Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Confusing uO Errors

[Neil Bedwell]

Nick,
Thank you!

Adjusting the niceness level did the trick, however after digging more
into the files, I also figured out the fusb_block_size/nblocks
commands, and have found a solution there as well.  I can now sustain
the full 32MB/s write to disk that the USB will allow.

For reference, here are my findings:
gnuradio defaults to 1MB fusb buffer, FUSB_BUFFER_SIZE in
fusb_sysconfig_linux.cc.
At 8MB/s, 1/8th of a second, the buffer doesn't seem to be enough on
my system for the scheduler at 0 niceness.
Per the note in fusb_sysconfig_linux.cc, I have left fusb_block_size
set to 0, or 4x1024.
Latency is not an issue since I am spectrum recording, so I have
adjusted my block size to be 2 secs (16MB, fusb_nblocks=4096).  I
played with this value quite a bit, and 2 secs seems to be a good
compromise.
I upped the transfer to 32MB/s (decimation of 16), increased
fusb_nblocks to 16384, and it still records without any uO's.

I know this can cause GUI responsiveness issues, and poor latency, but
are there any other side affects I should be aware of?

Thanks again,
Neil


On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 1:28 PM, Nick Foster <address@hidden> wrote:
> You're probably getting interrupted by some scheduler-chewing task. If
> you don't mind risking locking your system up, try prefacing your
> command with "sudo nice -n-20 " to give your process priority.
>
> You should also benchmark your HDD with hdparm or Bonnie to get a handle
> on what you can actually write for sustained periods of time.
>
> If all else fails, create a ramdisk to save your samples:
>
> mount -t tmpfs /mnt/ramdisk -o -size=512m
>
> ...and copy them over to HDD when you're done streaming.
>
> --n
>
> On Wed, 2011-01-05 at 10:47 -0500, Neil Bedwell wrote:
>> Hello,
>> I am having overruns that I cannot get figured out, and I am on a time
>> crunch to get this resolved.  Any help would be appreciated.
>>
>> Problem:
>> I seem to get uO's that appear irregularly, maybe every 20 seconds or so on
>> average.
>>
>> Script in Python:
>> USRP with 2 TVRx boards -> Decimation set to 64 (1MHz BW, also tried 128,
>> with same result) -> Split Stream -> Store samples as two interleaved I/Q
>> files (4MB/s per file)
>> That data is what I expect out, so I don't suspect that the Python code is
>> incorrect
>>
>> Computer:
>> Core2 Duo >2GHz per core (runs at 1GHz while executing)
>> Ubuntu 10.04 fresh install on Ext4 hard drive (Also tried 10.10, and have
>> tried AHCI settings to both On and Compatibility in BIOS)
>> USB benchmark succeeds at 32MB/s (8MB/s should not be an issue)
>> Latest GNU Radio from git (also tried 3.3.0)
>> High-speed hard drive, more than capable of 8MB/s writes (HD light only
>> flashes every few seconds when script is running)
>> I have tried playing with fusb_block_size/nblocks, but don't know a good
>> configuration to set, and haven't had luck reducing the uO's
>>
>> Questions:
>> What else can I try?
>> Are there buffer sizes that I can increase on the computer so that there is
>> room during the hard drive block writes?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Neil
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Discuss-gnuradio mailing list
>> address@hidden
>> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
>
>
>