Survey: how often does BI crash?

[RROONNBB]

Fairly new BI user - have had it running for a couple of months. But it seems to crash on me relatively often... couple of times a week? Is that normal? What are other people seeing?

Beyond that, is there a good handhold-the-noob guide for diagnosing what the issue may be?

(more info: About a week ago I moved from a 5-year old box to a new i5-8400 machine w/ 8GB, thinking maybe my old machine was just underpowered but I've still had a crash about every other day. Running Windows 10 pro, latest version of BI, and the CPU/ram is only hitting about 21% and 1.5GB, etc.)

 

[fenderman]

Fairly new BI user - have had it running for a couple of months. But it seems to crash on me relatively often... couple of times a week? Is that normal? What are other people seeing?

Beyond that, is there a good handhold-the-noob guide for diagnosing what the issue may be?

(more info: About a week ago I moved from a 5-year old box to a new i5-8400 machine w/ 8GB, thinking maybe my old machine was just underpowered but I've still had a crash about every other day. Running Windows 10 pro, latest version of BI, and the CPU/ram is only hitting about 21% and 1.5GB, etc.)

That is not normal. Its is never normal for it to crash. You either have a memory leak issue, see threads or you are installing other software on the machine that is causing issues. I have over 20BI machines running. They dont crash.
Did you perform a CLEAN windows install using MS media creation tool? did you move any old parts from your old system over? are you using your machine for ANYTHING else other than BI?

 

[Q™]

I have two (2) separate and distinct Blue Iris installations @RROONNBB; neither crashes...ever.

 

[RROONNBB]

That is not normal. Its is never normal for it to crash. You either have a memory leak issue, see threads or you are installing other software on the machine that is causing issues. I have over 20BI machines running. They dont crash.
Did you perform a CLEAN windows install using MS media creation tool? did you move any old parts from your old system over? are you using your machine for ANYTHING else other than BI?

Glad it's not normal at least... so I guess it's troubleshootin' time...

Yes I did a totally clean windows install direct from MS. I'm not using the machine for anything else but there are a couple of other things installed like Dropbox, TightVNC, FreeSSHd... I think that's about it...

Not a super experienced Windows user (Mac & Linux) so I'm trying to figure out Event Viewer... is there an easy way to have it show only BlueIris-related information? Is there a separate log file for Blue Iris itself that might be useful?

 

[fenderman]

Glad it's not normal at least... so I guess it's troubleshootin' time...

Yes I did a totally clean windows install direct from MS. I'm not using the machine for anything else but there are a couple of other things installed like Dropbox, TightVNC, FreeSSHd... I think that's about it...

Not a super experienced Windows user (Mac & Linux) so I'm trying to figure out Event Viewer... is there an easy way to have it show only BlueIris-related information? Is there a separate log file for Blue Iris itself that might be useful?

did you move any parts from your old system to the new system?

 

[RROONNBB]

did you move any parts from your old system to the new system?

Not really - the boot disk on the old system was reformatted and is now being used as a data disk on the new one.

 

[cyberwolf_uk]

I look after about 10 BI systems and never seen a crash yet, but I've been asked to look at other peoples systems who's BI systems crash. When I start looking into them I find they are running all sorts of shit on there, Plex server, VMware (not that any of these products are shit BTW) updating any update they get prompted for. Once I system restore back to before any updates occurred and remove process hungry apps, tell them not to touch it again, surprisingly it all works.

I guess the story I'm trying to tell is a BI system should be just that... a single system! Keep your other apps and services for another desktop!! And switch off updates, read forums to find out when it is safe to update your system be it Windows hotfixes, BIOS updates or BI updates. If you have OCD and need to update everything you get prompted for, have a development BI server and update to your hearts content!

 

[fenderman]

Not really - the boot disk on the old system was reformatted and is now being used as a data disk on the new one.

try swapping that disk

 

[RROONNBB]

try swapping that disk

Skeptical that that's it - it's not the whole system that's crashing just BI... But sure, I'll give it a shot.

