[mythtv-users] So close I can taste it. Final issue before I get to leave you alone?

[tekchip]

Well being a pc technician A+ certified and all I have all the
answers to your questions.

--- Ray Olszewski <ray at comarre.com> wrote:
> 1. Why is the monitor switching resolutions? Switching to watch TV
> should 
> not (normally) cause *that* to happen.

The monitor resolution switch isn't due to switching to TV. It's due
to the machine rebooting. I was simply attempting to give a full
description of the event.

> 
> 2. Can I assume you have checked obvious hardware issues like
> making sure 
> DMA is enabled on your hard drive? And, for that matter, that the
> drive 
> supports DMA (an 8 GB drive is an old drive, after all, almost
> surely ... 
> the smallest 3"-drice size I see advertised currently is 40 GB).

Yup it's all checked. It is a little bit older hard drive but it was
'top of the line' when it was purchased a couple of years ago. Here's
all the specs
http://www.maxtor.com/en/documentation/manuals/dm2160_ultra_ata_manual.pdf.
Not gonna be setting any speed records but then again it should need
to. I dont have any sort of recording set at the same time. I'm
simply trying to watch 'tv'. 

> 3. I don't know your motherboard so wouldn't know how to flame you
> for 
> using it. I will ask if your kernel is compiled with support for
> the mobo's 
> IDE chipset.

The motherboard is a super small VIA Mini-ITX motherboard, low power
consumption. Not the perfect platform for this but as stated in a
previous response(that you may have recieved after you sent your
response) I'm mainly using it for a test platform and possibly for
just a regular tuner on a non cable ready tv. Not planning to really
use the 'tivo' functionality with this particular machine.

> 4. All that said, it sure sounds like a problem associated with the
> 
> increased load of simultaneously encoding and decoding. So ...
>          A. How large is the "larger known good power supply"? How
> large is 
> the one you normally use?
>          B. Might the CPU be overheating? Do you have a good
> heatsink/fan 
> combo on it?
>          C. Do you know how much power the ATI vidcap card draws?
> (I can't 
> find this anywhere.) Might the combination of its activity and
> heavy CPU 
> load and heavy disk load overtax even a "known good" power supply?

I had given thought to the power supply issue thus mentioning the
swap out earlier. I initially had a 90w power supply in the machine
but soon found reboots were happening during compiles due to the
increased power usage of a desktop style hdd and cdrom drive. I then
went up to a 150W power supply. This stabalized the system during
compiles and the system has run perfectly solid ever since. The
'known good' power supply I just swapped out the 150W for is a 350W
power supply. Consider the cases made to fit this type of motherboard
are designed for laptop cd/dvd drive's and 2.5" hard drives and come
with 55W power supplies. A 350W should be far more than enough to
power the current board and configuration.

CPU over heat shouldn't be an issue. The chips/coolers on Mini-ITX
boards are meant to be used in cramped conditions so they are very
low power/low heat. This particular systemboard/processor happens to
have active cooling on it's processor unlike most of the other EPIA
processors on other boards. I'm also running it in a case that has
the cover removed.

Throw in the fact that all this is taking place at night in Iowa. I
have a fan in my window blowing inwards and weather.com is telling me
the current external temp is 56F. I'm fairly sure it's not a heat
issue(I gotta go put on some socks it's cold in here). 

> 5. You say: "However the machine runs rock solid in absolutely
> everything 
> else." What does your definition of "everything" cover? Does the
> system 
> have no problems when doing kernel compiles and large ftp
> transfers, for 
> example (these are the best ways, aside from video processing, I
> know of to 
> tax hardware)?

I've run every compile necessary to setup Myth thus far with out an
issue including XMLTV and Myth it's self. It's not an athlon to be
sure so compiles run the processor near 100% constantly. I did run an
ftp download of the RH9 disc 1 iso image from the wisc.edu mirror.
This downloaded fine. I also played dreamcast on it via xawtv for
about an hour this evening. I've also played a couple avi movies off
my win box. All went with out issue. Throw in using it for a second
internet browsing machine over the past month inbetween battles with
Myth....

> 6. Can you capture video successfully using any non-Myth vidcap 
> applications? (Examples are vcr/avifile, avicap, mencoder, ffmpeg.
> Even 
> xawtv has a primitive vidcap capability.)
>


> 7. Can you play back recorded or downloaded video using some other
> app 
> (xine is a good choice for this test) that uses the xVideo
> extensions 
> (xawtv does not use them)? Are you *certain* that your X driver has
> xVideo 
> enabled? (I'm still puzzling about that monitor resolution switch
> you refer 
> to.)

As mentioned before the monitor res switch isn't because of software
it was just the computer rebooting. As for play back, yes I've played
back multiple movies from my windows box on my linux box. Using
gmplayer which had to be installed for myth any way.

> 8. For that matter, within MythTV, can you (a) record a show, then
> (b) 
> watch it? Does the problem *only* occur when simultaneously
> encoding and 
> decoding?

I'm just trying to watch a show when the reboot takes place. I'm not
even attempting to record. 

> 9. Is there any chance that you are running out of RAM? This is a
> long shot 
> with any typical configuration ... 256 MB is usually plenty ... but
> there 
> is a lot we don't know about your setup, so I feel obliged to ask.
> If, for 
> example, you are using a large gbuffers setting -AND- this mobo
> uses system 
> RAM for video -AND- you are running a bunch of other stuff, it is
> just 
> barely conceivable that you have a problem with RAM size.

