Constant Lock Ups - Completely Unresponsive This Evening

[Surge]

Ruleset: PFRPG2

My group just had to give up on a session this evening because FGU constantly (every few minutes) kept locking up, and we had to wait for many minutes every time for it to catch up and become responsive again. It has never been this bad before.

It would even lock up when no one did anything, and the time between the lock ups was shorter than the time we had to wait for it to come back.

I have attached the log from immediately after one such lock up, where it eventually recovered (after >5 minutes). If you need anything else to help diagnose, am happy to share what is needed.

Kind regards.

[Haeldin]

The latest version of FGU was destroying the CPU on my Mac. I had only 10% idle with that and Zoom running with FGU doing 80%+ of the work over time.

[Surge]

It wasn't the hardware in our case this evening. At least not according to my Task Manager. Computer was buttery smooth, just FGU completely unresponsive.

[srinity]

I am here to post my own 'FGU went crazy thread', but completely concur. Last night felt like several steps backward in my group as well, with players losing connections, lots of locking up around the group, and poor performance.

[Slamoo]

And here I thought I was going crazy. FGU does indeed lock up and take considerably longer to load/populate than FGC. It is absolutely unplayable in this state.

[Griffin]

I've also had issues like this. Seems to get worse the longer the session goes. It does seem to struggle the most the first time I click things. Like the first time I click on "NPCs" for the session, FGU locks up for a full 2-4 minutes, but after that it usually only takes 10-30 seconds.

But last night in my session trying to click around PCs sheets was locking up the session for a couple minutes each time. It just became too much and we ended the session early. I just thought it was because we have 6 players + the DM for our game, but maybe there's other causes.

[Slamoo]

As I understand it, FGU has changed the way it parses and fills things. I think it does it on the spot now as opposed to pre-loading (which is a huge step backwards in performance) and it shows in all aspects of the FGU program. It was a poor design decision and unless they got an xml/lua parsing wizard optimizing those scripts/code.. its something that we will have to find workarounds for ourselves. The memory management also seems wonky at times... almost like a memory leak (noticeable when running longer sessions). I haven't seen the code myself, but judging on how the program is functioning/running in its current state.. I'm confident these are the primary issues. Time to elect for patience while they sort things out.

As a non-affiliated person.. my personal advice is we either go back to FGC or find another VTT until FGU is in a working state. For me, that looks like another vtt as I don't personally have a FGC ultimate license.

[Surge]

I've also had issues like this. Seems to get worse the longer the session goes. It does seem to struggle the most the first time I click things. Like the first time I click on "NPCs" for the session, FGU locks up for a full 2-4 minutes, but after that it usually only takes 10-30 seconds.

This wasn't that kind of lock up, where it takes some time to open something for the first time. This was occurring constantly, without having to do anything to prompt it. We were between 2 and 3 hours into the session when we had to give up because of the lock ups. To be fair, it didn't start out doing it, but when it started, it was constant. We even all relaunched FGU and restarted the session to see if that helped - it didn't. In our previous sessions, it had never been like this before. I would suggest the cause was the map we had open, but it's the same map we've used in previous sessions which ran brilliantly.

[Willot]

mmmm looking at the log One of your players kept attempting to connect with a client that was out of date.
37415
FGU wont shut down because of this. It will load in the other players as they connect, but as this one player keeps trying to connect and getting rejected its slows everything down.
Certainly at the beginning.
Also You had some extensions loaded through this, Clock Adjuster and Better save description. When this sort of thing happens try restarting and removing the Extensions, the FGU code might be getting unjustly accused...

An Update may of moved or changed some of the FGU around and things arent where the extension expects them to be, but that doesn't stop it from continually trying and sucking up your clock cycles

[ddavison]

Was Remade one of your users or an anonymous user you don’t know?

[Surge]

Was Remade one of your users or an anonymous user you don’t know?

One of the group. A friend I've known for about 20 years.

At the beginning of the evening, I did ask if everyone updated, and they said they had... Hmm.

[Willot]

One of the group. A friend I've known for about 20 years.

