Persistent Crashes on Vero4K During Music Playback

[Harbour]

Hello everyone,

Could someone please help with me with a recurring issue I’ve been experiencing with my Vero4K? The device frequently crashes without any apparent reason when I’m listening to music. These crashes can occur even after an hour of normal playback, with no user interaction whatsoever.

I suspect one of the two reasons:

1. I have a fairly large music library that is neatly organized, complete with album covers, CD arts, and occasionally, large reviews. Although I previously encountered a crashing problem due to special characters in album names/reviews after the V19 update, I manually cleaned the database, so I believe that particular issue has been resolved.

2. Audio Setup: My Vero4K is connected to two audio sources simultaneously. I have it connected to a DAC (Essence HDACC) via USB and a Samsung HW-Q990 soundbar via HDMI. To switch between the two sources, I utilize the Audio Profiles add-on. Since the Vero4K remains powered on, I have noticed that crashes can occur when I power on either the DAC or soundbar, when a different audio source is selected in the Audio Profiles. However, I suspect that this is not the main cause of the crashes, as it mostly happens during startup.

I recently updated to the latest June 2023 version (2023.06-1), and unfortunately, these crashes have become more frequent since then. Additionally, I’ve noticed significant stuttering when horizontally scrolling through my music library using the Aeon Nox Silvo v8.1.0 skin.

Below is the link to the latest log file. As requested, I’ve performed two reboots, and Vero4K crashed approximately after 30 minutes of music playback:

https://paste.osmc.tv/pasisiyose

I would appreciate any insights or suggestions regarding this issue.

Many thanks!

[Harbour]

Following up on my previous inquiry about the recurring crashes on my Vero4K. Despite not receiving any responses yet, I’ve continued my investigation and believe I may have identified a potential issue with the music database, MyMusic82.db.

To recap, my Vero4K experiences daily crashes when playing music or even when it’s idle (including during nights), but it never crashes while playing movies.

Upon analyzing the log files produced by the Vero4K, I’ve noticed that each time the player crashes, the last entry in the log file is related to an SQL query executed on the music database. An example of this query is as follows:

“2023-08-05 13:02:09.993 T:4871 debug : GetAlbumsByWhereJSON query: SELECT a1.*, album_artist.idArtist AS idArtist, artist.strArtist AS strArtist FROM (SELECT albumview.idAlbum, strAlbum, strReview, strGenres, strThemes, strMoods, strStyles, strType, strLabel, fRating, iTimesPlayed, CAST(strReleaseDate AS INTEGER) AS iYear, art.url AS thumbnail FROM albumview LEFT JOIN art ON art.media_id = idAlbum AND art.media_type = ‘album’ AND art.type = ‘thumb’ WHERE albumview.strReleaseType = ‘album’ ORDER BY RANDOM() LIMIT 20) AS a1 JOIN album_artist ON album_artist.idAlbum = a1.idAlbum JOIN artist ON artist.idArtist = album_artist.idArtist GROUP BY a1.idAlbum, album_artist.idArtist ORDER BY a1.idAlbum, album_artist.iOrder
2023-08-05 13:02:10.046 T:4871 debug : GetAlbumsByWhereJSON - query took 53 ms”

Upon further investigation, I executed this query on a copy of MyMusic82.db on my PC, and sometimes it returned rows with the text “loading…” across all fields (written in red color) instead of the expected information about albums. I am attaching below two screenshots for reference.

I am now seeking advice on how to proceed with further testing of my database to confirm if the issue lies indeed within the database. Additionally, I would greatly appreciate any suggestions or steps to eliminate these frequent crashes on my Vero4K media player.

[Harbour]

Screenshot No. 1: Normal return of the query (Album information retrieved successfully)

Screenshot No. 2: Rows with the error (Album information shows “loading…” in red)

[fzinken]

@Harbour

I am now seeking advice on how to proceed with further testing of my database to confirm if the issue lies indeed within the database.

My suggestion is to make a copy of the database then delete the file and reboot OSMC to see if that solves the problem. Watch out if you still have older versions of MyMusic sql database in your Database folder they will be used and upgraded to the new format. So if problem existed before it will remain to exists.

You also can run PRAGMA integrity_check to check general health of the database

[Harbour]

@fzinken , thank you so much for your prompt response and helpful suggestions!

I followed your advice and ran ‘PRAGMA integrity_check’ on my MyMusic82.db, and the message “Execution finished without errors” was returned. Does it mean that the database is in good health?

Now, I would like to proceed with your second suggestion. I will save a copy of the database, proceed to delete the MyMusic82.db file and reboot my OSMC. I’m hoping this step will help identify whether the database is indeed the root cause of the frequent crashes.

I have found two older databases: MyMusic60 and MyMusic72. Should I remove these two older versions as well, or is it advisable to keep them during the troubleshooting process? I would also like to know if I can safely move them back to the folder once the issue is resolved.

Thank you once again for your time and assistance!

[fzinken]

@Harbour

I followed your advice and ran ‘PRAGMA integrity_check’ on my MyMusic82.db, and the message “Execution finished without errors” was returned. Does it mean that the database is in good health?

That means the structure should be ok but content could be broken

@Harbour

I have found two older databases: MyMusic60 and MyMusic72. Should I remove these two older versions as well, or is it advisable to keep them during the troubleshooting process? I would also like to know if I can safely move them back to the folder once the issue is resolved.

If you leave them there Kodi will use them after reboot and upgrade them to MyMusic82. You could try that first. If the problem remains I suggest to move all MyMusic files to a backup and reboot.

[Harbour]

Excellent! Great, thank you. I’ll do all this and report.

[randallspicher]

I was having some issues with my music DB (which resided on a mysql server) My issue was mostly a performance problem (bringing up the info dialog for an artist or album, or entering an album to list the songs would take 20-30 seconds (or more!), which just did not seem right. I decided to swtich over to mariadb, and found that those screens stopped coming up at all (simply hung with the spinner), so I decided that since [almost] all my music was tagged, and who cares about the “watched” status for music, so I dropped the musicdb from the database (and the previous versions that were still around) and restarted kodi to let it create a new musicdb from scratch. And then reindexed.

It was like a magic trick. suddenly everything was an instant response, rather than the long long delays I had gotten used to over the years.

I suspect the the music db had just gotten crufty over the years, didn’t have the right indexes anymore, possibly didn’t clean up dead rows from when I’ve renamed/moved files, etc, as well as cruft from the many upgrade cycles I’ve gone though.

So deleting (or renamging) the music db and letting kodi recreate it may be the first thing you should try.

[Andreas_S]

@harbour, was your problem solved by rebuilding the Music-database?
I had the same effect - permanent crashes when playing music. I noticed that this seems to be dependent on the used skin too. Confluence is rock-solid and never crashes, but AEON MQ8 seems to react to all irregularities with a crash. I just rebuilt the Music DB as mine also had a long history and the crashes seem to have gone now.