Well with the thought in mind of eventually trying to get this thing
to power in a shorter period of time I've tried to minimize
processor/ram usage of everything. I've got gnome smoothed down a
bit.  I've disabled a couple of services that arn't absolutely needed
like iptables(running a firewall at my internet connection, no need
for one on the individual box), RHNSD(all ready ran all the updates),
sendmail(i use yahoo mail). None of these that I'm aware of should
effect the functionality of myth. I suppose I could be wrong but I
dont think i am....

> 10. Do you have enough room on your hard drive for a capture
> buffer? How 
> big a capture buffer do you have specified? (I wouldn't normally
> worry 
> about this, but an 8 GB drive is unusually small for a Myth setup.)

Not capturing any thing but the buffer is set to 5gb currently which
seems to be either the default or scripted to pic the max available
space on the drive in whole gb.

> If you post again, tell us what Linux distro is involved, what
> kernel (and 
> whether stock or locally compiled), what "free" reports just before
> you try 
> and fail to watch TV, and what "df" reports at that same time.

Linux distro is RH9. Kernel is 2.4.20-13.9. Kernel is stock(success
reported with this configuration by Jeff C on 5/24). Free reports 
Mem:
Total 247372
Used 150208
Free 97164
Shared 0
Buffers 9248

-/+ buffers/cache:
Used 63272
Free 184100

Swap:
Total 522104
Used 0
Free 522104

DF Reports:
Filesystem /dev/hda2
1K-blocks 7455556
Used 2069152
Available 5007672
Use% 30%
Mounted /

Filesystem /dev/hda1
1K-blocks 101089
Used 13938
Available 81932
Use% 15%
Mounted /boot

Filesystem none
1K-blocks 123684
Used 0
Available 123684
Use% 0%
Mounted /dev/shm

> BTW, last time I looked, the myth-users list did have a search
> interface. 
> Did you try it? It's at
> 
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/archive/MythTV_C2/Users_F11/

Well thanks for the link. I apologize for being kind of peeved by it.
I guess I've been on to many lists. If you click the users archive
link on the sign-up/admin pages for the list it goes to a
non-searchable page. I didn't catch the other little link towards the
right side of the screen that also links to the page you just sent me
to. My bad. :-)

> Actually, the people who tell you to check the archives are not the
> ones 
> with "way to[o] much time on [their] hands". It's the people who
> don't have 
> time to answer the same questions over and over.

Might I suggest the list admin change the link on the list
sign-up/admin page to point to the searchable archive? There by
eliminating possible confusion and providing a unified interface for
all things list related?

Thank you very much for your time in responding and attempting to
help me out. I believe most bases are covered thus far with the
exception of the search on the user list that I'm about to embark on.
Thanks again. May be the additional information I have provided will
help in resolving this. I'm also going to lose the OSS drivers and
try throwing down Alsa which I havn't done yet. Just in case it's
some how sound related. Take care all!



> At 09:15 PM 5/26/2003 -0700, tekchip wrote:
> >Ok, due in part to the kindness shown on this list in helping me
> out
> >and partially due to good documentation on the web site I have
> >managed to get everything configured, and running up till I try to
> >switch to watch TV. At that point the screen goes blank for a
> second
> >and then the monitor clicks due to switching resolutions and I
> find
> >that the computer has rebooted it's self.
> >
> >Now before you tell me to check the FAQ let me re-assure you I've
> all
> >ready done that(more than once for other issues). It tells me it's
> >more than likely a hardware issue. To test I have swapped ram,
> >swapped to a larger known good power supply. Attempted to unplug
> the
> >cd-rom drive. The only thing that hasn't acctually been swapped is
> >the motherboard/proc and hdd. I do suppose the motherboard,
> processor
> >or hdd could be the problem. However the machine runs rock solid
> in
> >absolutely everything else. Just to ensure it wasn't an issue with
> >the vid capture card I installed xawtv and I can get video just
> fine.
> >Played a little Dead or Alive 2(on dreamcast), for testing
> purposes
> >mind you.
> >
> >Uppon running XAWTV I noticed that in order to get picture I had
> to
> >switch the input from Television(the coax connector I'm guessing?)
> to
> >Composit 1(standard yellow video connector). This did give me
> proper
> >video. I then went back and attempted to re-run myth's backend
> setup
> >and re-ran mythfilldb. This still had no effect on the issue. Is
> >there something I may have missed?
> >
> >Here's the system stats:
> >VIA EPIA 800(flame away)
> >Single stick PC133 256mb Micron ram
> >Maxtor 8gb hdd
> >Sony 24x CD-Rom
> >ATI TV Wonder VE
> >
> >Please dont tell me to read the faq or the documentation I've been
> >over those both 5 or 6 times now. And if you tell me to look at
> the
> >list archive for an answer you obviously have way to much time on
> >your hands. Get with the internet program, impliment a search
> engine.
> >Any way sorry for being crusty about the list archive. Thanks for
> any
> >help you can provide!
> 
> 
> 
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=====
Brock Hatfield
tekchip at yahoo.com
do bee do bee do....beware the penguin

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