At the beginning of the evening, I did ask if everyone updated, and they said they had... Hmm.

Player: Yeah,yeah Ive updated
DM: Today?
Player well, no 3 days ago.... But I did update!
DM: <Head plant> Sigh....

[Surge]

Was Remade one of your users or an anonymous user you don’t know?

Just confirmed with Remade. He had updated. We were running the same version.

[bmos]

Sometimes the update button doesn't turn red quickly enough to get people's attention.
When I run into issues (in Unity especially) I always have everyone shut it down and update.
I've had updates come out mid-game a few times which can be quite confusing.

[Surge]

Sometimes the update button doesn't turn red quickly enough to get people's attention.

I asked him to look at the version in the launcher (we haven't played since that fateful evening, and he wouldn't have even opened FG since then. It is the same version as mine.

I'm wondering if one possible cause could be other connection attempts from outside the group. Perhaps random bots trying to make random connections. We use Direct IP and I have a dynamic DNS set up on duckdns.org to point to my IP (for reasons other than FG), where I get the others to connect via the URL instead of IP. I've also never bothered with a password, so maybe it was random attempts to connect to the port that FG uses from some bots or something?

When I just asked everyone to check the version they were using for that session, one of the players said they had some problems updating:


Might have been mine. I updated but everytime the game froze it wouldn't let me back in until I updated again. Updated 3 times in total

This person is on the same connection as the previously mentioned Remade, if that makes a difference.

[Slamoo]

On the latest update, things are somewhat better. I would suggest trying it again. Still rough around the edges, but seems to be a drastic improvement in performance.

[cevikd]

Player: Yeah,yeah Ive updated
DM: Today?
Player well, no 3 days ago.... But I did update!
DM: <Head plant> Sigh....

I get in voice chat 30 minutes early and say "Be sure to check for updates" as soon as anyone logs in. They always say "you know you don't have to tell me that every week, right?" To which I reply "I know, it's really everyone else I'm worried about, I just say it to everyone to be fair."

[Surge]

On the latest update, things are somewhat better. I would suggest trying it again. Still rough around the edges, but seems to be a drastic improvement in performance.

We've got another session either this Saturday or Monday. I'm going to ask everyone to check their version in the launched before joining this time, instead of just asking them to update. I'm also going to add a password to the server in case it was some random outside connection attempts to the port.

[Raific]

I noticed the same thing since the 7/7 update. Windows opened a bit quicker but as the game moved on, things got much worse. We played for about 4 hours with a DM + 7 and by the end, it was absolutely painful. It also got so people would roll and the app would not even acknowledge they rolled vs their target so I had to do everything manually. Not the end of the world but frustrating.

[Surge]

Update from this evening.

Got everyone to update and check their versions. Put a password on the server.

The massive lock ups still happened.

Had to restart FG. Tried using the cloud based server browser instead of direct IP.

One player couldn't connect. Searching for my name didn't do anything.

Asked him to force a full update from the Updater. He didn't have the option.

Asked him what version the updater was. He said 2020-04 or -05-something.

Asked him to download and reinstall FGU. He was then able to search for and join my game.

There were then only much milder lock ups from then on (but didn't play too long after that to confirm improvement).

Checking the console after a lock up (which kept happening even after all but one person disconnected), it was during an aborted connection to the server browser and a reconnection.

Next session we'll go back to Direct IP and see if the cause was indeed the outdated updater. Fingers crossed.

[JSCHERTLER]

^^^ Same.

It's been a regular frustration for my group for weeks now. I can't seem to figure out what the issue is. Everyone is updated, server goes live, and I'm even hosting it LAN. (Cloud had the same issues, but even worse for me). It was kinda insane, dice rolls would freeze the game long enough to grab a drink and come back. Several times, just clicking the map or advancing the combat tracker would make the application totally unresponsive. Things were just lagging behind so poorly. I really want this to work, because I personally enjoy the application a lot, but my players are getting very frustrated in combat encounters.

[LordEntrails]

^^^ Same.

