Edited by tonskidutch, 26 December 2023 - 15:25.

[WanWizard]

In the EPG settings screen you can disable all supported EPG readers, and EIT now/next. If you disable all, you will not receive any EPG, not even with EPGrefresh.

 

When you restart Enigma, it will create an epg.dat file (in /hdd, / or a custom location if you have defined one) to prevent the EPG from being lost. How big is this file? Bigger than say 12-15MB, and you're loading to much EPG for such an old box.

[Tech]

It can also help if you keep the channel lists as small as possible and throw away bouquets that are not used.

Every time you open the channel list it must be read in completely, which takes time.

[ElectroMagic]

Thank you all for great feedback and hints for finding out what's wrong! I am very grateful!

 

Regarding remote controls, I can say that we bought the box used, and we got two remotes with it. I agree the left one (see attached pic) is rubbish. The one on the right is the one we've been using, quite happily.

 

I want to start by saying that I seem to have gotten rid of the problematic behaviour completely. Before the fix, like I wrote before, we used to have a delay of 1-10 seconds from remote control keypress to action. We could be on channel 1 in the EPG and know from experience that the channel we wanted to get to was 12 positions down, so we'd press the down button 12 times and then sit and look at the spinner for seven seconds, after which we immediately ended up on the correct channel. Then, however, if we wanted to go a few steps more, there would be a new delay of several seconds before those keypresses were acted upon.

 

After the fix, the response is back to being alomst immediate, for every keypress. I'd say we have less than a 300 ms delay for all actions, and for most of them, MUCH less than that.

 

I checked the size of the epg.dat file, but that was only around 2 Mb.

 

Thanks, tonskidutch, for the info on "something not found instantly causes spinners". The only actions I've taken were:

* To open up dreamboxEdit and download all the channel bouquets from the Duo2.

* To look through them (there were maybe 200 bouquets, probably put there by the previous owner) and remove all of them, except for the only one we were actually using.

* To go through the channels in the remaining bouquet, removing all channels we do not have access to. This removed maybe 70-100 channels that we can't access.

* Upload the modified and reduced data back to the Duo2.

 

We're now left with one bouquet that contains less than 25 channels, all of which we have access to.

 

Looking at 'top' (via telnet) after the modifications made in dreamboxEdit, regarding memory, everything looks very much the same. The only obvious difference are the "Load average" numbers, where it previously stayed somewhere between 0.30 and 0.40 for all three numbers. After the fix, the numbers seem to be between 0.05 and 0.25 instead.

 

Once again, thank you all so much for taking the time to reply with clever tips!

 

Attached Files

•  RemoteControls.jpg   45.66KB   3 downloads

[ElectroMagic]

By the way, does anyone know what the path for picons is for the Vu+ Duo2 box?

[WanWizard]

It is the same on any box: /picon, on the mountpoint you've installed them.

[Aliraza63]

By the way, does anyone know what the path for picons is for the Vu+ Duo2 box?

 

in flash its 

/usr/share/enigma2/picon

[tonskidutch]

possibly picons are a hazard on your DUO2

but thats for you to find out

 

I could never get a set of picons wich are adapted to my dvb-s2 and dvb-c channellist, ergo spinners.

[WanWizard]

in flash its 

/usr/share/enigma2/picon

 

No, it is not.

 

As I said, OpenPLi installs picons in the folder "picon", in the root of the selected mountpoint. In Flash, that would be "/picon".
 

[WanWizard]

I could never get a set of picons wich are adapted to my dvb-s2 and dvb-c channellist, ergo spinners.

 

Picons in itself don't cause spinners, a picon can be found, or it can't.

 

The problem with old boxes with low memory is that Enigma is designed for boxes with very slow NAND flash (i.e. DM7025), and therefore it keeps everything it loads in memory. That includes picon images, which are cached in memory too.

 

So the more you zap, the more memory is eaten up. Even worse if you have picons active in your channel list, in which case all of them will be loaded.

[ElectroMagic]

Ok, thanks again. I've looked in a few different places for a picon folder without luck. I've also searched through the menu system and LCD4Linux settings briefly, but couldn't find the path there either. There was a path suggested as default in dreamboxEdit I think, but I thought I needed to locate it on my box before starting to fiddle with it. For now, I can say there's no picon folder in either of the following folders:

 

/

/usr/

/usr/share/

/usr/share/enigma2/

 

Could it be that some picons have to be installed first and I currently have none, therefore no picon folder? Also, where can I find picons for the channels we have? Do I have to download logos from our cable provider and change resolution myself, or are there collections provided by dedicated people, like all of you in this forum?

 

Regarding all picons being loaded vs. RAM size, I don't think that could possibly be a problem. The resolution of the TFT is 400 x 240, so the picons would be smaller than that, say 300 x 200, which, with 32-bit color depth would yield a picon file size of about 235 kBytes. Since we have like 25 channels in total, that would add up to 5,7 Mbytes of RAM spent on all of the picons, even if they are 32-bit and completely uncompressed. Also, I have to say I don't think this box has a small RAM. Looking at the table on this page, for example:

 

http://vuplus.com/sub/sub0104.php

 

...2048 Mb is the largest RAM size of the boxes seen there. I realize newer boxes might have more, but 2 Gb should be sufficient for what this box needs to store in RAM, in my opinion.

[boolean]

2 GB is more than enough for E2 and all plug-ins you can think of; I've never came even close to the limit.

 

 

I've only installed the Ziggo picons and those are less than 2,5 MB altogether.

Edited by boolean, 5 January 2024 - 14:48.

[WanWizard]

Could it be that some picons have to be installed first and I currently have none, therefore no picon folder? Also, where can I find picons for the channels we have? Do I have to download logos from our cable provider and change resolution myself, or are there collections provided by dedicated people, like all of you in this forum?

 

The folder is created when you install a picon package.

 

There are several in the feed, some are labeled SNP, which are matched on channel name, some are labeled SRP, which are matched on unique channel service reference.

 

We build picons packages from https://github.com/picons/picons.

 

I suggest you start with an SNP package, and see how that matches your channel list. You can report any omissions on that github page, or, if you want support for service references for your specific provider, you dan ask them to add them.

[ElectroMagic]

 

Could it be that some picons have to be installed first and I currently have none, therefore no picon folder? Also, where can I find picons for the channels we have? Do I have to download logos from our cable provider and change resolution myself, or are there collections provided by dedicated people, like all of you in this forum?

 

The folder is created when you install a picon package.

 

There are several in the feed, some are labeled SNP, which are matched on channel name, some are labeled SRP, which are matched on unique channel service reference.

 

We build picons packages from https://github.com/picons/picons.

 

I suggest you start with an SNP package, and see how that matches your channel list. You can report any omissions on that github page, or, if you want support for service references for your specific provider, you dan ask them to add them.

 

 

Great!

 

What feed are you refering to? On the linked github page, the README.md file is displayed, with building instructions for Ubuntu. I'm currently running Manjaro (arch), so I'm using pacman for packade installation, which I find much harder to use than APT, but that's another story. I already have git installed, so getting the files out would be no problem.

 

If I start to follow the instructions in that README.md, I seem able to install all listed packages, except 'librsvg2-bin'. Also when looking through the instructions, it is not clear to me everywhere what is to be done on the box itself and what should be done on my laptop. Suddenly, it refers to TvHeadend. I've never heard of it and don't know if I'm running it or not.

 

But lets say you point me to a place where there's a pre-built picon-package that could work for me. How do you actually install them? Using dreamboxEdit or is there another way?