TV Server startup incompatibility with System Temp files in Ram Disk ? (1 Viewer)

mralolli

MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • May 5, 2009
    9
    3
    Home Country
    Italy Italy
    TV Server startup incompatibility with System Temp files in Ram Disk ?
    This seems my experience on trying to install the MP 1.3.0 Beta on a fresh Windows 7 64bit platform. Here below a list of major hardware components:

    MOBO: AsRock Z77 PRO4-M
    CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 3,4GHz
    GPU: Intel HD Graphic 4000 (integrated)
    RAM: Corsair 4x4GB DDR3-1600 CL9
    SSD: Crucial M4 128GB SATA3 (system disk)
    HDD: 2xWestern Digital 1TB SATA3 Raid0 (data disk)
    TUNER: Terratech Cinergy T PCIe Dual DVB-T

    At MP installation time, a portion of Ram (4GB) is activated as additional Ram Disk unit by the ASRock utility named xFast RAM. Enabled configuration options chose redirection to the xFast RAM disk of the following temporary files categories (ASRock terminology): System Temporary Files, User Temporary Files, IE Cache Files, Firefox Cache Files. Backup XFast Ram on HDD is disable; hence after every restart the Temporary and Cache folders are cleared.

    On these conditions the TV Server installation failed, showing what I'm used to call the "fatal error" message on TV Server startup: Failed to startup tvserviceSystem.Net.Sockets.SocketException:..etc). MP forum contain many suggestions on how trying to solve this: e.g. edit ..\etc\hosts file, enable RPC Locator service, setup static IP address, MySQL reinstall,..

    So I spent a full day on doing several attemps. Sometimes the installation succeeded.. but temporarily. After next restart the TV Server failed to start again: TVService cannot be activated. Finally, at midnight, I decided to disable the Ram Disk and retry the installation... miracle!! Everything run ok and the installation, after some days, is stable.

    In order to check more in detail which Ram Disk data category conflicts with the TV Server startup, I've enabled the xFast RAM options one at a time. The result is that only the System Temporary Files redirection must be kept off. Unfortunately I'm not able to find detailed info about the ASRock's setup when this option is on. Maybe somebody of you could further progress on the analysis or, in addition, could report about experience with other Ram Disk software (of course with System Temp redirection).

    Al least, I hope this thread will be able to save time to somebody else, facing TV Server installation troubles on system based on ASRock motherboard (xFast Ram utility is free and run on ASRock mobos only).


    P.S. my main purpose was to put on this Ram Disk the TV time-shifting files by configuring the TV Server
    folder location, after the MP installation. I'm happy to confirm that now it is well running, with major improvement on TV Server performances and important reduction of the access frequency to the SSD/HDD (extended lifespan expected).
     

    mralolli

    MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • May 5, 2009
    9
    3
    Home Country
    Italy Italy
    just wondering, is there any speed boost compared to using an SSD ? seems hardly worth the effort ?

    RAM disk Pro:
    Compared to a speedy SSD, RAM disk read more than 10x faster and wrote about 20x faster. If your hw configuration can lay on it, the combination of SSD (system and program storage) with RAM Disk (temporary files with high r/w load frequency) is the best solution.
    Writing load mainly asks for special care, not only about speed improvements. SSDs have the downside of a limited number of writes and you can increase the SSD's longevity by moving often-written class of data to a RAM disk. Cache, time-shifting and the temp files of your most used applications are good targets.

    RAM disk Contra:
    Obviously, RAM disk size is taken away from the main system memory; then the prerequisite of a good RAM disk approach is to have excess of system Ram on normal load conditions.
    Furthermore the RAM disk can considerably increases the boot time; its structure is completely re-initialized at any restart. On my configuration (see the initial post) the additional boot time is around 10-15 seconds.
     
    Last edited:

    Users who are viewing this thread

    Top Bottom