SER is "Acting Up" since last update (4.21)

DavidA2

I have had to constantly monitor SER today since last update. My system is running close to 100% CPU utilization almost all the time. (I have a quad-core cpu that is fairly fast). I don't know if it is because of this cpu utilization or not, but the interaction between SER and Captcha Sniper is terrible now too. Captchas take 5-20 seconds to solve. I am getting frequent tesseract terminations (very rare before). And eventually CS will appear to hang. When this happens, it seems that SER "hangs" too.

I don't think it really hangs. It seems to just be waiting on responses back from CS. If I shut CS down and start it back up, it usually will process a bunch of captchas very quickly (like there was a backlog of them). SER will speed back up for a while. And then the whole process will repeat itself - usually in less than 1/2 hour.

I have tried rebooting my PC. I have tried closing all other programs. Nothing has changed on this PC except for the update to SER and everything has been running great.

Any ideas?

DavidA2

To add a little more info...

I had noticed when I tried to stop SER before that there was a couple of projects that took a long time (about 5 minutes) to finally stop. I noticed this again when I just stopped everything. I think it was the same two projects.

I started everything back up with all project inactive. Then I activated them one at a time, except for the two I noticed took so long to stop. Everything seemed to be running fine, so I enabled those two for verify only.

Everything still seems to be running fine like it is now. It is getting late my time, so I will leave it to run like this overnight and see what happens. If it stays ok, I will start the other two projects back up in the morning and see if the problems come back.

DavidA2

Oh...I meant to mention...with it running like it is, cpu utilization is still pretty high (which I would expect), but it is not constantly pegged at 100% like it was before when I was experiencing the problems. RIght now it is bouncing between 40-80%.

Sven

Thats all very strange. I don't have any more CPU usage than in previous versions here but seems it occurred for other people as well. Can you try to disable site lists maybe and see if that makes a change?

DavidA2

Well...the way I left it running still caused it to "hang up". It was still running, but very bogged down. I stopped all projects, restarted Captcha Sniper, and restarted just a couple projects again. *NOTE: I did disable site lists like you asked Sven. I will let it run this way for a while and see what happens.

Ozz

My CPU varies at 0-8% with 4GB RAM, AMD Phenomom II X4 965 @3,5 GHz.

50 Threads, global lists only today.

pingboard

I have the same issue. only since updating 4.19 to 4.21

windows server 2008 SP2, 3 projects, 20 threads. no project has "use urls from sitelist" enabled...

Identified and verified are saved though as set in global options.

CPU usage is constantly over 90% for the SER process:

DavidA2

Sven...after what pingboard said, I need to make sure I changed the right thing. I turned off the "global" options to save to the global site list. Is that what you wanted?

Seemed to run ok for a while. I slowly activated more projects one at a time. And eventually it got bogged down again - until I stopped and restarted Captcha Sniper.

I noticed I am getting a lot of the following messages displayed (always "0/0"). What does this mean? I know I turned off posting to the site lists. But I still have "use site lists" turned on in each project. I just checked and the files are there.

08:04:16: [ ] Loaded 0/0 URLs from site lists

Ozz...I am running an AMD Phenom X4 9750 with 8GB. I have not had the problem of the cpu utilization pegging again, but I am averaging 25-30% with spikes over 90%. I am running (when everything is running) 6 projects and 50 threads.

pingboard

UPDATE: rebooting the VPS seems to have fixed the issue...

5% most of the time with 25-30% when working actively and some spikes over 90%

xbox

Hi David I'm having the same problems as you, also maxing out at 100% lots of lag and meaning 0/0 messages.

I'm on a VPS with 4GB and 4 CPU's... mine jumping from 50% to 100% and freezing in-between now, a week ago was running very smoothly. 

See how it stops for a minute then continues, I'm running 7 projects on 30 different search engines all have 3000 to 9000 keywords and private proxies.

Mine is like a yo yo right now, not sure if this helps much, before mine was flat lining at 99% 100%

Sven or Ozz please let me know if you need more information, log files, I can test things too, happy to help or provide any information I can.

DavidA2

Has anyone else that has been having problems turned off saving to global list (in Options-->Advanced)?

