PDA

View Full Version : Problems with new install.



etay0330
01-22-2010, 02:44 AM
Hi I just reinstalled HEM and postgres on a new hard drive and re-imported all the hands from my old database. I also just copied the config folder over to the new HEM folder. Now I just tried running HEM for the first time. I can load the stats in Reports just fine but there's no hands listed at the bottom. What's going on and how do I fix it?

etay0330
01-22-2010, 06:00 AM
Well, turns out after I removed winners cards, name and money won from hand view column everything became just fine. Except I don't have the winners info anymore which is ok I guess.

But the truth is this is really disappointing. I got a new hard drive, OS and ram just to improve my HM performance. In the last few days I've done everything suggested just to re-import all the hands and follow the tips on improving performance. The end result was really disappointing. This brand new installation of OS, postgres and HM on a faster drive with more ram actually performs worse than my old XP system. I'm so tired. This is still a good product and I'll continue using this product. But this will be the last time I'm trying to improve performance of HM. Importing at less than 20h/s, 1.5 hour to delete 8k hands, every time I refresh stats for any period of time longer than 3 months I can go take a break and come back in awhile because it's gonna take awhile.

I just spent over 3 days on this. This is probably the 4th time I'm doing major overhaul to HM because of bad performance issue. This is not some 4 year old computer either. Granted I don't have SSDs, some quad core processor, and all the other good stuff. I'm sure I probably missed something you guys suggested in all the stickies etc. But the truth is, it's not supposed to be this complicated and so hard. It's not supposed to be this time consuming.

Like I said I'll keep using the product because I've been using it and I'm used to it. Until something drastically better or different comes along I'll keep using this. But I won't put in the effort to try to improve the performance anymore because frankly, it's pointless. And it's wasting my freaking time to spend over 3 days on this instead of playing.

B-Money
01-22-2010, 02:29 PM
I feel your pain.

Upgrading to a new PC should definitely help, not hurt performance. Single biggest thing you can do to help performance is the SSD drive. I personally don't have 1 but my understanding is Holdem Manager constantly pings the PostgreSQL database, so it's rarely your CPU or RAM maxing out, it's your Hard Drive.

Try doing a database querry without your antivirus installed. It's possible the AV is checking each querry too.

I'm guessing you have a HUGE database. After some queries are run with the hero, it should get faster. First time loading hero stats might be slow, but it should get faster because some of the data will be cached now.

If you think about it. You probably have a couple million or more HH files in your database. HEM pings PostgreSQL for your request and postgres has to sort through millions of hands and return the results to Holdem Manager. Our PC's are not like google so it takes a little time.

GL,
-B

etay0330
01-22-2010, 02:48 PM
I know SSD drives will help. Processors with gazillion cores will help. The thing is I have friends with setups that seem similar or even slower than mine and they're importing the same batch of mined hands at 70+h/s and I'm getting 15. I can't pretend to understand the complexity of a piece of software like this and I appreciate the support efforts you guys put in. But I just don't understand why there's such a big difference in performance between similar machines. Everytime I try to do major overhaul like this it works fine in the beginning when the database was brand new. But with more and more hands added to the database you can just see the performance drop like a rock.

What is this database querry you're talking about? Only one I know how to do is to check total number of hands in my database, which is around 5 million hands by the way.

By the way one of the main reasons I chose HM from the very beginning was that I read something one of your 'founder' wrote about this software. It said something along the line of 'the size of the database should not affect performance. It should perform just as well for a new database or a huge database.' I could be wrong but I remember reading something like that.

Patvs
01-22-2010, 03:16 PM
15 hands vs 70 hands/s on two similar systems isn't right.

Surely something is monitoring your SQL connection, almost blocking it.
This is almost always an antivirus/firewall issue.
Please add Holdem Manager & PostgreSQL (postgresql.exe and pg_ctl.exe from the bin folder) to the exception list (of Windows Firewall) and forward (open) port 5432 & 5433.

Try to install a different version of SQL on a different port. So if you have 8.4 on port 5432, install 8.3 on port 5433 and see if that's faster.
What's your current system?

B-Money
01-22-2010, 03:16 PM
The time remaining and Hands/sec is not very accurate when importing hands. Mined hands take time because the files are bigger than normal HH files. the smaller the HH files, the faster HEM processes the information. For example. I have a Quad Core, 8GB Ram, etc. When importing my old hands on a new database, I might see the hands/sec jump above 100, but it's usually around 20-30 hands/second.

Founder wrote about the software - It's possible that was said, but I doubt it. It's common knowledge that the bigger the database gets, the slower it's going to run. When HEM first launched our competitor had big problems with large databases and their software crashing along with the HUD lagging. This might have been what he was talking about because when HEM first launched it was very stable with no HUD lag no matter how big your database was.

Mined Hands - We don't support it because it's against T&S for most poker sites. One thing you can do is remove hands that are older than say 3 months. Keep yours obviously. This will keep your database size reasonable along with having current stats on players. After 6 months a regulars game probably changes a little and if your database is referencing data that is that old, it's probably hurting your reads on the player more than it's helping.

GL,
-B

etay0330
01-22-2010, 03:33 PM
Patvs:
Do you have a link for me describing in detail how to get it all done? I have all the programs listed by you as 'trusted' in my zonealarm. Not sure about Windows firewall though. Not sure about if those ports are forwarded or not as well.
I'm currently using a fresh install of Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit version. Core 2 duo E8400, 4gigs of ram and a 1tb WD Cavier Black. I have a seperate hard drive for my other stuff like movies musics etc.
Should I try installing 8.4? I think I read that if 8.3 is working fine then don't touch 8.4 since it's still a little buggy or something?

