Go Back   Cockos Incorporated Forums > REAPER Forums > REAPER for Linux

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 08-02-2022, 08:27 AM   #1
reapercurious
Human being with feelings
 
reapercurious's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 1,890
Default What's it called when Reaper eats up 16 GB of memory for no reason?

Of course there's a reason, but what's the technical term for when Reaper or a DAW spawns 20 processes each of which tries to take 30% of 16GB of Ram and then stops the computer from working until you need to press the reset button on the computer's case?

and more importantly, how can a DAW or any program be prevented from doing that?

(linux)
reapercurious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-02-2022, 09:15 AM   #2
Glennbo
Human being with feelings
 
Glennbo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Planet Earth
Posts: 9,055
Default

Sounds like a faulty mouse button if you are saying you launch REAPER and get 20 copies of it.
__________________
Glennbo
Hear My Music - Click Me!!!
--
Glennbo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-02-2022, 12:44 PM   #3
audiojunkie
Human being with feelings
 
audiojunkie's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2011
Posts: 971
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by reapercurious View Post
Of course there's a reason, but what's the technical term for when Reaper or a DAW spawns 20 processes each of which tries to take 30% of 16GB of Ram and then stops the computer from working until you need to press the reset button on the computer's case?

and more importantly, how can a DAW or any program be prevented from doing that?

(linux)
Can you make Reaper processes are closed and start Reaper from a command prompt, and monitor the activity? After closing all Reaper processes, go to your reaper folder and run reaper by typing: ./reaper Do you still get the 20 processes then? This will help confirm the suspicion (or help point to a different cause).
audiojunkie is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-03-2022, 09:41 AM   #4
reapercurious
Human being with feelings
 
reapercurious's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 1,890
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Glennbo View Post
Sounds like a faulty mouse button if you are saying you launch REAPER and get 20 copies of it.
it was running for 25 hours and probably a plugin went buggy. but the concerning bit is that plugins are allowed to try to consume more than 100% of a cpu, as well as presumably eating up more RAM than is possible. I just wanted to know the technical term for what is happening there.

Quote:
Originally Posted by audiojunkie View Post
Can you make Reaper processes are closed and start Reaper from a command prompt, and monitor the activity? After closing all Reaper processes, go to your reaper folder and run reaper by typing: ./reaper Do you still get the 20 processes then? This will help confirm the suspicion (or help point to a different cause).
This doesn't happen every time, but I am using Yabridge a lot and that introduces all kinds of potential issues of course.

Main thing is, I think there should be some kind of watchdog to keep track of if Reaper is trying to stream more than it can, and keep a tally of the RAM its plugins are trying to ask for and maybe throw an error message if you reach the point where all the RAM is being used, because under normal circumstances you probably won't need 16GB to handle one project unless it's a feature film in 8k I guess.
reapercurious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-03-2022, 09:51 AM   #5
Glennbo
Human being with feelings
 
Glennbo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Planet Earth
Posts: 9,055
Default

Even in Windows if a plugin jumps off the track, I don't think REAPER could do anything about it. If it was a Windows plugin, running in WINE and being bridged there's probably even less of a chance that REAPER could do anything.

Sounds like you might have a plugin with a memory leak, where instead of staying within its boundary, it leaks into other areas of memory and causes problems. REAPER has some kind of sandboxing or firewalling available to use on buggy plugins, but I've never used any of it.
__________________
Glennbo
Hear My Music - Click Me!!!
--
Glennbo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-03-2022, 10:17 AM   #6
reapercurious
Human being with feelings
 
reapercurious's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 1,890
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Glennbo View Post
Even in Windows if a plugin jumps off the track, I don't think REAPER could do anything about it. If it was a Windows plugin, running in WINE and being bridged there's probably even less of a chance that REAPER could do anything.

Sounds like you might have a plugin with a memory leak, where instead of staying within its boundary, it leaks into other areas of memory and causes problems. REAPER has some kind of sandboxing or firewalling available to use on buggy plugins, but I've never used any of it.
definitely think it's a buggy plugin kind of thing. I haven't noticed any difference between running plugins in buggy plugin mode or separate or native processes because they still KO reaper. the ideal is if only that plugin would die and leave Reaper running. that feature seemed to work better in windows than linux. i crash reaper every time i go in for a sesh. cest la vie.
reapercurious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-03-2022, 11:12 AM   #7
audiojunkie
Human being with feelings
 
audiojunkie's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2011
Posts: 971
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by reapercurious View Post
it was running for 25 hours and probably a plugin went buggy. but the concerning bit is that plugins are allowed to try to consume more than 100% of a cpu, as well as presumably eating up more RAM than is possible. I just wanted to know the technical term for what is happening there.



This doesn't happen every time, but I am using Yabridge a lot and that introduces all kinds of potential issues of course.

Main thing is, I think there should be some kind of watchdog to keep track of if Reaper is trying to stream more than it can, and keep a tally of the RAM its plugins are trying to ask for and maybe throw an error message if you reach the point where all the RAM is being used, because under normal circumstances you probably won't need 16GB to handle one project unless it's a feature film in 8k I guess.
Sounds like a good idea to me!
audiojunkie is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-03-2022, 11:13 AM   #8
audiojunkie
Human being with feelings
 
audiojunkie's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2011
Posts: 971
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Glennbo View Post
Even in Windows if a plugin jumps off the track, I don't think REAPER could do anything about it. If it was a Windows plugin, running in WINE and being bridged there's probably even less of a chance that REAPER could do anything.

