[mythtv-users] System hangs occasionally

[Kingsley Turner]

On 07/11/14 14:13, Dick Steffens wrote:
> On 11/06/2014 06:58 PM, Kingsley Turner wrote:
>> On 07/11/14 11:33, Dick Steffens wrote:
>>> Another occasion occurred. Here's the top few lines of top as it appears 
>>> frozen in a terminal window on my desktop machine:
>>
>>
>> When you say "hangs" do you mean it pauses for a while, or locks up 
>> completely, requiring a reboot ?
>
> The later. I turn on the TV and see the front end menu, but there's no 
> response to the remote, or to the keyboard. I can't connect via a terminal 
> in another machine. The only solution is to power cycle the machine.
>
>> If it's a lockup, I'd think faulty hardware.
>> Perhaps RAM.  Although if it's happening very infrequently, it would be 
>> hard to tell.
>
> It is infrequent. At least a couple of weeks between incidents. I've got 
> some things scheduled to record this evening. It looks like I'll have some 
> free time tomorrow and nothing is scheduled to record (after tonight) 
> until tomorrow evening. I'll try running memtest and see what I get.
>
> Thanks for your thoughts.
>


I went through this a year or two ago with my current hardware.
Started out failing every two weeks or so, but it got worse and worse.

Replaced everything bit by bit.  Eventually it turned out to be the fricken' 
CPU.
Since when do CPUs break ?!

Since about 18 months ago apparently.

My list of stuff to check/do (in very rough order of cost/priority/likelihood)
    - Clean out all fans and heat-sinks
    - Pull out RAM, re-seat it (thermal changes, I've heard, can cause RAM 
sticks to loosen).
       - You could run the memory test app on boot, but for very infrequent 
lockups like that, I don't think it will find anything.
    - Borrow some RAM the same, test
    - Check heat-sink compound between CPU & heat-sink is in tact

then there's the power supply, CPU, other cards, etc.  Swap these out with 
borrowed ones if you can.

-kt