B-Money:
I set my HUD to display stats in the last 3 months only, not the whole history of the players. I probably don't need the hands before that but I just don't think I have the time to try purging hands. I tried deleting around 8k hands and it took a long time and I had to do it in batches of 1.5k hands because if I do it with larger chunk I got some kind of timed out message. So I'm not particularly look forward to purging 100s of thousands of hands. I just don't have the time for that.

Patvs
01-22-2010, 09:17 PM
I'd uninstall ZONEALARM.
Activate Windows Firewall as your firewall.
Open ports 5432 and 5433 in Windows Firewall.

Install SQL 8.3 and 8.4 (each on their own port)
Which anti virus program do you use? Windows Defender is also turned off?

And speedtest both SQL 8.3 and 8.4.

etay0330
01-23-2010, 12:25 AM
1. Just uninstalled Zonealarm.
2. Not sure if I'm doing this right. I activated Windows firewall and added ports 5432-5433 in both Inbound and Outbound rules and allowed connection to and from the ports. All TCP, do I need to add UDP as well? Please let me know if I'm doing this open port thing correctly.
3. I use Avira as my anti virus. I don't see Windows Defender in 'System and Security' part of the control panel. Is that something I need to download? Or is it something that automatically disabled once I have other antivirus software installed?
4. How to do speedtest?

B-Money
01-23-2010, 12:27 AM
I'm pretty sure what Pat meant was import some hands and see if there is a difference. I had to take a second look to his reply too. :-)

Here's a FAQ for the firewall.
http://faq.holdemmanager.com/questions/275/Windows+Firewall+%7B47%7D+Defender+Problems

You should be speed testing it after each thing you change. That way you don't do multiple "fixes" and not know what fixed it or worse, end up making it slower. Honestly though, if you're getting 20 hands/sec importing, I'd let it be. You can import your hands overnight or when you're not using your PC. The numbers HM spits out as h/sec is an average over time, it's not an exact number.

etay0330
01-23-2010, 12:42 PM
One quick question before I do the adjustments. If I use Windows Firewall/Defender, does that mean I don't need other firewall/anti-virus application anymore? The Windows product would be sufficient to provide the protection I need?

I think most likely I'll just let it be for now and do all the stuff mentioned later. I'm just mentally too tired to have to spend hours to figure out what's wrong with it. I just wish I hadn't spend the money to get the new hard drive.

fozzy71
01-23-2010, 03:15 PM
One quick question before I do the adjustments. If I use Windows Firewall/Defender, does that mean I don't need other firewall/anti-virus application anymore? The Windows product would be sufficient to provide the protection I need?.....

I would recommend you disable Windows Defender and install it's much better replacement Microsoft Security Essentials. I have been using the windows firewall and MSES since I got this PC in September. I do monthly MBAM/SAS scans for malware and virus/trojans and havent had any problems yet.

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

To disable defender:

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/02/14/how-to-disable-uninstall-or-remove-windows-defender-in-vista/

The easy way.
1. Run Windows Defender.
2. Click Tools and go to Options
3. Scroll right to the bottom and you’ll see an option “Use Windows Defender”.
4. Uncheck “Use Windows Defender” and it’ll be disabled.

http://www.raymond.cc/images/disable-windows-defender-2.png

etay0330
01-25-2010, 01:24 AM
1. I've added all the programs to the Windows Firewall exceptions list.
2. I've purged all the hands I don't need anymore. The database size went from 35g to 15g.
3. I haven't done the installing postgres 8.4 on a different port thing. Honestly I'm not sure how to do it.
4. I ditched Avira and use Microsoft Security Essentials now.
5. I still haven't done the speed testing because, well, I need to know how to do that. A detailed instuction would be great.
6. Honestly as far as importing hands is concerned I'm fine with the way it is now. During normal playing it's working just fine. However I do have another big problem though. When I do my session review I check for the biggest hands played, with or without me involving in the hand. To do that I need to add WinnerWon to hand view column. We all know it slows down if we add that but it's EXTREMELY slow on my machine. WIthout it the hands will show up in the bottom section almost instantly. With WInnerWon added though, sometimes it takes a few minutes, sometimes it takes much longer. For example, I'm doing an experiment now. I'm trying to show the hands in this one session I played yesterday. Around 1500 hands in 82 minutes. It took 12 minutes before the hands are shown. What gives? I don't mind waiting 3 minutes instead of instant. But 12 minutes for a 1500 hand session?

Patvs
01-25-2010, 01:55 AM
Did you vacuum/analyse the database after the purge + reindex (pgAdminIII)
+ DEFRAG the entire SQL folder with Defraggler?


Do that, to see how much it improves performance. Hopefully getting the 12 minutes back to <3 minutes.

With speedtest/benchmark I only meant there is a chance a different version of SQL on a different port is faster (can also turn out to be slower). But there is no risk in trying. Install SQL 8.4.2 on port 5433 (download the installer from postgresql.org, use "postgrespass" as password".

A different approach would be: Turn off System Restore on your C:/ drive,
turn of indexing, enable write caching on your CAVIAR BLACK, set the power settings to HIGH PERFORMANCE, etc.