[mythtv-users] OT: suspend to disc....

[Jules Gosnell]

time I offered some feedback on this one...

So, limited success...

After getting everything setup, I suspended to disc 3 times. I had one 
successful resumption from disc and two hangs. With each hang, I had to 
reset the box to get it running. The second time I did this, my box 
would not reboot and I ended up reinstalling my OS and Myth :-(

For some reason my frontend myth box has always been extremely fragile. 
As long as it is shutdown cleanly it is perfectly happy, but if it 
suffers a sudden reset or powerdown, I have about a 1 in 2 chance of 
having the next boot sequence hang (usually whilst trying to set up 
local filesystems or something around here) forever. My solution to this 
is a complete reinstallation, as this involves very little thought on my 
part, I just start the thing off and go to bed :-), The filesystem is 
ext3, so I have no idea why the box should be so awkward about unclean 
shutdowns... If anyone has any ideas I would be very interested to hear 
them.

So, in conclusion then - limited success - but I am too chicken to 
continue, because I can see it is going to cause me a lot of pain. If I 
could get to the bottom of why the box is so fragile, I might be 
encouraged to continue.

Thanks for all the help that I have been given with this one - much 
appreciated.


Jules


Jules Gosnell wrote:

> Bryan Niederberger wrote:
>
>> Jules Gosnell wrote:
>>
>>> Bryan Niederberger wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jules Gosnell wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I try not to leave unnecessary electrical stuff running overnight, 
>>>>> but my mythfrontend takes quite a while to boot/shutdown.
>>>>>
>>>>> I have been looking at what it would take to be able to suspend-to 
>>>>> and resume-from disc.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's a Via Epia Ezra (i586) running FC3 with the latest FC3 kernel.
>>>>>
>>>>> This looks like the best option - http://www.suspend2.net/ - but 
>>>>> involves custom built and patched kernels and no doubt a long time 
>>>>> spent tailoring scripts to unload drivers before shutting down and 
>>>>> reload them after starting up....
>>>>>
>>>>> I was wondering if anyone else was doing this sort of thing with 
>>>>> their myth-frontend box and what their experiences had been....
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for your time,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Jules
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> I went down this path with my Epia M10000 and got mixed results.  I 
>>>> am using Fedora 3 and found a site that keeps recent kernels and 
>>>> packages for software suspend in Fedora 3 and 4.  The link is 
>>>> http://mhensler.de/swsusp/ if you want to check it out.  Getting 
>>>> things set up was no real problem, as I recall it basically 
>>>> consisted of installing the hibernate package, installing a custom 
>>>> mkinitrd for swsusp and installing a patched kernel.  After that, 
>>>> software suspend worked like a champ simply by executing the 
>>>> hibernate command as root.
>>>> Overall it works well, boot times are roughly 30 seconds to resume 
>>>> from suspend mode.  This could probably be faster but my Epia a 
>>>> little anemic in the processing area.  The main reason I have not 
>>>> been using hibernate is that the resumed Unichrome driver has some 
>>>> sort of problem with Myth.  Although I can see the desktop/frontend 
>>>> perfectly whenever I attempt to play a recording myth just displays 
>>>> a black screen with audio (I'm not using XVMC so I don't think it's 
>>>> a problem there).  At this point I got frustrated and never really 
>>>> looked into what the exact problem was.  If you fair better with 
>>>> your Epia let me know any tips/tricks.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks, Bryan,
>>>
>>> I will have a look at this - i was sure that there would be some 
>>> device that didn't like it :-) and I am using XvMC - still, when I 
>>> have some time i may try installing this stuff...
>>>
>>> BTW - do I need to repartition the disc, or can it suspend to a 
>>> large file ? Did you manage to attach the hibernate command to your 
>>> power on/off button (it needs to be wife/child proof :-) ) ?
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>>
>>> Jules
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Bryan
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> mythtv-users mailing list
>>>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>>>> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Software suspend uses the swap partition to do a memory dump when you 
>> ask it to shutdown, so no repartitioning is required.
>
>
> perfect :-)
>
>> As for the frontend power button, that would probably require you to 
>> mess around with acpi events and I have never looked into it.  My 
>> shortcut was to map the remote power button to the hibernate command 
>> using irexec.  Jarod's howto has a very applicable section 
>> (http://www.wilsonet.com/mythtv/tips.php) about using irexec to map 
>> remote buttons to applications.  All in all it worked pretty well for 
>> me, hope that helps.
>
>
> I guess I can set the shutdown string in MythTV to call hibernate...
>
> I just timed my Epia from power-up all the way to a running myth 
> frontend - including a 30 sec timeout at gdm, in case someone else 
> wants to log in - 3 mins 20 secs - even if you call it 2 mins 50 secs, 
> 30 secs sound much more agreeable ...
>
> my kernel is rebuilding now (I need i586 and Matthias only provides 
> i686).
>
> Thanks for the pointers - I will feedback if/when I get it all 
> running....
>
>
> Jules
>
>>
>> Bryan
>> _______________________________________________
>> mythtv-users mailing list
>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
>
>
>


-- 
"Open Source is a self-assembling organism. You dangle a piece of
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