Requesting help for diagnosing ES issue on Pi4B

roslof

@mitu thank you as always for your help. I'll play around with other setttings as you mentioned a couple of days ago. The issue is definitely with my setup (somehow) and not with ES. If I figure it out, I'll report back in case others experience this in the future.

mitu

You trace what ES is doing during that time using strace (needs to be installed with sudo apt install strace).

When the slowdown/freeze starts, run

strace -f -p `pidof emulationstation` -o $HOME/es_trace.log

and leave it for a few seconds. Interrupt with Ctrl + C and post the log on pastebin.com.

roslof

@mitu said in Requesting help for diagnosing ES issue on Pi4B:

You trace what ES is doing during that time using strace (needs to be installed with sudo apt install strace).

When the slowdown/freeze starts, run
strace -f -p `pidof emulationstation` -o $HOME/es_trace.log
and leave it for a few seconds. Interrupt with Ctrl + C and post the log on pastebin.com.

PASTEBIN HERE

Useful. It's stuck in a temp loop.
You'll note 100,000 Pyramid.png repeats.

This was the last game played and the matching screenshot image. Subsequent restarts of ES yield the same. I confirmed that launching any other game from any system will display that game's screenshot in the log repeatedly.

EDIT/WORKAROUND: Found the configuration diff. Current system has the Automatic Game Collection "Last Played" enabled. Older (faster system) does not. Turning off "Last Played" solves.

mitu

@roslof said in Requesting help for diagnosing ES issue on Pi4B:

You'll note 100,000 Pyramid.png repeats.

Well, you need to get to that 100,000 somehow :).

Turning off "Last Played" solves.

Yeah, there's something fishy with that loop for the last played collection.

Can you zip your gamelists (the .xml files) and attach them somewhere ? I could try to reproduce the issue on my end and see where's the bug.

roslof

@mitu said in Requesting help for diagnosing ES issue on Pi4B:

@roslof said in Requesting help for diagnosing ES issue on Pi4B:

You'll note 100,000 Pyramid.png repeats.

Well, you need to get to that 100,000 somehow :).

Turning off "Last Played" solves.

Yeah, there's something fishy with that loop for the last played collection.

Can you zip your gamelists (the .xml files) and attach them somewhere ? I could try to reproduce the issue on my end and see where's the bug.

Can do. Confirming: Since they're all named gamelist.xml, should I place each one in it's own <system_name> folder?

mitu

Use this:

# if gamelists are in the rom folders
cd $HOME/RetroPie/roms
find -type f -name gamelist.xml | zip -@ zippy1.zip

# if gamelists are in the ES config folder, then
cd $HOME/.emulationstation/gamelists
find -type f -name gamelist.xml | zip -@ zippy2.zip

and upload the .zip files somewhere.

roslof

@mitu said in Requesting help for diagnosing ES issue on Pi4B:

and upload the .zip files somewhere.

Yeah, you make this too easy.
somewhere (feeling cheeky)
UPDATE: ZIP is now password protected. PW is my complete email.

mitu

You can remove the file, I've downloaded it.

After creating files from the gamelists and loading them in ES, I can see the issue also. Note that some games haven't been added, the ones in sub-folders.

The problem is indeed related to the Recent games collection, you have a lot of ~~them~~ games with lastplayed set. Now, the Recent collection is a bit more special than the others, it's picking up all games where lastplayed is set, then sorts it and finally shrinks it to 50 items. The issue is in the shrinking stage, since removing has more checks then simply adding the file, here's a rundown (note the timestamp on each operation):

[...]
Jul 21 20:23:54 lvl1: 	File "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zxspectrum/Snoopy & Peanuts (1989)(Softek International)(128k).zip" does not exist! Ignoring.
Jul 21 20:23:57 lvl2: 	Finished collecting: all, size: 50702
Jul 21 20:23:58 lvl2: 	Finished collecting: favorites, size: 295
Jul 21 20:23:58 lvl2: 	Finished collecting: recent, size: 6199
Jul 21 20:23:58 lvl2: 	 Begin trimming
Jul 21 20:24:28 lvl2: 	 Ended trimming
Jul 21 20:24:28 lvl2: 	Finished triming: recent
Jul 21 20:24:35 lvl3: 	SystemView::getViewElements()
Jul 21 20:24:35 lvl3: 	fireEvent: system-select 3do gotostart

Most of the time is spent in the trimming code, which looks to be inefficient when called 6000+ times to remove 1 game at a time.

While not a bug, I think there's some optimizations that can be done to make this go faster.

EDIT: did you really started 6000+ games or is this some sort of scraping fluke ?

roslof

@mitu said in Requesting help for diagnosing ES issue on Pi4B:

While not a bug, I think there's some optimizations that can be done to make this go faster.

Makes sense and understood. I could easily scrub the XML files and remove the recent flags, but this will slow over time. Best for me, for now, to simply turn off the Recent collection.

Cheers, @mitu !

roslof

@mitu said in Requesting help for diagnosing ES issue on Pi4B:

EDIT: did you really started 6000+ games or is this some sort of scraping fluke ?

I have, and not a fluke. Working on this since 2017 and never stopped. You can see by the most 'recent recents' that there are frequently many game tests a day.

mitu

@roslof said in Requesting help for diagnosing ES issue on Pi4B:

Best for me, for now, to simply turn off the Recent collection.

Yeah, that's unfortunate (for now), but it's best to keep lastplayed saved. I myself use it as a start system, this way when ES starts, you're back to your last played games and start again.

mitu

@roslof when you have the chance, can you try installing the latest emulationstation-dev from source ? There's a fix added that should help speed up the initial loading.

roslof

@mitu said in Requesting help for diagnosing ES issue on Pi4B:

@roslof when you have the chance, can you try installing the latest emulationstation-dev from source ? There's a fix added that should help speed up the initial loading.

@mitu as you would expect, with Last Played toggled true, load times are no longer in excess of 50 seconds for me. Cheers to you for the fix!