[mythtv-users] Sometimes mythfrontend freezes when internal player is put on pause

[Michael T. Dean]

On 11/05/2012 02:58 PM, Andrey Zhunev wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Friday, November 2, 2012, 9:31:38 PM, Martin wrote:
>
>>>    The issue is that sometimes after putting a movie on pause
>>>    mythfrontend just freezes.  It does not respond to keyboard
>>>    commands, so resuming or exiting the playback is not possible.
>>>    The only way out that I found is to kill mythfrontend and restart
>>>    it (I do it via irexec).
>>>
>>>    The freezes do not happen all the time, but maybe in 20-30% of the
>>>    cases. Sometimes it may happen several times in a row, and sometimes
>>>    it can pause/unpause just fine 20-30 times without any issues.
>
>>>    The strangest thing is that I see no error messages in mythtv log
>>>    when a freeze happens. Nothing unusual at all.
>
>> Might be worth trying -v all, rather than just playback, likely to be
>> freezing for another reason.
>
> It took me some time to catch it with '-v all', and the log file is
> huge. Here is the part of the log when it was put on pause (11:45:45):
>
> http://pastebin.com/download.php?i=2NAYCbBh
>
>
> Then, after some time, when attempted to continue playback,
> mythfrontend just didn't respond. I noticed a real lot of messages
> later in the log:
>
> 2012-11-05 11:46:01.022606 I [27319/8386] AudioOutputBase audio/audiooutputalsa.cpp:566 (WriteAudio) - WriteAudio: Preparing 1536 bytes (384 frames)
> 2012-11-05 11:46:01.022615 I [27319/8386] AudioOutputBase audio/audiooutputalsa.cpp:566 (WriteAudio) - WriteAudio: Preparing 1536 bytes (384 frames)
> 2012-11-05 11:46:01.022624 I [27319/8386] AudioOutputBase audio/audiooutputalsa.cpp:566 (WriteAudio) - WriteAudio: Preparing 1536 bytes (384 frames)
>
>
> May it be that mythfrontend is too busy "preparing" alsa output and
> stops responding to user input?
>
> Once again, this is an excerpt from '-v all' log, so maybe this amount
> of messages is expected.
>
>
>
>
> ===============================================
>
> An idea:
>
>
> In case of "correct pause" when mythfrontend is not frozen, I see
> these "Writeaudio" messages I copied above being followed by something
> like this:
>
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804174 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:114 (IncrRef) - (0x7feea404c9d8)::IncrRef() ->  3
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804201 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:145 (DecrRef) - (0x7feea404c9d8)::DecrRef() ->  2
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804211 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:114 (IncrRef) - (0x39d7908)::IncrRef() ->  2
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804219 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:145 (DecrRef) - (0x39d7908)::DecrRef() ->  1
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804228 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:114 (IncrRef) - (0x415ad98)::IncrRef() ->  2
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804234 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:145 (DecrRef) - (0x415ad98)::DecrRef() ->  1
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804242 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:114 (IncrRef) - (0x4868838)::IncrRef() ->  2
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804248 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:145 (DecrRef) - (0x4868838)::DecrRef() ->  1
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804255 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:114 (IncrRef) - (0x403dc28)::IncrRef() ->  2
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804262 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:145 (DecrRef) - (0x403dc28)::DecrRef() ->  1
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804264 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:114 (IncrRef) - (0x7fee8801e468)::IncrRef() ->  3
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804272 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:145 (DecrRef) - (0x7fee8801e468)::DecrRef() ->  2
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804274 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:114 (IncrRef) - (0x7fee98149f68)::IncrRef() ->  3
> 2012-11-05 23:46:22.804281 I [8649/8649] CoreContext referencecounter.cpp:145 (DecrRef) - (0x7fee98149f68)::DecrRef() ->  2
>
>
> Then there's a bunch of "Writeaudio" messages again, and so on - until
> the playback is unpaused.
>
> BUT: When mythfrontend is frozen, I see much more "Writeaudio" messages
> (probably thousands of them) in the log before some other messages pop up.
>
> Not sure if it's related...
>
> ============================

Perhaps the audio device is blocking?  I.e. this can happen if you mess 
around with your ALSA configuration and/or specify a hardware device 
directly (as nearly all current hardware--thanks to Intel's "let's make 
an audio interface that burns CPU to make sure people buy big chips" 
AC'97 and HDA specifications--has no hardware mixer and uses software to 
do mixing).

What's your audio configuration in MythTV?

Mike