LMMS process still exists after closing

[matakuna]

Hello there!

I discovered LMMS very recently and I must say, this soft is really amazing! Thanks a lot to all the guys behind it, I know how hard it is to create this kind of stuff (I'm a game developper myself).
As the title says, I noticed that after closing lmms, I can still see the process in the task manager. It still eats memory (and that can be pretty huge when using a soundfount: 1.9GB when using CrisisGM), and it seems I can't kill it. A logout solves the problem.

I use lmms 0.9.92 on Win 7 64 bits.
I use it with a MIDI Oxygen 61 keyboard controller
I use the asio4all driver in order to have low latency on my cheap integrated soundcard
and I installed the 64bit libportaudio-2.dll compiled with the asio4all driver support (found from this post: http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/lmms/ ... ?f=3&t=604)
This setup was a bit difficult to achieve but seems to work fine.

In addition (may I start another thread?) I noticed that, sometimes, I don't have any sound working for only one sf2 track while the others are perfectly making sound. And of course, I don't have any muted/soled tracks.
I don't have sound in the piano roll neither when playing the single track alone. However the keys of the virtual keyboard on the piano rolls react (are "pressed") when playing the track. But no sound comes out.
The problem is, I can't reproduce the bug systematically... Sometimes I can solve it by closing all the other apps, quiting and restarting lmms, sometimes it needs a logout, and sometimes even a reboot doesn't solve the problem. I can't see any logical pattern in there.

Any ideas/suggestions?

Thanks a lot and keep up the good work on the soft!

[musikbear]

the sound problems could be the asio+ a libportaudio dll that is 'non.factory' A somewhat insatisfactory 'fix' is to use SDL. Does mean a little les dynamic range, but the sound works normally flawless.

The mem-resident-evilness is a whole other animal
But understand that 0.92 is ONLY for bugfix, and not a off. release.
I would like to know - Do you by chance have 2 or more lmms instalations?

[matakuna]

Hi Musikbear, thanks a lot for your answer!

For the SDL fix, as you say, it's a bit unsatisfactory as there is too much lag when playing my midi keyboard, and it's really annoying when recording. Anyways, at the moment, the sound bug doesn't appear that often, and when it does I can still copy the midi track in a new one, and it's OK.

For the memory problem, I previoulsy had other lmms versions; I tested a bunch of them to solve a problem about midi recording with sf2 tracks, which seemed to break in 0.4.15 I think. So I tested 32 bits and 64 bits versions, with the asio/portaudio each time. However I carefully uninstalled every version before trying a new one.
Nevertheless, an uninstall process may have gone wrong, because I noticed at some point that I still had the Program Files/ directory of a previously "unsintalled" version. But the problem was, the lmms program didn't appear anymore in the program list of the configuration panel. So I couldn't remove it "properly". I finally removed the directory in Program Files manually (which is very bad I know).
So this may be the source of the problem. Would you have any advice on this particular point?

And I understand well that 0.92 isn't supposed to be used in a "production" pipeline, but to this point, it's the only version that seems to support midi recording from my keyboard with sf2 tracks, and with no lag thanks to the asio "driver". So I can't complain about its stability But if you know another more stable version/configuration setup that might suits my needs, I'm all ears

Thanks a lot, and keep up the good work on the next releases (by the way, any date for the 1.0 release? )!

[musikbear]

doubt i can figure this one out, but theres one thing i would ask you to do.
Next time you restart That is cold-boot your pc. Open taskmanager and find running number of processes.
Then open lmms*. Do you get more than one process added to the taskmanager.
After that, close lmms.
Did the taskmanager registate the shutdown (eg count one less process)

Then reopen lmms once more
What was the behavior this time?



*btw - do you open lmms from a shortcut, or from the program manager Obs! remember that you never can open lmms by double-click, on a project!

[matakuna]

Cold reboot
number of lmms processes: 0
Start LMMS (from the desktop shortcut)
number of lmms processes: 1
Close LLMS
number of lmms processes: 1
Restart LMMS
number of lmms processes: 2

And as stated above, I launch LMMS from the desktop shortcut, which points to "C:\Program Files\LMMS\lmms.exe" (I'm on a 64 bit Windows)

Hope that helps.

[musikbear]

This is weird. Could you try to do a shutdown of ONE running instance of lmms FROM taskmanger? It would be really strange if an instance of lmms STILL exists, if taskmanager has done the shutdown, (and it could point in a specific direction -However noone has confirmed this behavior, so im pretty sure you have a unique situation at home - this one not so good..
..and do try 1.0 btw, ( -but yet not out in 64b..

[matakuna]

When I kill the process from the task manager: it actually closes the lmms window, but the process is still in the task manager. If I try to kill it "again", nothing happens; the process still lives in the task manager.
Same thing when I have 2 or more lmms process still "alive". Killing seems inefficient.

But I noticed something strange: after having quit the lmms windows, if I press a key on my midi keyboard, this kills all the remaining lmms processes in the task manager! My guess is that some kind of midi manager process/task exists and somehow survives the killing of the lmms app. But when a midi input is received, this triggers the killing of this "background midi module", and finally removes the lmms process from the task manager.

I tested the 1.0 version, and it's the exact same bugs. Even with the SDL sound output (that is to say without all my asio crazy setup).
There's (sadly) one more: I can't load up my usual soundfont (crisis GM 3.0), but this is maybe because it's huge and the 32-bit version can't handle enough memory. So this may be more a limitation than a bug.

By the way, thanks a lot for the 1.0 version! It was faster than I expected

Peace!

[musikbear]

But I noticed something strange: after having quit the lmms windows, if I press a key on my midi keyboard, this kills all the remaining lmms processes in the task manager!

ahh - check the memory value, just before you press thet midi-keyboard. Does the memory value change when you press the midi-keyboard?

[matakuna]

The memory use varies a bit from one execution to the other, but it goes something like this:
Opening LMMS: 116 800 K
After Quitting: 33 160 K
When midi keyboard press : 29 904 K for less than 1 second and disappears from the task manager after that. I can't always spot a change in memory use, because the process often disappears too quickly.

[musikbear]

oki -all is ok. You only release ~3.3 mb when you pres the midi-keyboard. That shows that there are no orphan lmms-instance in memory. Your midi-keyboard apearently name its own 'existence', after the program its refered to on the pc. In this case: LMMS, so the additional instance of LMMS that you saw, is indeed a dirty rest from your midi-keyboard, that actually do not remove it self before a key is pressed. -Thats somewhat weird, but externals can do weird stuf :p
LMMS DO close, and the ~3 mb disapear if you just remember to hit the midi-keys.
Have fun!