Gqrx freezes when changing mode

[Digital]

First I have to say how great Gqrx is: it is the only SDR software that works efficiently enough to run on my computer, and I find it is by far the most intuitive and enjoyable to use. I really look forward to future developments!

Can anyone help? I find that Gqrx frequently freezes when I change mode (e.g. AM to FM to USB etc.). There doesn't seem to be a pattern to this except that it will happen every time after several changes. It's really annoying, and I badly want to stop it but I can't find much reference to the problem.

I am running the 64 bit version of Ubuntu 12.04. I am using an RTL dongle.

Thanks in advance.

[Alexandru Csete]

On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 5:03 PM, Digital <sander...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> First I have to say how great Gqrx is: it is the only SDR software that
> works efficiently enough to run on my computer, and I find it is by far the
> most intuitive and enjoyable to use. I really look forward to future
> developments!
>
> Can anyone help? I find that Gqrx frequently freezes when I change mode
> (e.g. AM to FM to USB etc.). There doesn't seem to be a pattern to this
> except that it will happen every time after several changes. It's really
> annoying, and I badly want to stop it but I can't find much reference to the
> problem.

I've seen such behavior some time ago but it disappeared again -
probably due to an update. Which version of GNU Radio and which
version of gqrx are you using?

Alex

[Steven Moughan]

On Wednesday, November 7, 2012 12:33:20 AM UTC, Alexandru Csete wrote:

I've seen such behavior some time ago but it disappeared again -
probably due to an update. Which version of GNU Radio and which
version of gqrx are you using?

Alex

I can confirm I have been seeing the same issues, however I have also experienced it when opening the data window or while enabling the FFT options (under view).

OS: Ubuntu 12.04
PC: Dell Inspiron 9300
RX: Generic RTL2832U (e.g. hama nano) / FC0013 Tuner

GnuRadio was built recently (2 or 3 days ago), using the build_gnuradio script.
GQRX is version 2.1 as per GIT (built 2 or 3 days ago).

I can't really think of any other useful information to add, if there is any further info you need; please let me know and I would be happy to help.

Steven.

[Digital]

Thanks for your replies.

I used the build script for gnuradio as well and I installed gqex from the GIT repository. I did both on the same day, I think about 2/3 weeks ago (so end of October). I don't know which exact version I have of gqrx as it just says 'version 0.0.0'!

I did see yesterday that there is a new master of gqrx in the GIT repository, so I suppose it might be worth downloading and building that? What do you think? Have I got that right?

Thanks again!

[Alexandru Csete]

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 1:11 PM, Digital <sander...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for your replies.
>
> I used the build script for gnuradio as well and I installed gqex from the
> GIT repository. I did both on the same day, I think about 2/3 weeks ago (so
> end of October). I don't know which exact version I have of gqrx as it just
> says 'version 0.0.0'!

That is intentional and indicates that gqrx has been built in
"release" mode. You can get a real dev snapshot version number by
building in "debug" mode, see e.g. this screenshot where to select
that in Qt Creator:
http://www.symlab.org/wiki/images/6/6d/QtCreator2_RunSettingSelector.png
(remember to clean & rerun qmake & rebuild afterwards).

In debug mode you will see a lots of debug messages and there may be
some hints about where the crash occurs, though it is probably not at
the same place from time to time.

> I did see yesterday that there is a new master of gqrx in the GIT
> repository, so I suppose it might be worth downloading and building that?

There have been no changes to the master branch for many weeks, so you
are fine. I have been moving branches around yesterday, but now the
master branch is back in a state where it was weeks ago.
There are some recent changes merged into the gr-audio branch but I
don't think it works on linux at the moment (works on mac though).

Alex

[Alexandru Csete]

Steven,

Thanks for the info. This provides new information as I have too have
only experienced it during demodulator change.

Alex

[Digital]

I keep trying to reply and my posts keep getting deleted!

[Digital]

OK - I'll try again:

I've tried rebuilding and running gqrx in debug mode, but I don't understand the messages. Would you be prepared to take a look?

Thanks

On Tuesday, November 6, 2012 4:03:58 PM UTC, Digital wrote:

[Alexandru Csete]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 12:35 PM, Digital <sander...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> OK - I'll try again:
>
> I've tried rebuilding and running gqrx in debug mode, but I don't understand
> the messages. Would you be prepared to take a look?

Yes, please post it somewhere.

PS: I don't why your messages were deleted. I haven't seen anything or
gotten any notifications.

Alex

[Digital]

Thanks.

Here: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=NzevvH0f 

(Hope that works!)

[Alexandru Csete]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 7:12 PM, Digital <sander...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Thanks.
>
> Here: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=NzevvH0f
>

You get a lot of "OOOOO...." which means device overrun - i.e. the rtl
produces samples faster than it can be processed. Try something lower,
e.g. 1024000.

