[x264-devel] Bug Report/Help?

[Kevin P. Jacobson]

Benjamin, thanks for your reply.  I don't have a kill-a-watt, but I know somenoe who has one and could borrow it I suppose.  I used to have two additional hard drives in this system when it was a core 2 duo, I don't think it is a wattage problem, but I'll check it.

Consensus has been pretty clear that something is up with my memory.  I did purchase it through NewEgg, and they are known for being reasonable about exchanges, I'll contact them...I do not have any other memory around.

Thanks.


________________________________
From: x264-devel-bounces at videolan.org [x264-devel-bounces at videolan.org] On Behalf Of Benjamin Rosenblum [ben at brosenblum.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 10:33 AM
To: Mailing list for x264 developers
Subject: Re: [x264-devel] Bug Report/Help?

So just to confirm what your saying, even if you run x264 10 times with the exact same settings/source/everything, it reboots at different spots in the encode and not always at the same spot?  While I'm no expert on the inner workings of x264, I would venture to say that if thats the case its almost definitely not (directly) an x264 issue since in theory x264 should run basically identically for each of those runs.  Think about it this way, if you take x264 down to the most basic level, its only really a calculator designed to run predefined mathematical equations on a set of numbers to generate another set of numbers.  Given that those equations aren't changing (which they obviously aren't assuming your using the same x264 binary and cli options each time), and that the input numbers (your source) aren't changing, x264 should in theory run exactly the same every time.

Given that all of the above is true and that you are seeing the reboots at different (and dare I say random) times through the encode, I would agree with everyone elses view that this is a hardware problem.  While I realize 600W sounds like a lot (and yes it should be plenty), have you ever actually tested to see how much power your system is sucking out of the wall?  How do you know your power supply isn't defective in some way that it could be having issues at higher loads?  One really good way to test this is using a little gadget called a Kill-A-Watt (http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/kill_a_watt_electric_usage_monitor_review).  I've had one of these monitoring my server since I built it a few months ago (actually its monitoring the UPS since thats in the line between it, but you get the idea).  I've seen my system get as high as 550W when working it to the max (its a dual x5355 quadcore xeon, so you can imagine, it sucks some juice).

The only other thing that pops into my head as a possible cause is a bad ram chip.  Specifically one spot on one chip on one piece of ram.  I saw an issue similar to this about a year ago when building a media center for my father.  The system would just "randomly" reboot under load.  There was no definitive way to cause the reboot or any particular amount or duration of the load similar to your situation.  What actually helped us narrow down the problem was that the ram we were using (crucial's ballistix tracer line) had led's on it that would show different things when under different usage.  We noticed that when one particular chip would get to a specific amount of load the reboot would happen.  My guess is that a similar thing could be happening to you.  As your system loads up and allocates the memory, its very possible that its allocating it to different areas of the physical ram chips.  When your encode hits that spot in the ram, the system goes nuts and something triggers the reboot to happen.  BTW, when we ran memtest86 on that ram, it performed perfectly in every test also.  Again, this is just a thought, but if you have more then one stick of ram in there I would be curious to see if you can do a few passes with some of the sticks removed (and rotate which ones are out obviously between passes, just make sure you track which is which and put them back in the original configuration so that we don't skew any future results of tests that could point to bad ram).

I hope some of that helped or at least triggered a thought in some one else for another idea if my theory isn't right.


Kevin P. Jacobson wrote:

Sorry for lack of details...

Power Supply is 600W, it should be plenty.

CPU doesn't get over 50C at any time, and I have run it over 68C before with other applications.  CPU or memory is not overclocked.

The reboots are random.  It always happens on the first pass, it has been at the very beginning of the pass (as soon as I press Enter to execute), half way, 3/4, almost done.  A full first pass is supposed to run for around 6 minutes (~23min DVD clip @ ~100fps).

I ran two full passes of all 8 tests from memtest86 on the memory last night, no errors reported.

I have had perfectly fine uptime with this system.  For example, DVDShrink also makes use of all four cores and I can run three instances of it at a time, most of the time running more than 10 minutes.

I am very close to installing XP on this machine, I have had some headaches with Vista.  While I love linux and use it all day at work, it is just not an option for my desktop at home, sorry Guillaume.

Again, thank you for your time and suggestions.

-Kevin

________________________________________
From: x264-devel-bounces at videolan.org<mailto:x264-devel-bounces at videolan.org> [x264-devel-bounces at videolan.org<mailto:x264-devel-bounces at videolan.org>] On Behalf Of Tomas Carnecky [tom at dbservice.com<mailto:tom at dbservice.com>]
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 3:57 AM
To: Mailing list for x264 developers
Subject: Re: [x264-devel] Bug Report/Help?

Kevin P. Jacobson wrote:


I am trying  to run x264 on a Xeon X3220 (Quad Core @ 2.40Ghz).  I am
using the binaries at http://x264.nl and have tried the most recent
(r669) all the way down to r654 without success.  My system usually
reboots spontaneously, but sometimes it will just freeze.  I am running
Windows Vista Ultimate and have 2GB of RAM (DDR800, Corsair).  I am
going to run memtest86 on the computer tonight to rule out a memory
problem, but I think this is related closer to my Quad Core processor
and that is something that I don’t know much about.


Maybe insufficient power supply. You didn't tell how long it takes until
the computer reboots, it it right as soon as you start x264 or after it
runs for some time?

tom
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