HUD Displays, UI doesn't after "Tuning" Postgres.

[the_funkmeister]

Tried installing PT4 into a VirtualBox'ed VM on one of my more powerful machines to test out the tuning capabilities for Postgres -- The VM's Specs are:

8GiB RAM (host has 32)
1x SATA based 25GiB Disk, with Host I/O use turned on (the default for Linux hosts)
4x CPUs with VT-X turned on
IO/APIC support ticked
2D Video Acceleration (no 3D)
1000M Intel Desktop NIC
No USB Controller
No Sound
No Serial Ports
and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit installed.

The only applications installed are Chrome, the Cake, Party and Stars software (no customisations, except for hand histories being saved) and PT 4b18 -- it's a brand new freshly installed VM.

Took a VirtualBox snapshot before doing any hand importing, then attempted to import a 25k sample of hands (NLHE Cash).

Importing and _not clicking_ the "Tuning Postgres" button in Housekeeping gives me about 50h/sec and runs normally, the UI is snappy and the HUD works off 50 hands on Stars.

Rolling Back to the pre-imported snapshot & tuning the Postgres DB gives me about 62h/sec and runs normally until I start any of the poker clients, where the UI goes to a white space with "Not Responding" in the title bar -- the HUD works, but it only updates every second hand (so opponents have 0, 2, 4, etc hands).

Task Manager shows 0% CPU use for PokerTracker, which was around 6-8% when clients were running, and the Memory is around 75M when a client is running & is now a solid 40M with no clients running.

Killing it doesn't seem to do anything either, a reboot is the only thing that fixes it -- have reverted the tuning in housekeeping after shutting down and restarting Windows and everything seems normal again.

On a similar spec'd VM on the same host (with 2x 300GiB drives) which is my primary poker box, PT3 works fine (with Postgres 9.1 64-bit) and importing cash hands usually averages 100-110h/sec, although I self tuned the Postgres configuration with the help of the forums here, my own knowledge of DB tuning and some posts from DC.

Any ideas where to look, or what to send on so you guys can diagnose it?

[kraada]

It sounds like the tuning may be a bit too aggressive for you. I'll notify the developer who worked on these profiles and have him take a look at this thread and we'll figure out the appropriate next step. Thank you for the detailed report and your willingness to help - we really appreciate it.

[the_funkmeister]

Thanks kraada -- If it helps, I can supply my known-good 8.3 and 9.1 based Postgres configurations for PT3 too.

[the_funkmeister]

Just wanted to update this & say it does exactly the same thing on b19 -- I noticed the release notes mentioned tweaking of lower memory setups, but the high level one still has 75-80% the performance of an untuned one.

[kraada]

Even if you revert and re-run tuning you get the same memory settings?

[the_funkmeister]

That's correct.

I even reverted the VirtualBox guest back to a pre-PT4 state and installed b19 in it from scratch, which gave me the same result.

Having a lazy weekend and playing with PT4 (rather than playing poker) -- I decided to tweak the guests VM and try it a few different ways.

To do this, I:

1) reverted the guest to a pre-PT4 snapshot & changed the memory (no other settings changes), reboot into W7 and installed PT4b19.

2) imported 20k 0.05-0.10 cash hands (from a directory on the desktop) on an Untweaked setup -- recording the CPU and Memory consumption in Task Manager, as well as the amount of hands PT4 reported it was importing at 20,000)

3) Then rolled back, re-installed PT4b19, running "Tune PostgreSQL" from Housekeeping and importing the same directory of hands a second time.

4) Finally, I fired up the Stars software and played 100 hands on a single NL cash table, using the "Cash - Inspired by Harrington" HUD and recorded the results of the average CPU use and the memory consumption (highest/lowest during the time the PokerTracker4.exe file ran), recording the results each time:

At 4GiB: Untweaked: 61h/sec Tweaked: 64h/sec (CPU 8-11% / 3% (Manual Import / "Get Hands While Playing") / Memory 75-55 / 85-65 (No Client Running / Stars + HUD Running), the UI works normally (I can select statistics, etc) and HUD performed normally.)

At 8GiB: Untweaked: 58h/sec Tweaked: 49h/sec (CPU 8-30% / 25-30% (Manual Import / "Get Hands While Playing") / Memory 80-55 / 95-60 (No Client Running / Stars + HUD Running), the HUD performed erratically, as reported in b18, CPU at ~25-30%, the UI whitespaces (becomes non-responsive) on both the manual import and when I start playing live hands, while the HUD seemed to "miss" one every 3-4 hands and then the HUD flashed off, then flashed back on with the correct stats -- 1, 2, 3, off, 5 ~ 21, off, 23, 24, 25 ~ 97, off, 99, "sat out".)

At 2GiB: Untweaked: 37h/sec Tweaked: 42h/sec (CPU 10-12% / 5% (Manual Import / "Get Hands While Playing") / Memory 75-40 / 85-40 (No Client Running / Stars + HUD Running), the UI was normal during the manual import, but became non-responsive after the first 30-40 hands post-import, then the CPU spiked to ~30% at one stage when the table was shorthanded (3 players @ 6-max) but was fine at all other times & the HUD continued to be responsive throughout.)

So, I guess the low memory fixes worked correctly, at 2GiB, as I said, there was a CPU usage spike from a Tuned Setup when the table broke up at 6-max -- and the memory drops while PT4 is idle (ie. between the time the manual import finishes and I do anything else with the UI) and at 4GiB there was no load spikes while the HUD was in use and the memory does drop while PT4 is idle, but not as much as it does at 2GiB.

I didn't try anything like changing the priorities of PokerTracker4.exe in Task Manager or anything obscure, importing Tournaments or changing the HUD type, but if that would be helpful in testing, i'd be happy to repeat them with any suggestions anyone has.

I also don't have a 32-bit copy of Windows anymore, so all these tests are on W7Pro 64bit, for what that's worth.

[kraada]

I'll make certain the developer in charge of these settings sees this post of yours, thank you for taking the time and effort to put it together for us.