Note: if you change the sample rate in the I/O config dialog and press
OK gqrx will crash; however, when you start again it should use the
new sample rate.

Alex

[Digital]

Thanks Alex.

Lowering the sample rate does seem to reduce the frequency of program crashes, but even at the lowest rate it will still eventually crash.

Perhaps this is simply down to my computer not being very powerful?

I've been using my rtl dongle with an upconverter this evening to receive HF, and it's been more bearable with fewer program crashes as I find I need to switch between modes frequently in HF, so that is certainly progress. 

[Steven Moughan]

Hi Alex,

I have rebuilt a dev version of gqrx and have managed to recreate the crash by enabling the data window. The log isn't terribly forthcoming with information, so here is some of the output coming up to the crash - http://pastebin.com/TBKzkyUy .

You will notice, I enable the AFSK1200 decoder, and before the window can open, the program becomes unresponsive and the easiest way to end it is to Ctrl+C or killall gqrx (when running without CLI interaction). Although this time I have not left it to run for a reasonable amount of time to ensure it wasn't just lagged, I have done so in the past and it has failed to recover.

In relation to Digital mentioning his computer not being terribly powerful, that is also the case here.

steven@devb0x:~/gqrx-build$ cat /proc/cpuinfo |grep name
model name    : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.60GHz
steven@devb0x:~/gqrx-build$

I hope the information is of some use to you, if you need / want me to try anything and report back; just let me know and I'd be happy to help.

73's,
Steven

[Steven Moughan]

Apologies for the double reply and forgetting to remove the irrelevant historical data from the previous post, but I should also mention that I am running at 1024000 samples/sec.

-Steven

[Paul Warren]

I'm also seeing this with the latest gqrx, change from narrowFM to
Wideband, and the fft display freezes. It sometimes just does this
randomly too, rtl_tcp starts showing missed packets (ll+ increasing).

Was looking forward to doing some listening tonight, but it's just not
working for me at all! rtl_tcp is segfaulting a lot more often than it
used to as well, serve me right for doing a git pull I spose.

:(

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Paul Warren
p dot a dot warren at gmail dot com
pawarren.blogspot.com

[Alexandru Csete]

Guys,

Thanks for the reports. The issue is on my list with high priority but
I will not have time to look at it until next week. Please post any
new reports or details here - the more info we have the better.

Alex

[Paul Warren]

No worries mate, best of luck with the rocket engine! Which may have
been fired already, will go check google+ for videos :)

[Alexandru Csete]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Paul Warren <p.a.w...@gmail.com> wrote:
> No worries mate, best of luck with the rocket engine! Which may have
> been fired already, will go check google+ for videos :)

Yes, it has been fired :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq4SJlv691U

It will be fired again on December 30.

Alex

[Alexandru Csete]

Greetings,

I'm happy to report that we have finally managed to triage this issue
and even find a fix. Actually, there is not much to fix, except
upgrade packages.

I believe that the app freezes issue happens on systems with Boost
1.46 (Ubuntu 12.04, Linux Mint 13 and others). This version of Boost
is actually tagged as "bad boost" for these very reasons and gnuradio
should have failed building on these platforms, see this message:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnuradio/2013-02/msg00267.html

As it turns out, the check failed to detect the "bad boost" and we had
no problem installing gnuradio. Tom is going to fix this, but that's
not going to help gqrx.

The fix for gqrx is either to upgrade the OS, or try to upgrade Boost
from 1.46 to 1.48. Although 1.48 is available for both Ubuntu 12.04
and Linux Mint 13, upgrading can be problematic because of some
inexplicable mess the two versions have ended in. A solution that
worked for me is listed here:
https://github.com/csete/gqrx/pull/58#issuecomment-14138239

Feedback or improved instructions is welcome. I really believe this
fixes the freezing issue. I have a small test program that triggers
the issue after 50-100 iterations when using boost 1.46. With Boost
1.48 it has been running for thousands of iterations without any
freeze or crash :)

Alex

[Digital]

It's great to see a fix, but I've just seen what to do to upgrade Boost - I think it's probably best just to replace the OS. Seems simpler and more likely to succeed! 

I've been putting it off for a while: I guess it's time for a rebuild!

Thanks once again, Alex.

[Digital]

Update: I've done my long-overdue rebuilt, this time to Xubuntu.

Got Gqrx working with the RTLSDR easily. Whole thing works beautifully well.

No sign of the problem with Gqrx freezing when changing mode so far!

[Alexandru Csete]

Thanks for the update. I'm glad to hear that your problems are resolved as well.

Alex

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