[mythtv-users] Unusual problem

[Martin Turner]

Hi MythList,

This isn't strictly a Myth question, but only my master Myth backend is 
doing this so I thought I'd ask here. The box its self has been running 
more or less fine for about 2 years now except that recently (the last 2 
weeks) it has developed a stutter.. Now I say stutter because it 
sounds/looks like it gets stuck in a second loop for about 4-6 seconds 
then continues on fine like nothing ever happened. I don't have anything 
in the logs (myth or syslog) to indicate what is going on and im 
basically stuck.. As you can imagining its extremely annoying having it 
do this at random..

This is what I have observed/done so far..
- Seems to be at random. Doesn't coincide with any regular running task 
or recordings in myth. Can do it while myth is recording or not.
- Nothing is logged. If myth is recording I get a log about " 
cx88_wakeup: 31 buffers handled (should be 1)" but after investigation 
im putting that down to the cards internal buffers filling up during the 
stutter then all being read at once rather than it being the error thats 
causing this.
- New kernel didn't fix the fault (gentoo system, roll my own kernel) 
neither did changing the kernels tick timer or making it a tickless 
kernel. Also, the problem didn't start after a kernel change.
- Seems to have started after the 0.20.2 upgrade but that may just be 
coincidence. Is it safe to roll back to test?
- The clock in the system actually stops for the time its stuttering and 
needs to re-sync. NTP fixes this fairly quickly, but interesting..

Any help would be great, I'm happy to post more info about my system if 
its needed.