[mythtv-users] a7n8x -- lockup after 30 minutes recording]

[Ray Olszewski]

At 09:28 AM 11/13/2003 -0500, H Brett Bolen wrote:
>using nforce2 asus a7n8x deluxe mobo with amd2800 ( not
>overclocked), and hauppauge 401 card ( btaudio). mobo has
>onboard sound. ati  radeon video ( origional aiw, but not
>using it for vid cap or audio capture ( in or out )).
>
>I have moved the bttv card to different pci slots, and used
>`lspci -vv` to try to make sure it's irq is not shared.
>
>Lockup is computer freeze -- no keyboard, no pings, etc. A reboot
>is necessary to get it running again.

If the host freezes this thoroughly, it is most likely not a Myth problem 
as such.  Because Myth buffers "live" TV, it will use up RAM much more 
quickly than will (say) xawtv. Though eventually ANY choice of apps will 
fill up available RAM -- that's the way the kernel works -- a vidcap app 
like Myth will do it a lot faster. So I'd **guess** that you have either a 
RAM problem or a swap-partition problem.

The best way to investigate this (since apparently you have other hosts 
available on a LAN, from which you can ping this host) is to open an ssh 
session to the Myth host and run "top" in it. That way, even after the Myth 
host freezes, the last "top" report will be visible on the remote host, and 
you can see if the failure is coincident with RAM almost filling (suggests 
a swap problem). Or with RAM filling to a particular size (suggest an 
actual RAM problem).

Although a Myth host (in my expeirence) does not really need a swap 
partition, I have (rarely) seen combinations of kernel and hardware that 
need a small swap partition to avoid periodic freezes of the sort you seem 
to be describing. In the case I have her, the partition never actually gets 
used, but the system freezes every couple of days (in non-Myth settings) if 
swap is not available. Weird, but true.

Also notice if the keyboard LEDs are all on after the freeze. If they are, 
this indicates a kernel oops happened ... which you **might** (if you are 
lucky) be able to get info about from your logs after a reboot (this is 
unreliable, because a kernel oops can cause filesystem sync to fail before 
the info actually gets to the disk drive).

Can't help with the rest of your questions (below), though.


>using mythtv v0.12.
>
>I have not had any more lockups with this computer.  appears
>to happen at after about 30 minutes of recording.  does something
>happen at 30 minute intervals ?
>
>xawtv runs forever ( although without sound).
>
>Is there a way I can play /dev/sound/dsp1 (  btaudio) ?  Unix
>cat doesn't work because of a speed mismatch ( might be stereo/mono
>mismatch).
>
>does anybody have a7n8x deluxe working with mythtv? What are you using
>for audio?