Meanwhile, though, ANY thoughts/help on finding some actual error messages for the crashes? Seems like that's a sensible place to start. But yes, I guess I'll just start googling on how this is done...

 

[RROONNBB]

I look after about 10 BI systems and never seen a crash yet, but I've been asked to look at other peoples systems who's BI systems crash. When I start looking into them I find they are running all sorts of shit on there, Plex server, VMware (not that any of these products are shit BTW) updating any update they get prompted for. Once I system restore back to before any updates occurred and remove process hungry apps, tell them not to touch it again, surprisingly it all works.

I guess the story I'm trying to tell is a BI system should be just that... a single system! Keep your other apps and services for another desktop!! And switch off updates, read forums to find out when it is safe to update your system be it Windows hotfixes, BIOS updates or BI updates. If you have OCD and need to update everything you get prompted for, have a development BI server and update to your hearts content!

I totally agree! This is a dedicated system that's, theoretically, only running the stuff I need to use and administer it. I AM guilty of updating BI pretty much as soon as the update shows up but that's mostly because I keep hoping the update will fix my crash problem.

 

[fenderman]

I totally agree! This is a dedicated system that's, theoretically, only running the stuff I need to use and administer it. I AM guilty of updating BI pretty much as soon as the update shows up but that's mostly because I keep hoping the update will fix my crash problem.

You might also want to try a clean install of blueiris...

 

[SouthernYankee]

Is there Anything in the Blue Iris log at the time of the "crash" ?
Is Blue Iris running as a service ?
Is the blue Iris service set to restart ?
Is there any errors in the Event Viewer ?

You say Blue Iris crashes but the Windows OS stays up. When was the last complete OS reboot ?

 

[RROONNBB]

Is there Anything in the Blue Iris log at the time of the "crash" ?
Is Blue Iris running as a service ?
Is the blue Iris service set to restart ?
Is there any errors in the Event Viewer ?

You say Blue Iris crashes but the Windows OS stays up. When was the last complete OS reboot ?

Not running as a service
Here's a snippet of the log file:

0 7/31/2018 2:52:08 PM New Move: nothing to do [2/168 hrs, 8.44G/10.0G, 902.2G free] 1 locked
1 7/31/2018 2:52:08 PM Stored Delete: nothing to do [645/336 hrs, 19.6G/20.0G, 902.2G free] 1 errors
2 7/31/2018 7:59:40 PM App Restarted after unexpected shutdown
0 7/31/2018 7:59:41 PM New Move: nothing to do [7/168 hrs, 9.20G/10.0G, 901.5G free] 1 locked
1 7/31/2018 7:59:41 PM Stored Delete: nothing to do [650/336 hrs, 19.6G/20.0G, 901.5G free] 1 errors
4 7/31/2018 7:59:41 PM Clips F:: 17, 28.8G/31.0G (+899.3G)
0 7/31/2018 7:59:41 PM Server Started on port 81
10 7/31/2018 7:59:42 PM local_console 0.0.0.0: Login
0 7/31/2018 7:59:42 PM App Today's sunrise: 4:35 AM, sunset: 6:46 PM
3 7/31/2018 7:59:48 PM dining MOTION
1 7/31/2018 8:00:02 PM dining FPS: actual max 16.66
10 7/31/2018 8:00:54 PM ron 192.168.1.1: Logout, 1:06
3 7/31/2018 8:01:19 PM Annke1 MOTION


Any idea what those "Delete: nothing to do" messages are about?

But as you can see, it crashed about 2:52pm and then I manually restarted it at about 7:59pm.

I'm still trying to figure out how to extract useful information from Event Viewer - haven't had a chance to dive into that but it's on my plate for the weekend.

I rebooted the system less than 48 hours before this latest crash.

