[mythtv-users] Fwd: Re: Fwd: Re: Mythfrontend freezing and VDPAU?

glen burgstein glenb at glenb.us
Tue Mar 3 15:39:32 UTC 2020


---- On Tue, 03 Mar 2020 06:49:21 -0800 Allen Edwards <allen.p.edwards at gmail.com> wrote ----





On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 2:16 AM John <mailto:jksjdevelop at gmail.com> wrote:

On 02/03/2020 16:39, Allen Edwards
      wrote:




On Mon, Mar 2, 2020 at 7:15
            AM John <mailto:jksjdevelop at gmail.com>
            wrote:


On 02/03/2020 14:41, Allen Edwards wrote:




On Mon, Mar 2,
                        2020 at 2:19 AM John <mailto:jksjdevelop at gmail.com>
                        wrote:



On 02/03/2020 01:48, Allen Edwards
                              wrote:

I continue my search for
                                why my mythfrontend is locking up. As I
                                have said, the real bother is that it
                                basically requires a restart of the
                                computer to clear up the problem as I
                                have discussed previously. 

The error I am seeing in the log is
                                  this 

Decoder timed out waiting for
                                    free video buffers
 

What I have found is that several
                                    others have had this problem and
                                    have isolated it to VDPAU with an
                                    interlaced source. We had a lock up
                                    again last night and sure enough the
                                    source was 1080i and the output is
                                    1080p.



There does not seem to be a
                                    solution online that I can find.



Here is one thread https://forum.mythtv.org/viewtopic.php?t=2735

Here is another https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1037255/linux/mythtv-errors-lockups-with-vdpau-and-340-or-390-drivers-/



My question is, am I using the
                                    right driver and video
                                    configuration? Next question, what
                                    should I use if VDPAU is
                                    unacceptable?



I am running Mythbuntu 

Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS


MythTV Version :
                                    v0.28.2-6-g9031599

MythTV Branch : fixes/0.28

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core
                                    Processor 5400+

6G memory

GeForce GTX 750Ti

nvidia 390 driver

VDPAU High Quality



Allen




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I have found that using High Quality
                              software decoding to be more reliable and
                              tolerates faults in the broadcast stream.
                              The cpu load is only moderate - try it.

By the way this issue is still present in
                              V31 so upgrading will not help.






Thanks so much for the confirmation of the
                        issue. I have been wondering about using
                        software but wasn't sure my CPU could handle it.
                        What specific settings do you recommend?



Allen 




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I am on ver 31 using Opengl High Quality and cant
                  remember the exact settings for V28 but I think there
                  was a High Quality choice in
                  Setup>Video>Playback>Current Video Playback
                  Profile

You should get ffmpeg decoding and if I remember
                  correctly vdpau double de-interlacer.

That config never failed for me on a combined Intel
                  Haswell front and backend with Nvidia graphics.

Note i still get judder with software decoding if
                  there are background tasks running so avoid that.






I tried "High Quality" and so far it looks good picture
            quality wise.



I took a look at the CPU load using top and I find that
            strange.

Mythfrontend with VDPAU runs about 9% and with High
            Quality about 29%. That seems fine.

Xorg is what I find strange. With VDPAU it runs about 2%
            and with High Quality it runs all over the place. I have
            seen as low as 6% and as high as 96% 



I guess this is OK as long as nothing is pinned at 100%
            and I see that mythcomflag is able to get in there and it
            only uses left overs so I guess all is good.



If there was just an easy way to restore operation after
            a lock up like there was when I was running Mythbuntu 8 we
            could live with the occasional lock-ups which happen about
            once a month. I modified several things so that CTRL-ALT-BS
            will restart X but it does not work when mythfrontend is
            locked up. Basically, only "shutdown now -r" works in that
            case.



Thanks for the help. We will try High Quality and see how
            it goes.



Allen




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killall mythfrontend

repeat

killall mythfrontend

has always got rid of a hung Frontend for me put it in a script.

Similarly 

If you add "/bin/systemctl restart mythbackend.service" to your
      visudo file then the backend can be reset easily without a
      password.

If the backend does not restart quickly add

TimeoutStopSec=10

to the [Service] section as described in https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Systemd_mythbackend_Configuration





What happens after repeated kill -9 <pid of mythfrontend> is that Xorg is hung and running at cpu of 100%. After repeated kill -9 of that eventually it killed. Process took 5 minutes. Nothing killed right away. Then mythfrontend immediately locked up again when she started the show again. Doing a systemctl restart display-manager also just hangs up the entire gui. I can still access the computer remotely but the gui is toast. I use top to see that Xorg is at 100% and basically eventually do a shutdown to clear things up.



I notice that there is some tearing with High Quality but it is slight. Would be nice if CTL-ALT-BS would work when the system is hung like it does when it is not locked up. I did a lot of work to make CTL-ALT-BS restart things clean. I start mythfrontend directly and not as a service. Without that every time I do CTL-ALT-BS I would get another instance of mythfrontend.



I would like to use vapau as the system runs cooler and the performance is better but the hang ups are just too hard to kill. 



So is there some sub process of Xorg that needs to be killed that has to do with vapau? Maybe that is the secret. I just don't know enough and it is hard to troubleshoot something that happens once a month right when the wife is in the middle of a show and just wants the system working again.



Does this happen to everyone or is it just my old hardware?



Allen








my be/fe hardware is ryzen 2700, nvidia gtx 750ti, 8gig ram, 128gb ssd (os), 2 3tb drives, 2 nas drives, and 128gb nvme (backups). os: archlinux, (kept current), desktop is xfce,  mythtv-git pkg from arch-aur. fe/be is fed to tcl 43 inch 4k tv. 2 other fe's (both shields 1-(2015), 1 (2019) models). and use fe's on laptops, use kodi also on everything. i run vdpau high profile on be/fe. i did have the freeze issue from time to time on the be/fe, but not often. when it happened i would ssh in and kill mythfrontend. there is no mythfrontend/mythfrontend.real in the aur package. there was no hang it would return to desktop immediately. about 6 months back, it began freezing more often and the playback would stutter and was not smooth. i tried a variety of things; changing the xorg.conf.d options, desktop settings, power settings and nothing helped. very frustrating. finally i changed out the hdmi cable and switched to arch-repo linux-ck-zen kernel and went back to my xorg conf settings that i had used previously. and since then not a single freeze and playback in vdpau has been perfect. i know it is a very frustrating problem because there are so many variables. you might look at changing your desktop, look into your xorg.conf settings and possibly changing the os. when things got bad, the opengl playback worked fine, but i did not want the higher cpu usage if i could avoid it.

















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