Sonos plugin getting hammered by AVAST delaying trigger events

[devoir]

I'm not sure here what's going on but if I enable the Sonos Plugin for HS4 platform the AVAST service engine pushes the CPU 40%-70%. It begins to create lag for triggered events.


I had originally posted this in the HS4 forum until testing showed this effect










Disable SONOS the CPU Load drops back significantly....


Dcorsus any thoughts on what I need to do different?








Devoir

[dcorsus]

How many players do you have? What is your setting for creating a music DB? Is it set to immediate or daily?

[devoir]

dcorsus,

I just upgraded to the S2 program I typically have it running on a PC not hosting HS4, but almost every device in the house has a new copy of S2 on ipads and iphone but they are not actively open.

I don't have the Immediate Update Flag checked. If I understand the question









is there a way to see what AVAST if checking or when the CPU usage is high what it is doing?



Devoir

[dcorsus]

I can't comment on what AVAST does, I assume it only gets involved on network traffic. I do notice that you have the MediaAPI enabled, are you using HSTouch screens that attempt to do media content navigation? I've written it somewhere that I think this MediaAPI is a flawded as it gets in HS3 (it did work properly in HS2) and I would recommend to turn that off. It does create tons of traffic.

[devoir]

I'LL post a question in the AVAST Forum

and turn off the MediaAPI


Devoir

[dcorsus]

You may need to reset the PI after you turn the flag off, HS only queries the PI for its support at start-up

[dcorsus]

I did a quick Google search on AVAST and Sonos, bunch of postings but more about how to make it work, nothing about load. So the only thing I can think off is lots of traffic in/out of the PI, and there are only 2 cases:
1/ making music DBs can cause a lot of traffic depending on size. If you have the PI set to do immediate update and there are many, it could case a lot more effort. Doesn't seem to be your case.
2/ The mediaAPI support pulls thinks like list of all albums, artists, tracks etc and if you have a bunch, and you have many HST screens, there is clearly an issue in HS3 where I can see it beeing requested over and over and over and cause a lot of load (and traffic). Wouldn't be surprised this is your issue.

[tenholde]

If you have many sonos players playing at once, the Tracks device for each one is updated every second. Shouldn't be a problem, but wondering if the cpu goes down as you stop (not mute) a player at a time.

[dcorsus]

If you have many sonos players playing at once, the Tracks device for each one is updated every second. Shouldn't be a problem, but wondering if the cpu goes down as you stop (not mute) a player at a time.

true but updating an HS device should not involve the AV. Only thing I'm curious about, whether the AV is configured to inspect loopback traffic as opposed to just incoming/outgoing traffic on an ethernet interface over virtual internal interfaces. Maybe something to look at.
The mediaAPI however, *could* generates many order of magnutude more traffic

[tenholde]

true but updating an HS device should not involve the AV.

There is TCP traffic between the plugin and HS4. Should not be a problem, but always good to narrow down stuff. Would be good to know if the cpu load is impacted by sonos device activity.

[dcorsus]

There is TCP traffic between the plugin and HS4. .

yep, that's my remark that the AV should not inspect loopback traffic

[devoir]

Okay some feedback

I turned off the mediaAPI as you suggested .... without playing any songs and the controller open on the desktop for a few hours I don't see any issue with the CPU load. The AVAST engine server is staying at 0%





When I upgraded to the new S2 controller i noticed I has one speaker "S1" only capable which was orphaned by Sonos moviing to the new S2 platform.... I deleted that speaker from the list since I can't access it thru the S2 system.



===============

Now for the advise of AVAST

Basically a do over....






I will follow their advise and then turn the mediaAPI back to to see if I can replicate the issue..... This seems like an AVAST issue



PS what tool can I use to see this network traffic? is there a tool inside a Unifi controller for Realtime traffic with AVAST?



Stay tuned I will post the results...



Devoir

[dcorsus]

When I upgraded to the new S2 controller i noticed I has one speaker "S1" only capable which was orphaned by Sonos moviing to the new S2 platform.... I deleted that speaker from the list since I can't access it thru the S2 system.

???

The PI doesn't care about S1 or S2, it will control all players. You cannot link them and/or put them together in an announcement but all else will work just same. If the speaker is on-line the PI will add them again, and if you deleted them just from the HS device page you just create an inconsistancy between the HS DB and the sonos PI, only delete players using the delete function on the PI's control page.

[devoir]

dcorsus,

when I deleted the sonos speaker I was on the PI control page to delete this speaker. Thanks for the advise I didn't realize it could cause issues...


In the last two hours no more issues with CPU loading it's hovering about 8% ...... I'm gonna point a finger towards AVAST...


Many thanks for your support in the community....

Devoir

[dcorsus]

In the last two hours no more issues with CPU loading it's hovering about 8% ...... I'm gonna point a finger towards AVAST...

Not sure there is anything wrong with AVAST, at the end this is just a SW based firewall so it means it needs to grab every packet and depending on what it is supposed to do (think inspect content etc), this is hard labor. So if you have a MediaAPI which is really a problem and send out loads and loads of traffic, not only is AVAST hogging your system but so is HS, HSTouch, PI

I did see a lot of memory used by AVAST, so perhaps there is an issue but as I wrote, it could be just features that are turned on that suck up memory