sabnzbd high iowait/unresponsiveness

[LightC]

Hi all,
I've been using sabnzbd 0.5.6 on my plugbox running Seagate Dockstar. While it works fine for a few hours, eventually it starts to overwhelm the entire system to the extent that it takes 5+ minutes just to initiate a ssh session. Load averages can go up to 2+ when this happens. A simple kill of the python2 pid and restart of sabnzbd solves the problem, but again only for a short while.

I've limited download threads down to 2 and the cache article limit to 5mb but that didn't seem to help. I also have a 500mb swap file stored on flash for rar/par actions. I've noticed that iowait can fluctuate around 99% when the system slow down occurs. Anyone have an idea of what I can do to fix this issue?

I took a look at nzbget and hellanzb but I would prefer to stick to sabnzbd if possible.

Thanks in advance.
LightC

[shypike]

I don't know the device you have.
SABnzbd is a fairly hungry app, both CPU time and memory usage.
It also depends on the quality of the Python implementation for the platform.
How much memory do you have?
unrar doesn't use that much memory, although large par2 repairs can.

[truxntrax]

Same problem on dockstar.  80% cpu usage when idling. 

Shypike - dockstar is a nice little device that every now and again drops to 24.99£ on amazon.  Similar to a plug computer eg sheevaplug.  Can be loaded with debian and makes a nice headerless low energy server.

Any suggestions how to stop high PC usage on idle?

Thanks

Trux

[shypike]

Any suggestions how to stop high PC usage on idle?

Not really, because it shouldn't.
Except perhaps when even normal operation makes it swap like hell.
Which can be the case when memory is too small for the basic memory requirements.
Judging by its price it must have a tiny memory.