[ISSUE] Asset download and vault problems

[sna-scourtney]

My compliments to the developers -- this tool works fantastically overall!

I have this running on a fast CPU with plenty of RAM and all SSD, and the network connection is wired Ethernet with an ISP rate of 54 megabits/sec.

To better manage storage, I have my vault set to /var/cache/ue_vault/, ownership of that directory set to my regular (non-root) user account, and that's the mount point for a dedicated LVM2 volume with an XFS filesystem. My settings have the vault path as /var/cache/ue_vault/ as well.

Downloads are working but not showing up in the vault display afterward, even though I have done all of the following:

• File...Refresh Vault
• File...Refresh Assets and then another File...Refresh Vault
• Restarted the applicati

I'm not sure if this is related to my use of a dedicated mount point, or possibly just to not having the vault at its default location, or if it's something else, but I wanted to let you know.

The downloaded code plugins do install into the engine correctly, and I give you extra thanks for the fact that the app even prompts me for root privileges to update a system directory in the engine.

Thanks again for this excellent tool. 

[NathanaelA]

Strange that it can't find any vault items. Moving the vault shouldn't be an issue, I don't have my vaults at the default locations either... (You can use a PIPE "|" symbol to have multiple paths for paths in the config including vaults)

Can you run the asset manager from a terminal and also use the Help -> Save Logs and see if there is any errors in either place?

[sna-scourtney]

There may also be a problem with thread priority or related issue that causes downloads to be very slow. My CPU has 8 cores, but I'm seeing some downloads that are only using about 10% of the available ISP speed (and I've tested that it's not an ISP issue). The reason I suspect a thread priority issue is that the UI status line showing the download progress is also lagging well behind what's actually downloaded, if I watch the vault subdirectory (even allowing for compressed downloads). Also, the problem seems more pronounced on larger downloads, so perhaps the small assets are finished before it becomes apparent.

I'll continue to test to see if I can narrow down whether the cause is my system or the application code.

[sna-scourtney]

Strange that it can't find any vault items. Moving the vault shouldn't be an issue, I don't have my vaults at the default locations either... (You can use a PIPE "|" symbol to have multiple paths for paths in the config including vaults)

Can you run the asset manager from a terminal and also use the Help -> Save Logs and see if there is any errors in either place?

I'll be glad to do that! Thanks for such a quick reply.

[sna-scourtney]

The test is still running, but I ran the terminal console through "tee" so I can see it and capture it. The very first line of the console log is this:
libva error: vaGetDriverNameByIndex() failed with unknown libva error, driver_name = (null)

I don't recognize that library offhand but wanted to share this one since it's so early in the startup.

[sna-scourtney]

There may also be a problem with thread priority or related issue that causes downloads to be very slow. My CPU has 8 cores, but I'm seeing some downloads that are only using about 10% of the available ISP speed (and I've tested that it's not an ISP issue). The reason I suspect a thread priority issue is that the UI status line showing the download progress is also lagging well behind what's actually downloaded, if I watch the vault subdirectory (even allowing for compressed downloads). Also, the problem seems more pronounced on larger downloads, so perhaps the small assets are finished before it becomes apparent.

I'll continue to test to see if I can narrow down whether the cause is my system or the application code.

I can rule out size of download as a determining factor. The current download is my largest so far with AMS, and it clipped along at most of the available bandwidth, as well as the UI being responsive. I did check during the previous test for background activity, and the CPU was almost zero utilization.

UPDATE: After some further testing, I think the slow downloads may be a transient issue with Epic's site. I'll keep watching this situation, but for now I don't think I have enough evidence to call it a bug. That leaves only the original problem with the vault showing empty.

[sna-scourtney]

Here is the output log. I apologize that I forgot and closed the app before using the Help button to capture logs.
asset-manager-studio-20240402.log

[sna-scourtney]

For reasons unknown, the vault seems to be working now. The only thing I think might be related is that I changed my CPU profile from "powersave" to "performance". Could this problem be a thread-starvation issue, if the UI update is done in background?