Bugzilla – Bug 673
RSS Ticker activation freezes Squeezebox/large text on slimp3
Last modified: 2008-12-18 11:55:12 UTC
Customer reported... Configuration : Squeezebox 1G SlimServer : 5.4.0 Systems : Mac OS X 10.2.8 iTunes : 4.7 Safari : 1.0.3 (v85.8) I believe I have spoted a bug related to the activation of the RSS Ticker in 2 situations. Here are the descriptions: 1) When the RSS Ticker screensaver goes on, the Squeezebox freezes with the error message : Lost contact with SlimServer... 2) When Loading the RSS feed from the Extension menu, the Squeezebox freezes with the error message Lost contact with SlimServer... The web page localhost/9000 refresh process would freeze > Manually refreshing the page would not work Actions : > Close webpage localhost/9000 > Stop SlimServer, Restart SlimServer > Launch localhost/9000 = still frozen... In both situations, this would corrupt the Pref files (and other hidden files in neighbor folders) in Library/Slimdevices/ I performed the following actions to start over (standard debugging procedure in such situation) > Stop SlimServer (System Prefs pane) > Quit Safari > Trash the Library/Slimdevices/ folder (trashing slimserver.pref only was not enough) > Start SlimServer (System Prefs pane) = Squeezebox would reconnect with latest played on display > Launch web localhost/9000 = Default settings I was able to replicate these incidents at least 2-3 times each and start over again.
Kevin, This sounds like a duplicate of bug #668, but I can't be absolutely certain from the initial report. Do you know what version of perl is running on customer's mac? Thanks, -Dave
I'm running WinXP and find that the RSS news reader works perfectly if it is in the 'small' text display mode on my non-graphic display Squeezebox. The moment I change the display size to 'large' text I lose contact with Slimserver, and my Squeezebox display goes blank. This happens when the screensaver kicks in with 'large' text size enabled or when manually browsing on the remote to look at the RSS news ticker on the Squeezebox in 'large' text size only. To remedy the situation I have to reboot the pc, and then reboot the squeezebox. The problem seems to be specific to 'large' text only, on WinXP at least. I've tried this with the 5.4.0 release and also with nightlies from 11/23, 12/01, and 12/03. I have been following the recent discussion on this but didn't see anyone mention that it was specific to 'large' text... hope this helps!
Chris, Does this happen with any feeds in particular, or all feeds? And do you have Perl installed or are you using the default slimserver installation? Also (completely unrelated) are you the Chris Wood who attended Brown in the early 90s? -Dav
Chris, I hope you don't mind I've added you to the CC list on this bug. Please see my earlier questions to you. Are you still experiencing the problem? (I'm trying to start the new year with no open bugs! :) Thanks, -Dave
Dave, here's an update... I'm running a reasonably fresh install of windows XP sp2, and am using a non- graphic wireless squeezebox with firmware 40. I uninstalled slimserver, then downloaded & installed the latest 5.4 nightly for windows 'SlimServer_5_4_x_v2005-01-01.exe'. I added the rss feed to the player main menu and can browse through the feeds manually with or without music playing at the same time in small or large text size. So far so good. If I set the rss feed to be the screensaver then all works fine in small text size, the screensaver scrolls onto the next story by itself and cycles through the different rss sources ok. BUT... if I switch it to large text size either while it is scrolling or before the screensaver kicks in then I see the first line of text but as it is about to scroll to the right I see 'problem: lost contact with slimserver', the squeezebox display then goes blank, and the slimserver window on my computer shows 'The page cannot be displayed' screen trying to refresh itself every second. I can then close slimserver and reopen it and the squeezebox powers back up ok, and all is well again until I repeat the above. It doesn't make a difference if the title of the song I am playing is scrolling at the time the screensaver kicks in either, I tried with a short and long song title. The screensaver always starts off from the first source which by default I had as 'BBC News', I deleted this from slimserver and tried 'CNET News.com' instead and found no difference, so don't think this problem is to do with the source itself. I then tried all of the above but with the 6.0.0 windows nightly instead, and found everything to be exactly the same. I can browse in large text size manually, but the screensaver scrolling itself along in large text size only seems to be the problem. Looking at what I posted before I think half the original problem has been fixed, large text manual scrolling is now ok! hope that helps, didn't go to Brown I was at school in England, Chris Wood
I forgot to add... i'm not sure which version of perl i'm running, just whichever comes with windows xp by default. I'd be happy to try and update this but need some directions.
This has come up quite a few times over the past week. It always seems to be fairly reproducable with: - softsqueeze set as character display / slimp3 / squeezebox with character display - rss news set as the current screensaver - text size set to large Recently I've had reports of this on: - OSX with 5.4.0 and 5.4.1 nightly, usually crashing in slimp3.pm - Windows with 5.4.0 and 5.4.1 nightly, crashing either in slimp3.pm OR with that vague 'Perl interpreter failed.' message I had suggested to a couple of people to just uncheck RSS News in Server Settings -> Plugins and see if that eliminates the problem for them. I have not heard back from anyone about that yet, though...
This is the regex bug that Dave handed off to me.
*** Bug 802 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 1244 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 1615 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
While testing adrian's latest scrolling update, I ran a slimp3 on large text rss ticker for some time without issue. Is anyone still losing the server from this?
More testing recently, I'm still not seeing a crash. HOWEVER, if I change to large text after the rss ticker has started, the intro text is still on the top line in small text. This offsets the large text following and its garbled.
I'm seeing the same behavior with my Slimp3 and 6.1 beta 1 on Windows.
The new ticker code should reduce the amount of time spend "doubling" the text as it only adds one story at a time to the ticker even if "Items displayed per channel" is set to a large number. I am assuming that people were seeing this on a slower speed server due to the server being blocked processing large quantities of text. The corruption when changing text size in Rss is a bug in the ticker code - put this down to me to fix.
Please try r3592 - this should include a fix for the corruption when changing to doubled while displaying Rss
looks better. thanks! I'll mark this fixed, in the absence of any more reports to freezing. This can be re-opened if someone does run into it.
This bug was marked resolved in Slimserver 6.1, which is several versions ago. If you're still seeing this bug, please re-open it. Thanks!
Routine bug db maintenance; removing old versions which cause confusion. I apologize for the inconvenience.