[Freeswitch-users] Choppy sound with PCMU

Michael Jerris mike at jerris.com
Thu Dec 3 09:50:26 PST 2009 

I know people with hardware out there in production based on arm11 and those are pretty small processors, not sure how they compare to this.  In regards to the DISABLE_1MS_COND, try getting rid of that, it did increase performance on the high end but may be better for you on the low end with lower compute on idle busy loops.

Mike

On Dec 3, 2009, at 12:29 PM, eaf wrote:

> 
> I'm sorry if I sounded that way. Did mean to. :)
> 
> Yes, it's an embedded platform. It's an ALIX board with AMD Geode LX800 chip
> and 256MB of RAM. http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2d3.htm
> 
> Line offset difference is due to some minor logging changes I made to see
> who's allocating timers and how often. This way I found MOH streaming and
> that RTP still allocates timers even when it's set to none in the profile.
> 
> I feel that this platform turned out to be underpowered for FS because it
> cannot meet its scheduling expectations. I guess, some degree of kernel
> tweaking or setting priorities will fix that. Meanwhile I just got rid of
> the SQLDB 1ms thread via -nosql command line option, split sofia worker 1ms
> thread in two (one blocked and waiting for new commands in the SQL queue,
> the other one checking registrations and gateways with 1sec interval), and
> don't know yet what to do about the timer thread.
> 
> Again, I apologize for stupid or accusing questions, I'm just trying to see
> how FS can be made friendlier to this board. Or the board be made friendlier
> to FS ;)
> 
> 
> Anthony Minessale-2 wrote:
>> 
>> If you see that message then your machine/os/combo is having some problems
>> keeping up.
>> It's not the timer missing anything its the monotonic clock detecting a 1
>> second or more differential from what its next prediction for the time
>> should be.  The best way to trigger this would be to suspend FS with
>> control-z or attach to it with gdb blocking the entire process,  that 1ms
>> thread would have to miss 1000 iterations to trigger that warning.
>> 
>> Btw, that error message is at line 471 not 473 so you are using modified
>> code.
>> 
>> Its possible your box has a bad monotonic timer, you can set
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> under <settings> in switch.conf.xml
>> 
>> We are now starting to guess you are using some small embedded type
>> platform
>> perhaps?
>> I've run FS even on a nokia n810 and never caused that message to fire.
>> 
>> if 1 call can interrupt the cpu enough to  cause noticeable issues you
>> might
>> want to consider running the process at a
>> greater priority by using the -hp command line arg or at least nice it
>> 
>> Why don't you tell us the whole story about what OS/platform you are using
>> here rather that form conjectures about what is wrong with our code that
>> thousands of people are happy with.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 8:55 AM, eaf <erandr-junk at usa.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> Btw, I have these popping up in my logs from time to time:
>>> 
>>> 2009-12-03 09:42:06.035294 [DEBUG] switch_core_state_machine.c:314
>>> (sofia/external/xxxxx at 4.68.250.148) Running State Change CS_HANGUP
>>> 2009-12-03 09:42:06.035294 [CRIT] switch_time.c:473 Virtual Migration
>>> Detected! Syncing Clock
>>> 
>>> In this case an incoming call rang to both FS and Asterisk, Asterisk
>>> picked
>>> up, but the surge of activity made FS timer thread miss a beat or two.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> eaf wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Oh, it's not just one timer thread... Why, why is sql_thread keeps on
>>>> checking for messages every millisecond? Couldn't there be some
>>> signalling
>>>> implemented that will make the thread suspend on condition variable or
>>> a
>>>> socket/pipe in between?
>>>> 
>>>> #0  do_sleep (t=1000) at src/switch_time.c:109
>>>> #1  0xb7e5e215 in switch_core_sql_thread (thread=0xb7586ae8, obj=0x0)
>>> at
>>>> src/switch_core_sqldb.c:783
>>>> 
>>>> Why does this sofia_profile_worker_thread keeps on looping checking for
>>>> the queue? Have a semaphore!
>>>> 
>>>> #0  do_sleep (t=1000) at src/switch_time.c:109
>>>> #1  0xb73a4701 in sofia_profile_worker_thread_run (thread=0x80f3a30,
>>>> obj=0x80f2490) at sofia.c:978
>>>> 
>>>> Nothing's happening on the box, but there are three threads that
>>> pretend
>>>> to be actively busy with smth. Others at least sleep for hundreds of
>>>> milliseconds, not for one.
>>>> 
>>>> And there is even infrastructure present to do blocking pops: i.e. why
>>>> couldn't sqldb thread do queue_pop() instead of queue_trypop()
>>> intermixed
>>>> with 1ms sleeps? This looping is such a waste...
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> eaf wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> As I see it, switch_cond_next() currently is just a do_sleep(1000).
