[mythtv-users] Cant load bttv module, ALSA module load problem

[Ray Olszewski]

At 12:29 AM 6/7/2003 -0400, Michael Williams wrote:
>Very true Ray, the bttv and alsa problems aren't MythTV problems
>directly.  However the problem where when I go to "Watch TV" in
>mythfrontend and it completely freezes the machine is isnt it?

Probably. But, first, is it the *machine* that freezes or just the 
mythfrontend process? (For example, if the machine is on a LAN, can you 
ping it? Can you open an ssh or telnet session to it? Can you switch from X 
to a console and log in? Can you switch from mythfrontend to another X 
process, like an xterm? Since I don't know much about the details of your 
actual setup, I don't what options might be available to you to see if the 
system itself is hung.)

When I see this problem here (and I do), and it is only mythfrontend, not 
the host itself, that has ceased responding, I find that mythbackend has 
died unexpectedly. I still don't know in some cases why it happened. In 
others, it died because it could not access some resource.

Check if mythbackend is running under a userid that has permission to 
access the video and audio devices. The easiest way to take care of this is 
to add the userid to groups audio and video (in /etc/group).

Check that it has write permission for the directory where you told it to 
store the "live" TV buffer.  Someone else on the list today had that problem.

What X driver are you running? Does it support xVideo (or some means of 
displaying full-motion video)? (xawtv uses a very non-standard way of 
displaying video on the screen, so don't assume that because it can write 
to the screen, other apps can. See if xine or mplayer can play video if you 
want to check it that way.)

What type and speed CPU? How much RAM? We're getting to long shots now, but 
might you be asking your hardware to do more than it can?

[...]
>If this ALSA is working correctly now, I am still stuck as to why i can
>watch tv with xawtv but when I go to "Watch TV" in Myth it completely
>freezes the machine.  Mythbackend is running correctly, I can see the
>program guide just fine going through "Record a program".

The biggest difference between xawtv and Myth is that Myth buffers "live" 
TV to disk (that's why I always use quotes around "live"). So the 
possibility of a permissions problem with the buffer directory is a 
tempting one.

>Thanks again Ray for the response.
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