[mythtv-users] Can't open 3rd DVB device - malloc error?

[Janne Grunau]

On Tuesday 12 September 2006 17:34, Henry A Harper III wrote:
>
> I have a fairly new and fancy (for me, anyway) FC5 box built just for
> mythtv with three ATSC tuners (3 pchdtv hd5500s). I started out with
> Jarod's howto, mythtv 0.19 and am now at 0.20 svn 11166, new FC
> drivers from pchdtv.com, kernel 2.6.17-1.2174_FC5smp (A64 x2 4600).

One information is missing: the amount of memory. Your cards should 
supported by plain Fedora with that kernel version. Please try again 
without the pchdtv.com driver.

> What I can do: switch among all 3 cards (DVB mode only, I'm not using
> analog) in LiveTV as well as xine, and scheduled two recordings
> simultaneously (that work). What I can't do: schedule three
> simultaneous recordings on HD programs and have all three work - I am
> now up to two at a time working quite well. I have seen three
> simultaneous recordings on one occasion but one of them was a channel
> that is broadcasting SD/480i.

The memory used by the kernel doesn't depend on HD or SD and I can make 
4 simultaneous recordings with 4 DVB cards. So it isn't a general 
limitation.

> 2006-09-12 08:16:36.260 DVBChan(1) Warning: Symbol Rate setting (0)
> is out of range (min/max:5056941/10762000)
> 2006-09-12 08:16:36.298 Started recording: Good Morning America:
> channel 1061 on cardid 2, sourceid 1
...
> 2006-09-12 08:16:58.893 DVBChan(2) Warning: Symbol Rate setting (0)
> is out of range (min/max:5056941/10762000)
> 2006-09-12 08:16:58.920 Started recording: Today: channel 1071 on
> cardid 3, sourceid 1

You might want to fix the symbol rate of these two channels.

> 2006-09-12 08:16:59.706 DVBRec(2) Error: Failed to open DVB device
>                         eno: Cannot allocate memory (12)

But it should be unrelated to this error. Are you sure that your system 
has no memory shortage? The output of free with two HD recordings just 
before and after the start of a third recording would be interesting.

> Is there a kernel parameter I can tweak to get a
> bigger memory allocation?

I don't know but normally if enough memory is available it should just 
work.

Janne