[mythtv-users] mythfrontend hangs, X is locked, cpu usage skyrockets

Ramzy Darwish ramzy.darwish at gmail.com
Fri May 27 04:56:37 UTC 2005


Hello,
I have scoured the archives looking for an answer to my problem. Somehow, I have totally screwed up my installation of mythfrontend. The backend seems to be working just fine, but somehow, I mucked things up and my frontend won't start correctly.

I just upgraded my video card drivers and they seem to be happy with X all alone. But if I start mythfrontend, the "Prescaling images" dialogs appear, progress and disappear, but then the frontend just hangs there.

And if I check top, my cpu usage is at like 97/98% with X gobbling all of it. I can't kill mythfrontend and the only thing that seems to work is to kill X manually and forcefully. I can't use the mouse or keyboard within X and I can't get to a command-line. If I have an ssh session open to the machine though, I can do stuff no problem. So the machine is not dying, just something about the interaction of X and mythfrontend. I did just upgrade to .18.1 and everything was going fine.

THe only change I have made is my video card drivers. I did try to reinstall the old ones and uninstall the new ones etc., but this made both the NVIDIA installer and emerge (gentoo) angry and the only thing I am now able to do successfully is install the newest driver from the Nvidia installer.

I don't really know what to look for. No errors show up in any logs (i.e. system or mythbackend).

If I run mythfrontend -v all | tee output, I get:
2005-05-26 23:26:10.595 New DB connection, total: 1
Total desktop width=640, height=480, numscreens=1
2005-05-26 23:26:10.610 Using screen 0, 640x480 at 0,0
2005-05-26 23:26:10.620 mythfrontend version: 0.18.1.20050510-1 www.mythtv.org
2005-05-26 23:26:10.622 Enabled verbose msgs :all
2005-05-26 23:26:10.974 max_width: 640 max_height: 480
2005-05-26 23:26:11.136 Switching to square mode (Titivillus)
2005-05-26 23:26:11.477 /root/.mythtv/joystickmenurc not found.
2005-05-26 23:26:11.479 Joystick disabled.
2005-05-26 23:26:11.500 New DB connection, total: 2
2005-05-26 23:26:11.625 Registering Internal as a media playback plugin.
2005-05-26 23:26:11.661 Registering MythDVD DVD Media Handler as a media handler
2005-05-26 23:26:11.665 Registering MythDVD VCD Media Handler as a media handler
2005-05-26 23:26:12.286 Registering MythMusic Media Handler as a media handler
2005-05-26 23:26:12.667 generating cache image for: /usr/local/share/mythtv/them
es/default/blank.png
2005-05-26 23:26:13.221 Starting media monitor.


Now, I don't know if it necessarily means anything that the media monitor message is the last because I can start and use mythfrontend (somewhat) over a VNC connection. I can start mythfrontend and the menu comes up just fine and I can move around and even watch recordings (not actually watch, but they show up and I can play them).

I did look into the media monitor problems some people had and tried disabling "Monitor CD/DVD", but that did nothing. 

I don't know how I screwed it up this bad. I did try reinstalling myth and mythplugins, but that didn't work. 

I really have been loving my system for over a year now and this has been the first big problem since getting it set up initially.

Please let me know what other info you need me to let you know. I did compile mythtv with debug support, so I can send a stack trace if need be, but since there is not a crash or anything, I wonder if that's what is needed.

Sorry if I'm not giving you much to go on, I really want to be helpful to all you wonderful people who have helped me in the past. Be gentle ;)

Some info on my system:
OS: Gentoo
CPU: Dual P3 1000Mhz
RAM: 1GB DDR
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 4 440 MX
Previous version of driver: 1.0-6111
Current version of driver: 1.0-7174 (and they seem to be working)
uname -a: Linux frontend1 2.6.10-gentoo-r6 #6 Sat Mar 26 17:18:25 CST 2005 i686 Pentium III (Coppermine) GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

I hope this is the type of info you need. I didn't change any config files or anything when I upgraded drivers. 

Thanks in advance,
ramzy
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