It's been a regular frustration for my group for weeks now. I can't seem to figure out what the issue is. Everyone is updated, server goes live, and I'm even hosting it LAN. (Cloud had the same issues, but even worse for me). It was kinda insane, dice rolls would freeze the game long enough to grab a drink and come back. Several times, just clicking the map or advancing the combat tracker would make the application totally unresponsive. Things were just lagging behind so poorly. I really want this to work, because I personally enjoy the application a lot, but my players are getting very frustrated in combat encounters.
Verify the build date code for the GM and every player. Disable all extensions, test. Unload all modules, test.

[JSCHERTLER]

Verify the build date code for the GM and every player. Disable all extensions, test. Unload all modules, test.

Good suggestions. I'd actually ascertained this potential solve by reading the forums already. I don't have any extensions (including the fonts, etc. that people forget are extensions), all users are updating prior to session, and the only module I've loaded is the one in active play. It's not always the same issue. Some sessions have disconnecting issues, others have latency problems like this one. I'm not sure what a "fair benchmark" of performance looks like though for average users. If an average session is 3 hours of game play with 4-5 users and no disconnects during game play, or latency crashes, I'm under performing. However, if that's just the state of the beta right now, there's not much to be done, but wait for improvements. I'll track my logs for my next session and post them to support on the forums.

One consistent issue that's always happened is a lag every time a player joins the server. This has happened to me on both cloud and LAN, so I suspect it may be an issue with FGU at the moment.

[Trenloe]

One user recently reported big lags and tracked it down to a very large XML file in their campaign moduledb directory. All of those GMs who have experienced recent lockups like mentioned in this thread, please post a screenshot of your <FG app data>\campaign\<your campaign name>\moduledb directory for the campaign having issues (showing file details so that the file size can be seen). Get to <FG app data> by clicking the folder icon in the top left of the FG window before loading a campaign.

[Surge]

One user recently reported big lags and tracked it down to a very large XML file in their campaign moduledb directory. All of those GMs who have experienced recent lockups like mentioned in this thread, please post a screenshot of your <FG app data>\campaign\<your campaign name>\moduledb directory for the campaign having issues (showing file details so that the file size can be seen). Get to <FG app data> by clicking the folder icon in the top left of the FG window before loading a campaign.

Can't imagine that is the cause for my lock ups. At least I hope 319 KB isn't considered big by FG standards...

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=37699&stc=1&d=1594715888

[Trenloe]

Can't imagine that is the cause for my lock ups. At least I hope 319 KB isn't considered big by FG standards...

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=37699&stc=1&d=1594715888
That's fine. The user who reported the issue was seeing a 100MB XML file.

To cover off all bases around this, how big is your campaign db.xml file?

[Surge]

To cover off all bases around this, how big is your campaign db.xml file?

db.xml in the campaign folder is ~9 MB.

I am hopeful that next session will be vastly improved as we identified a player with an old Updater that wasn't able to update it self and had him reinstall FGU entirely, which fixed his inability to connect to me through the server browser. In fact, I'm going to ask everyone to check the version of their Updater before it starts.

[Trenloe]

db.xml in the campaign folder is ~9 MB.
That's a little bit larger than average, but not massively so. What are the types of data stored in the db.xml file with a lot of records? Is it PC character sheets, NPCs, etc.?

The reason I'm asking about this is that FG auto saves the campaign and moduledb database every 5 minutes. If it has a lot of data to save this might cause the GM instance to become overloaded for a few second. I know 9MB doesn't sound like a lot, but it's basically a dump of what's in memory into a FG XML file - with many, many records this could have a processing hit as FG converts the data in memory into XML files with tens of thousands of lines.

I'm not saying this is the issue, but it's worth looking at and considering...

[srinity]

Its definitely not limited to those with larger .xml files. In both my campaigns, all the .xml files are 10s to hundreds of KB only, and it still happens.

[Moon Wizard]

I'll probably need a copy of the logs immediately when the issue happens for both the GM and player. Also, I'll need a copy of the campaign folder. See this post for more information on the data I need:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?59982

Regards,
JPG