>>> Yes,
>>>>> it could be mapped to a 1ms timer, but "#define DISABLE_1MS_COND"
>>>>> overrides that.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Yeah, there is a global timestamp... It's easy to workaround that for
>>> RTP
>>>>> who calls switch_micro_time_now()... But if somebody accesses
>>>>> runtime.timestamp directly, it's gonna be tough to grep for that. If
>>> only
>>>>> this was C++...
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'll play around. Never liked polling too much. Never could've guessed
>>>>> that polling could be so useful for scalability ;) My naive
>>>>> implementation would've pulled timestamp via system calls and would've
>>>>> done sleeping by passing exact interval to select() instead of syncing
>>>>> with a pacing thread. Which would be dead-quiet at idle time, but, of
>>>>> course, would stop scaling at some point due to excessive number of
>>>>> system calls.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Michael Jerris wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> In short.  No, you can not for many reasons. The milisecond tic is
>>>>>> used throughout the code even when there is not any calls up.  You
>>> can
>>>>>> grep for switch_cond_next if you would like to see where but it is
>>>>>> required to keep our global timestamp and for pacing the scheduler
>>>>>> among other services that run all the time.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Mike
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Dec 2, 2009, at 7:31 PM, eaf <erandr-junk at usa.net> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Can I reduce resolution of that timer thread 10 times? I mean, I
>>>>>>> glanced
>>>>>>> through the code, and see that among others (are there others?) RTP
>>>>>>> and IVR
>>>>>>> set up their timers that are subsequently managed by this thread.
>>>>>>> RTP timers
>>>>>>> should be eliminated by that setting you've suggested. IVR timers
>>>>>>> are set at
>>>>>>> 20ms... So, if the thread is set to wake up every 10ms instead of
>>>>>>> 1ms it
>>>>>>> should be able to wake up those IVR timers just fine. Right?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> That's a cool design to have one dedicated thread that maintains
>>>>>>> accurate
>>>>>>> timing and then broadcasts via condition variables to hundreds of
>>>>>>> other
>>>>>>> threads events that they can register for. I'm sure it's one of the
>>>>>>> reasons
>>>>>>> why FS scales so much better than Asterisk. But for poor low-end
>>>>>>> setups that
>>>>>>> sit in the closet, eat only 6W of power and hardly ever run more
>>>>>>> than two
>>>>>>> calls at the same time, can I hack it somehow to be more UNIX-
>>>>>>> friendly? I.e.
>>>>>>> make it stuck in select() or recv() when there is nothing to do,
>>> call
>>>>>>> clock_gettime() right from the thread that wants and when it wants
>>>>>>> to know
>>>>>>> current time?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Say, what if that thread is made to suspend on a condition variable
>>>>>>> in case
>>>>>>> if there are no timers registered in TIMER_MATRIX? Then, if some
>>> other
>>>>>>> thread comes up and adds its timer into the matrix, it could wake up
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>> timer thread and enjoy accurate timing as needed, on demand? And in-
>>>>>>> between
>>>>>>> the calls, when there is no RTP or IVR, it will all go silent? I
>>> mean,
>>>>>>> sitting on a wait queue in the kernel is way better than go back and
>>>>>>> forth
>>>>>>> incrementing counters that nobody even needs at the moment?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Anthony Minessale-2 wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> idle is a 4 letter word to a realtime application.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> The core keeps a single high-priority thread to keep 1ms timing and
>>>>>>>> expands
>>>>>>>> that broadcasting
>>>>>>>> to hundreds or thousand of threads who need accurate timing.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Your choppy audio is caused by linksys lying about the packet len
>>>>>>>> that
>>>>>>>> it's
>>>>>>>> using and we set our timer
>>>>>>>> to the wrong speed.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> View this message in context:
>>>>>>> 
>>> http://old.nabble.com/Choppy-sound-with-PCMU-tp26594250p26619085.html
>>>>>>> Sent from the Freeswitch-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
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>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> View this message in context:
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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Anthony Minessale II
>> 
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> 
> -- 
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