Sounds like you might have a plugin with a memory leak, where instead of staying within its boundary, it leaks into other areas of memory and causes problems. REAPER has some kind of sandboxing or firewalling available to use on buggy plugins, but I've never used any of it.
Very possibly a memory leak
audiojunkie is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-03-2022, 11:16 AM   #9
audiojunkie
Human being with feelings
 
audiojunkie's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2011
Posts: 971
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by reapercurious View Post
definitely think it's a buggy plugin kind of thing. I haven't noticed any difference between running plugins in buggy plugin mode or separate or native processes because they still KO reaper. the ideal is if only that plugin would die and leave Reaper running. that feature seemed to work better in windows than linux. i crash reaper every time i go in for a sesh. cest la vie.
The things that bug me is when I try to troubleshoot a plugin, and run Reaper from the command line, only to see a message saying, "Killed" when it crashes. That is not a helpful error message at all. I'd love to get a more verbose error that would tell me what killed Reaper and why. More things for the feature request list, I guess. *shrug*
audiojunkie is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-03-2022, 12:18 PM   #10
Glennbo
Human being with feelings
 
Glennbo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Planet Earth
Posts: 9,055
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by reapercurious View Post
definitely think it's a buggy plugin kind of thing. I haven't noticed any difference between running plugins in buggy plugin mode or separate or native processes because they still KO reaper. the ideal is if only that plugin would die and leave Reaper running. that feature seemed to work better in windows than linux. i crash reaper every time i go in for a sesh. cest la vie.
I would create a project specifically to nail down the bad plugin. Actually, I did that before in Windows with REAPER. I'd add one plugin each time I'd mess with the project, and then open it, run it, and close it for a few days. If the issue didn't happen (REAPER spontaneously vaporizing), then I'd add in one of the other plugins I used a lot. I finally nailed it down to some reverb I was using a lot (maybe FreeverbToo) and once I stopped using that plugin, REAPER stopped vaporizing on me randomly.
__________________
Glennbo
Hear My Music - Click Me!!!
--
Glennbo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-05-2022, 12:48 PM   #11
reapercurious
Human being with feelings
 
reapercurious's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 1,890
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Glennbo View Post
I would create a project specifically to nail down the bad plugin. Actually, I did that before in Windows with REAPER. I'd add one plugin each time I'd mess with the project, and then open it, run it, and close it for a few days. If the issue didn't happen (REAPER spontaneously vaporizing), then I'd add in one of the other plugins I used a lot. I finally nailed it down to some reverb I was using a lot (maybe FreeverbToo) and once I stopped using that plugin, REAPER stopped vaporizing on me randomly.
the problem with doing that is there are a lot of links in the chain. I'm using a lot of plugins ranging from vst2 32/64 win vst3, and native linux. i've had native linux plugs vanquish reaper so i'm not prejudiced against bridged wine plugins.

another link is the wine version, the yabridge version, the reaper version, the opengl stuff, etc.

yesterday i made a massive improvement because for some unknown reason i was running in a RT kernel, and i was sure i wasn't. switched to the stable kernel and erased the RT kernel post haste. I thought I was home free for a while. I think i noticed an improvement at least. but then today happened:

today i had an annoying situation where the graphics in reaper turned really sluggish and clicking on drop down menu items was massively delayed for highlighting. i bypassed all the plugins in the project and it was still a graphical slug fest. opened a new tab and another project and the new tab played fine. restarted reaper and the project that was sluggish played fine again. wonder what on earth causes graphical sludge. one thing was that in HTOP reaper was using 90% of the cpu but Reaper only showed 3% cpu usage. and mind you i checked this with all the fx bypassed. i sense that it could be a yabridge thing but i dare not cast any aspersions until i know for sure.
reapercurious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-05-2022, 01:22 PM   #12
Glennbo
Human being with feelings
 
Glennbo's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Planet Earth
Posts: 9,055
Default

The GUI getting slow-mo I've seen when I have exhausted or fragmented memory so much that REAPER struggles. I've not seen that since building my Ryzen 3700X with 16GB RAM, but on my previous Intel I5 with 6GB RAM I could load up a couple big Superior Drummer 2 drum kits and make REAPER either sluggish or vaporize.

I never open more than a single project at a time, even though I've got 16GB now. I just see it like I'm going to give the one project I'm working on all the memory and CPU that isn't being used by the OS, rather than sharing it with a second or third project open simultaneously.
__________________
Glennbo
Hear My Music - Click Me!!!
--
Glennbo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-05-2022, 01:25 PM   #13
reapercurious
Human being with feelings
 
reapercurious's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 1,890
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Glennbo View Post

I never open more than a single project at a time, even though I've got 16GB now. I just see it like I'm going to give the one project I'm working on all the memory and CPU that isn't being used by the OS, rather than sharing it with a second or third project open simultaneously.
to be clear, i was getting the graphical sluggishness before opening a new tab to see if the new tab would be sluggish, and it was smooth. but the first tab remained sluggish until i restarted Reaper and opened the project again in which case it was smooth again.
reapercurious is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 11:40 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.