pi 3a+ strong enough?

[nosferatu_cat]

No issues with my 3A+ running since yesterday.

@nosferatu_cat maybe its a power supply issue?

Hmm...I've used a Canakit 2.5 amp power supply as well as a 2.4 amp generic charger with the same results.  

Yesterday I decided to experiment with library size.  I have over 80K files organized by music/genre/artist/album.  There are 13 genre subdirectories.  I started with my two largest directories.  It ran fine overnight.  This morning I added two more directories.  The Pi froze when I started a library refresh.  I rebooted with a different power supply. It started but performed sluggishly.  When I tried to update the library it threw up a "Library update already in progress" error although there was no progress spinner.  It froze.  Although I have it set up as a UPNP client I'm unable to see it in BubbleUPNP.  In network scanning apps it shows up by IP address rather than by name.  Port 80 is open but I can't connect to it with a browser.

[the_bertrum]

What is the memory usage like while the update is going on?

[nosferatu_cat]

After a reboot where I was unable to start a library update I removed the two directories I had added this morning, remounted the two original directories, and rebooted.  After two reboots it started normally and seems to be running normally.  BubbleUPNP sees it as a renderer and it shows up in network scans by name rather than by IP address.   I'm not sure if up time or the addition of the two directories was the cause but I'm leaning toward the two new directories.  The "update running" error confuses me.

If I'm mainly going to use this Pi as an alarm clock and have the ability to play all the NAS directories through BubbleUPNP I'm willing to accept it as not solved but having an acceptable workaround.  I have another 3A+ that I'm going to try.  Yup, I have more Pis than sense.  

[nosferatu_cat]

What is the memory usage like while the update is going on?

54% plus or minus. I'm not sure memory use due to the database build is the problem since the freeze takes place after the db build is complete.

[Tim Curtis]

Prolly the gigantic collection size of 80,000 tracks and only 512MB ram on the Pi is causing a resource issue.

[nosferatu_cat]

Prolly the gigantic collection size of 80,000 tracks and only 512MB ram on the Pi is causing a resource issue.

That's what worried me.  Thanks.  I tried my other 3a+ and it's been running fine.  The first one will run with only the first two directories loaded.  I'm satisfied since my main use will be clock radio.

[kurt1970]

On a PI4, just to have an idea, I just re-indexed my ~28000 flac tracks NAS lib.
In a SSH terminal I monitored the behavior via top.
Mem consumption didn't increase that much during the indexing process (300m > 320m), but the buff/cache kept on increasing. At the end, cache + mem was about 800m.

In the recent moOde releases, swap has been enabled. What about that?

[Tim Curtis]

If you are looking at top or free -mh then it's totally normal for "free" memory to be almost 0 and "buff/cache" to be close to total ram. Thats because Linux does a lot of resource caching in ram to improve performance. If an app needs more ram than is "free" then it gets it from "buff/cache".

The only column thats relevant when talking about ram utilization is "available" ram which = free + buff/cache, or just use moodeutl -m and it will conveniently show the % ram used based on these numbers.

Swap is only enabled to allow old Pi-Zeros to process in-place updates otherwise it's prolly never going to get used.

[kurt1970]

@Tim Curtis , out of context here, but I've seen cases where Linux involved swap instead/on top of claiming the mem from buff/cache when executing an application which was quite memory intensive. Surprised to see this. Hence, the reason why I'm taking the cache into account for the the overall average mem consumption.

[the_bertrum]

Swap is only enabled to allow old Pi-Zeros to process in-place updates otherwise it's prolly never going to get used.

The swap file is also essential on my 3a+ when doing library updates. Without swap, things get locked up very fast.