 

[crw030]

I run BI on a Win7 machine for 15 months, I don't run it "in Service Mode", so the UI is up all the time, and I connect to it from multiple devices all the time via the built-in BI web server. The machine has become unresponsive twice in that time, I suspect either due to leaving the UI up or due to the large amount of crap leftover on it from being an old repurposed WORK LAPTOP (or maybe because its a laptop!)

So basically I broke at least 4 cardinal rules of IPCT, and mine has only crashed twice in 15 months.

What cardinal (aka fenderman) rules you ask?

• Dont use a laptop
• Dont run with UI open all the time, run as a service if you can
• Dont record direct to detachable storage (yes my 4TB drive is connected via eSATA)
• Dont run anything else on the PC (I run a syslogd server for my network on it, nettime, plus all the other BI stuff like SunriseService, BIUpdateHelper and so forth)

I have the replacement built, updated my signature, and then haven't made time to copy 4TB of clips over and transfer BI license to the new computer, but I expect running as a Service with less bloatware I'll finally get to no-crash-ville.

 

[fenderman]

I run BI on a Win7 machine for 15 months, I don't run it "in Service Mode", so the UI is up all the time, and I connect to it from multiple devices all the time via the built-in BI web server. The machine has become unresponsive twice in that time, I suspect either due to leaving the UI up or due to the large amount of crap leftover on it from being an old repurposed WORK LAPTOP (or maybe because its a laptop!)

So basically I broke at least 4 cardinal rules of IPCT, and mine has only crashed twice in 15 months.

What cardinal (aka fenderman) rules you ask?

• Dont use a laptop
• Dont run with UI open all the time, run as a service if you can
• Dont record direct to detachable storage (yes my 4TB drive is connected via eSATA)
• Dont run anything else on the PC (I run a syslogd server for my network on it, nettime, plus all the other BI stuff like SunriseService, BIUpdateHelper and so forth)

I have the replacement built, updated my signature, and then haven't made time to copy 4TB of clips over and transfer BI license to the new computer, but I expect running as a Service with less bloatware I'll finally get to no-crash-ville.

to clarify, I do run most systems with the UI open, there is nothing wrong with that.

 

[crw030]

For some reason I thought I remembered reading not running BI as service, the UI was more likely to crash the recording core. So I always wrote my crashes off to the fact I cant run it as a Service yet. Might be remembering incorrectly.

Anyway, my "once a year or so" crash could easily be caused by one of the other 126 programs and patches installed on that computer or the fact I like to constantly tinker on things that aren't broken.

I guess based on what others have posted, seems like its pretty much set and forget. Will update about 300 days after I move it to the new computer.

 

[Skinny1]

Blue Iris has never crashed in the two years I have been running it.

 

[RROONNBB]

Thanks everybody - at least we've established that what I'm seeing is not normal. If I manage to track down something pertinent once I figure out Event Viewer a little more I'll post a follow-up.

 

[SouthernYankee]

Ok... back to work..
lets look at storage allocation.
1. provided a Screen shot of the Clip storage status (In BI click the three vertical bars button, select the tab Clip Storage).
2. provide screen shot of system storage ( two screen shots) for New and Stored space ( click GEAR button, select Clips and archiving tab) click new, then take a screen shot, click stored take screen shot.
3. screen shot of each camera storage, select a camera, click camera button, select record tab, take screen shot.

 

[RROONNBB]

Ok... back to work..
lets look at storage allocation.
1. provided a Screen shot of the Clip storage status (In BI click the three vertical bars button, select the tab Clip Storage).
2. provide screen shot of system storage ( two screen shots) for New and Stored space ( click GEAR button, select Clips and archiving tab) click new, then take a screen shot, click stored take screen shot.
3. screen shot of each camera storage, select a camera, click camera button, select record tab, take screen shot.

Ok, see attached. (And _thanks_ for the very concise instructions on how to get to these menus!)