[mythtv-users] Strange failure my MythTV-setup

[Michael T. Dean]

On 05/28/2006 03:48 AM, Bjarne Wichmann Petersen wrote:
> My MythTV-setup have been running almost flawlessly for almost 6 month now (no 
> update to the system in that timeframe), but the last 2 weeks something odd 
> have happened twice.
>
> The first thing I notice is, that I can hear heavy harddisk-activity. Then, if 
> I turn on the TV and play around with Myth it have a sluggish and slow 
> respond and playback might almost stop.
>
> A check with "top" reveals that all RAM is used (256MB) and just as much 
> virtual memory is used as well. I'm guessing heavy swapping is in play which 
> would explain the slow system.
>
> top also reveals that myth-backend takes the major share of the memory (150+ 
> MB).
>
> Checking the Myth-system-status shows that the most recent recordings have 
> failed to transcode, and playing back those recordings shows they have no 
> sounds in them.
>
> Rebooting the system and everything works again, except those 
> no-sound-recordings still have no sound.
>
> Now, my question is: Am I starting to see some hardware-failure? And what is 
> failing? Harddrive? CPU? Or my PVR 350? Or is this just some dormant bug that 
> have taken 6 month to "materialize"?
>
> My system: An Siemens Activy 300 system w. 256 MB RAM, PVR 350 using TV-out w. 
> ivtv 0.4.0 and Breezy and MythTV 0.18.

Have you run a mysqlcheck, lately?  If not (and, especially if it finds 
errors--probably in recordedmarkup), you might want to run the 
optimize_mythdb.pl script (from the contrib directory of the source 
distribution) in a daily cron job.

Corruption of recordedmarkup could cause the transcodes to fail.  The no 
sound issue is probably unrelated, though (and could be anything from 
just playing back the wrong audio stream to something more serious).  
However, making recordings with corrupt tables and/or system resources 
depleted may have "unusual" effects on recordings.

Mike