Wowza Media Server 3 stops working automatically

Dear Wowza Support Team

We have installed Wowza Media Server 3.0.3 on our CentOS 5.5 Operating System. We have 16 GB Ram in this server. Our Trial Free edition of Wowza was working fine without any issues. But after purchasing the license of Wowza and implementing the same in our system, we are facing issues with Wowza as it stops automatically after some time. When i check whether the Wowza service and java by using the command " ps -aef | grep Wowza" and “ps -aef | grep java”, it shows that both processes are not running. But when i check by using the command “service WowzaMediaServer status”, it says Wowza is started. Even i dont see any error in logs file. But our stream stops working. When we restart wowza, it starts working again. Please help us in solving the issue.

Dear Wowza Team

Still waiting your reply.

Zip up and send conf and logs folders to support@wowza.com

Include a link to this thread for reference.

Richard

Do you see any outOfMemory errors, or other clues, in the access and error logs before the restart?

Richard

If you are using a Trial edition it may have expired. Check license in a browser:

http://[wowza-address]:1935

Richard

What exactly is happening in your case?

Do you see any outOfMemory errors, or other clues, in the access and error logs before the restart?

Richard

Can I ask jhayvi, smared, iridium to update this ticket. What is the current state regarding your issue?

Richard

Thanks very much for the update

Richard

We’re having similar issues. What does this mean rebuilt without the virutalization layer? How can we do this?

In our case, Wowza does not report anything in the error or access logs, but just stops streaming. Can’t access port 8086 either. Needs to be restarted then all fine.

I’m have same problem. but I can access port 8086 and 1935 from web (http://host:1935 or http://host:8086).

But can’t send stream or play stream for wowza. After restart “/etc/init.d/Wowza… restart” it will come to work fine.

I use live-repreater function too.

I have problem 1-2 time per month.

We’re having the same issue.

Did this get resolved for you? We’re still looking for a solution.

Wowza service unexpectedly quits working. When you check the status, it states the service is running, but nothing works. You have to stop, then start the service and everything comes back up fine for a day or three. Then, it randomly quits again.

Wowza 3.0.3 build 9, Cent OS 5.7 (running virtuozzo, but it’s a dedicated machine), 16GB RAM

Thanks for any help or insight.

No memory errors…

We started a Wowza support ticket ( #18936) and here is the latest response:

The only way we can replicate what is happening is to actually kill the java process that is running wowza.

So by sending a kill signal wowza exits the same way that it does as shown in your logs.

Wowza does not send a kill signal to itself.

There has to be a house keeping script or something that is performing this kill task

We have asked our server support to look and see if anything is killing or affecting Java processes.

Beyond that, we’re stumped. It was a brand new server with nothing on it. Our server support installed Wowza and lastest Java version, etc. There’s nothing else on that server other than the usual Cpanel stuff.

Any advice?

Ok, thanks for the tip.

We’ll look through the crontab for this.

The wierd thing is the kills happen at random hours. Always at the top of the hour, but not the same hour and not the same intervals between kills.

We think we have it narrowed down to the transcoder add-on OR something on our server conflicting with the transcoder.

We reinstalled Wowza and started from scratch, one step at a time.

Before we included the transcoder license in the config file, the service did not die and the stream played perfectly for 4 days.

When we added the transcoder license, the stream buffered quite a bit, dropped frames, played poorly and the Wowza service eventually died within 18 hours (top of the hour again!).

We can replicate this consistently.

We only have the one test stream going on that server and it is NOT being transcoded/transrated. All the transcoding configs are default.

Any thoughts?

Looking back through this thread, one thing that stands out to me is everyone mentions licensing along with their problems.

How often does Wowza perform the licensing check? Is there anything going on at the top of the hour in Wowza?

Oh my, I’ve thought it’s something to do with my custom code, this is exactly what is happening to us. After a live broadcasting using a stream.play API then after a couple of hours the server dies. No error on the Logs or something. And I’m still investigating using jconsole and it seem nothing wrong as far as I’m monitoring it. Maybe the admin should look on this because this actually affects lots of your customers.

jhayvi - what are your hardware and software specs?

We’re still having the same problem and actively trouble-shooting. The more info we have from others, it might help us move in the right direction to identify the issue and maybe find a solution.

FYI - We have finally resolved this issue. We had our server rebuilt three times. First two times we still experienced the same issues. The third time we had it rebuilt without the virtualization layer and now Wowza stopped hanging. It’s been more than a week and everything is still working as expected. Not sure if it was something within the virtual layer or something else that was different between the two configurations.

similar behavior to me. Both stand-alone or services starting.

Wowza becomes unresponsive after hours.

accepts new connections, but sharedobject, timer functions, HTTPProviders, streams (not all) is gone. Sounds for me than half system has been crashed and half still alive, I don’t know…

vod streaming is running in server-side to keeping application alive.

first hours works like a charm. No log errors.

Wowza 3 Subscription.

any idea?

randall,

I found the reason to my issue, but not the solution.

take a look: https://www.wowza.com/forums/showthread.php?16442-Application-PingTimeout-no-effects

randall,

I found the reason to my issue, but not the solution.

take a look: https://www.wowza.com/forums/showthread.php?16442-Application-PingTimeout-no-effects

Try to provide as much information as possible. We have you 3 reporting this… maybe others, but Wowza has thousands of customers and not everyone is reporting this strange behavior. We need to try to isolate what the problem is. Of course, you should always upgrade to the latest JDK7 and Wowza.

Include steps to reproduce if possible.