I have been running this way for a couple hours now and it seems to be working ok. I think you may need to stop and restart everything for this to take effect...??? At least it didn't seem to help until I did that.

However, posting & verifying rates seem to have really tanked. And I am getting hundreds of these messages on every project.

[ ] Loaded 0/0 URLs from site lists

Bytefaker

Don't you all think this depends on the the improoved threading performance? Sven improved the threading so it does now a lot more at the same moment. I think this results in more CPU usage. Why not reducing thread count to a good level to control the CPU usage? In the past it was a problem that SER used only a very small part of the ressouces. In my eyes Sven changed/improved this.

GiorgosK

Might be unrelated but I noticed my captcha sniper x hanging twice within 10 hours
and this is only happening on 4.21 on previous version
I was amazed how CS is so stable

I was not going to report this here but since I show this issue ...

Bytefaker

I think this is related to your CPU usage. Try reducing thread count. CS needs CPU and if there isn't any it runs into problems.

pingboard

Update 2: rebooting didn't fully fix it.

Sometimes for 20-40 seconds it goes to 100% cpu usage and it lags/hangs...

I don't think it is due to the improved threading since this didn't happen with 4.19 which was already mad fast with new thread management.

Bytefaker

yeah, but after this sven improved the handing of searches too. I think this needs additional ressources and gives the conclusion that threading is using the ressources more efficient that a lower thread count can give better results than before.

DavidA2

I agree...this is not a result of the improved performance. As pingboard mentioned, it ran fine after 4.18 (I think the improvement was with this version). Also, I have adjusted thread counts up and down and number of projects up and down and it cannot get it to fix this problem.

Bytefaker

Then I really don't know. I'm running 800 threads and could handle it with CS and with SER. never ran into a problem related like this.

DavidA2

Well, it's got me confused now too. After doing all this, I have everything set back to how it was originally, and everything has been running fine for an hour now.

CPU utilization is back to staying pegged at about 95-100%. This does not seem to be effecting system performance on this PC. Everything else that I am doing is running ok. It seems that SER just uses as much cpu as it can when it needs to.

DavidA2

Sven...When you get back to this thread and have a chance, I would still like an explanation to the messages I was getting.

[ ] Loaded 0/0 URLs from site lists

I am not getting these now that I have switched back to saving to the Global Sites Lists again.

Ozz

My CS settings are

+ clean image algo

+ use "captcha platform"

Mike

4.21 - mine runs about two minute and goes to "not responding"
No links at all over night. Not runnin CS.
Rolled it back to 4.19 and running strong again

GiorgosK

@Ozz
use hosts file redirects
you have it uncheched ?

unfortunately there is no way to remember these setting (or is there ?)
and when CS is closed you have to set them again ... :-(

DavidA2

Mike...how did you "roll back"? I am going to have to try this. It is back to hanging up again. I am not getting anything done. I am just babysitting this all day and trying to figure out what is wrong.

Mike

In the windows program files directory for GSA - last version is saved before your last update.
Says "old" - double click on that one
Sven added this backup after I requested it about a month ago-

Bytefaker

@Ozz: Is "clean image algo" improving the recognition rate? I don't use this option atm and asked myself if this has advantages because it seems to be that this need much more resources.

Ozz

@Bytefaker: The dev of CS told me that "clean algo" helps to improve solving rate for at least one captcha. I can't remember the exact number for this, but it don't have hurt my success rate, so I activate that.

@GiorgosK: Yes, I leave "redirect" unchecked. I quote the developer at BHW:

"If the tools have CS integrated directly, you dont even have to have host file redirect checked."

xbox

I'm still having issues see image below, should I change VPS, upgrade VPS? is 4 CPUS and 4gig of RAM not enough to run SER now on a VPS?

DavidA2

Are you running the lastest version of the program?

Are you running Captcha Sniper X?

After I updated SER & CS to the lastest releases, the program has been running better than ever before. I have gotten twice as many submitted and verified as ever before while running fewer threads than I had been running previously.

GiorgosK

STill having captcha sniper freezes even after
using the settings mentioned Ozz

Bytefaker

@Ozz: Thanks for the additional information
@GiorgosK: Did you reduced the thread count?