[mythtv-users] Cant load bttv module, ALSA module load problem

[Michael Williams]

On Sat, 2003-06-07 at 02:21, Ray Olszewski wrote: 
> At 12:29 AM 6/7/2003 -0400, Michael Williams wrote:
> >Very true Ray, the bttv and alsa problems aren't MythTV problems
> >directly.  However the problem where when I go to "Watch TV" in
> >mythfrontend and it completely freezes the machine is isnt it?
> 
> Probably. But, first, is it the *machine* that freezes or just the 
> mythfrontend process? (For example, if the machine is on a LAN, can you 
> ping it? Can you open an ssh or telnet session to it? Can you switch from X 
> to a console and log in? Can you switch from mythfrontend to another X 
> process, like an xterm? Since I don't know much about the details of your 
> actual setup, I don't what options might be available to you to see if the 
> system itself is hung.)

Yes, its on a lan and I do most of my work on it from a SSH session and
VNC, though when I test the video stuff its at the local console.  Its
the machine that is locking up, the vnc and ssh sessions are killed on
the windows box, and on the mythtv box you cant switch tasks or virtual
terminals.

> Check if mythbackend is running under a userid that has permission to 
> access the video and audio devices. The easiest way to take care of this is 
> to add the userid to groups audio and video (in /etc/group).

I did a quick fix, chmod 777 /etc/dsp* and chmod 777 /dev/video*

I know, not the right way to do it, but I was getting desperate.  Will
set it correctly once I get this working.  If I do :)

> Check that it has write permission for the directory where you told it to 
> store the "live" TV buffer.  Someone else on the list today had that problem.

Yea, i already got that :)  Linux is stored on a little 10gb drive and I
have a 60gb drive mounted on /mnt/store and I run both myth frontend and
backend under the user "michael", I have gone to the store mount and
touched a test file to make sure I can write it.

> What X driver are you running? Does it support xVideo (or some means of 
> displaying full-motion video)? (xawtv uses a very non-standard way of 
> displaying video on the screen, so don't assume that because it can write 
> to the screen, other apps can. See if xine or mplayer can play video if you 
> want to check it that way.)

I was using the ATI All in Wonder Rage 128 that I was originally going
to use for a capture card (until I found out that it WILL NOT WORK :). 
I have installed an NVidia TNT2 with tv out.  I couldnt get the NVidia
binary drivers to work, even though I followed their instructions to the
tee.  Maybe they dont work with TNT2s, only Geforce+.

> What type and speed CPU? How much RAM? We're getting to long shots now, but 
> might you be asking your hardware to do more than it can?

I am running an AMD 1700+ processor with 512mb of PC133 Ram.


I am thinking the problem with it locking up when trying to view live tv
is with Alsa actually.  When I try to do it I hear a few clicks from the
speaker RIGHT before it freezes the system.  Strangly enough, bttv seems
to be loading more often than not now, right after boot.  I have no idea
why.  Sometimes it does give me the unresolved symbol error. Does anyone
know if bttv has some kind of sound driver dependencies?