[mythtv-users] RE: System freeze when "Watch TV"

[Vince Busam]

See my comments prefixed by "---":

...

Then after a crash and reboot, you can (probably ... filesystem sync'ing
remains an issue) see what mythfrontend was reporting to STDOUT and STDERR
by checking that file. That might tell you where your problem is.

--- The file has only one line in it "Connecting to backend server ..."

...

Three final thoughts ...

First, what X server are you running? (What video card, that is ... not
what version of X.) A Cel 1.1 is plenty fast for a system that supports
xvideo, but it will fail miserably if the X server requires xShm.

--- My video is on the motherboard - "onboard 64-bit 2D/3D graphic engine and
Video Accelerator".  XWindows in using the Trident driver, 8MB, unknown card.
BTW, I'm using KDE as suggested.  There is a VT133 chip on the motherboard, so
I'm sure it is VIA video.

Second, the lack of ALSA support is likely to prove to be a problem, (just
barely) possibly enough of one to cause the failure you are seeing (what
sound modules *are* you using? do you know that they work with your
hardware?). FOr this to cause "live" TV watching to fail would not surprise
me, but for it to go so far as to cause a hard crash does.

--- I'll try adding ALSA if I can't make progress in another day or two.

Third, how much (real, not swap) RAM does the system have? If you have a
way to watch this (say an ssh session), what is "top" showing just before
the hard crash in the way of CPU and RAM use?

--- Real memory is 256MB.  Can't switch to see "top" because of system freeze.
--- With ssh I get "connection to c11g closed by remote host" when I select
"Watch TV".
--- MythTV was running almost 5% of CPU during startup.

--- My current guess is I have a video problem.  Is there some other (easy to
install) program I can use to test the video?


...
>
> I'm new to MythTV.  Just installed it from RPMs on RedHat 9.  CPU is
> 1.1 GHz Celeron, no-name system.  Capture card is AverTV.  Did not
> install ALSA.
>
...
>
> When I type "space" at "Watch TV" my system freezes, e.g. ctrl-alt-F1
> doesn't work.  I have to push the reset button to recover.
>
> I'm not sure how to find the bttv driver files, but do have files
> bt819.0, bt856.0, and bttv.o in directory
> /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/media/video.
>
> The output from lsmod includes tuner, tvaudio, bttv, ic2-algo-bit,
> ic2-core, videodev, soundcore (all autoclean), and others.
>
...
>
> Vince
>