[mythtv-users] Hard Backend Lockups

[David Brieck Jr.]

I've been struggling with hard lockups on my backend/frontend. It's
completely freezing and won't respond to an SSH session or any other
keyboard or mouse input. I am not have any problems with a separate
frontend system, just this backend. Here are the specs:

- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+
- ASRock ALIVENF6G-VSTA AM2 motherboard (not using the onboard video)
- Nvidia 7200GS PCI-X card (using component out for HDTV)
- Kingston ValueRAM 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
- 1 TB WD SATA Drive
- 2x PVR-250
- HDHR

I recently rebuilt the system hoping to get rid of the lockups and
changed from 32 bit Ubuntu to 64 bit Ubuntu Gutsy. It's completely
updated and I'm running 0.20.2 version of MythTV.

Here's what I know: apparently there are many other people
experiencing the same problem
(http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=651172&highlight=lockup) and
most everyone can connect the problem in some way to an Nvidia card.
It doesn't seem to matter whether you're using the proprietary drivers
or the open source ones, people are still seeing the problem.

I've tried forcing linux to only use one core (to remove SMP from the
equation), disabled powernowd (should keep the processor from scaling
back to save power), not running X at all (boot directly to text
console), running the nv drivers, and I still have the problems.

Has anyone else experienced something like this? Anyone have any other
ideas of what I can try to fix it? Everything except for the PVR-250s
(they got moved from my old backend) was purchased brand new in
November of 2007 to replace another backend that completely died.
Everything is also running in a brand new case and power supply. It
can go for as short as 1 day and as long as maybe 10 days before it
will lockup completely.

I'm desperate for any ideas or help anyone can provide. I'm about
ready to try Fedora instead of Ubuntu, but I have no idea if that will
even help since it seems more hardware related than anything, but at
this point I'm willing to try anything. I'm almost even tempted to
dump all this AMD crap and get a Core2 Duo like my frontend that's not
having any problems.

Thanks in advance.