[mythtv-users] FE/BE combo system locking-up

[Stephen Worthington]

On Tue, 14 Dec 2021 00:24:59 -0500, you wrote:

>I'm going to assume that this didn't start immediately after you
>upgraded to Debian 11; if it did, then I'd suspect software, although
>the symptoms you describe sound more like something's hanging a critical
>bus than software per se.  (E.g., the HDD light jammed on and the system
>unresponsive sound like hardware, though it's interesting that SysRq can
>reboot it; maybe some critical interrupt got missed.)  I might believe
>that you have bad RAM and Debian just happens to be tripping over it,
>but I'm dubious.  But it sure sounds like bad hardware to me.
>
>(Did you touch any hardware as part of your upgrade?  Swapped disks,
>wiggled any connectors?)
>
>Easiest:  Blow all the dust out.  Maybe something's overheating, or
>dust is picking up humidity and acting as a crappy conductor across
>two traces that should have high impedance between them.  You could
>also try unplugging and replugging everything connected to PCI/PCIe 
>buses, etc.

This one - dust certainly can cause this, and if you are not at least
annually getting rid of it, it will cause problems.

>Most likely:  Bad power supply.  Maybe one of its rails is marginal
>and every so often it dips just enough.
>
>Most expensive:  Motherboard is going bad.
>
>How old is this system?  (Old power supplies & motherboards sometimes
>have capacitors that go bad, leading to increasingly-marginal behavior.)

Also: What drivers are installed for the Nvidia card?  I have had
Nvidia driver lockups that were very similar to your symptoms.  But
that was back when GT1030s were new - I have not had that sort of
lockup for some time now, with successive new versions of Nvidia
drivers.  I am currently running 470.86 on my mother's MythTV box and
460.91 on my MythTV box, both Ubuntu 20.04.  Both 460.91 and 470.86
are fine.