[mythtv-users] Begging for help with live TV freeze

[Patrick E. McKnight]

Alan Snyder wrote:
> A number of people, myself included, have reported
> frontend freezes in live TV, the symptom being frozen
> picture and sound, the frontend spitting out "Waited 2
> seconds for data to become available, waiting
> again...", and the backend seemingly working normally.
>  
> 
> Previous reports, including some backtraces, are at
> 
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/mailarc/gforum.cgi?post=94005
> (includes backtraces from two users and some console
> output)
> 
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/mailarc/gforum.cgi?post=82957
> 
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/mailarc/gforum.cgi?post=81509
> 
> This is very frustrating because I know that the best
> way to contribute is to track down the problem and fix
> it but I lack a sufficient understanding of what's
> going on.  The problem is not a crash in that the
> frontend is running and just doesn't seem to get any
> data from the backend, but the backend seems to be
> fine and doesn't need to be restarted.  It looks like
> the function spitting out the error is the one that
> pulls data from the ringbuffer, while another thread
> is supposed to be putting data in.  Perhaps there's
> some subtlety in backend-frontend interaction
> involved.  As I reported in one of the posts above,
> Knoppmyth on a separate frontend hung every 30-120
> minutes on average in exactly the same way when
> playing from my backend.
> 
> If the problem is not readily apparent to anyone who
> understands, is there any more I can do to provide
> better information?  I don't want to be a leech.  My
> apologies in advance if I posted this too soon after
> last evening's posts by me and others.  It seems that
> bug reports are answered pretty quickly or not at all.
> 
> Thanks to all for your fine work and for any help with
> this.
> 
> 

Alan,

Let me see if I can help you here.  I too had the screen freezes but I 
did the following and now it no longer freezes.  First, I originally 
compiled bttv into the kernel - big mistake.  I'm using 2.6.0-test11 on 
gentoo and by recompiling the bttv, btaudio, etc as modules, I was able 
to control the driver configs in the modules.conf (or whatever file you 
use to control these things).

BTW, I followed the directions from:

http://www.linuxlogin.com/linux/ati_tv.php

and in particular I used the following (since I was using the ATI card 
myself):

alias char-major-81 bttv
options bttv card=1 autoload=0 radio=0
post-install bttv insmod tuner type=2

I now have some other niggling problems but I am getting close to having 
a full-working and stable MythTV setup.  So my scientific (!) wild ass 
guess is the kernel drivers.  Have you tried to load them at boot rather 
than compiling them in?


-- 
Cheers,

Patrick