[mythtv-users] Help debugging XvMC freezes

[Scott D. Davilla]

>On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 5:03 PM, Misty P 
><<mailto:mistyp at thekorn.net>mistyp at thekorn.net> wrote:
>
>I have a fully working mythtv frontend/backend combination running on an
>nvidia 7300LE.  Running myth version 16838 .  Viewing content using xv, it's
>solid as a ROCK!  No, *really*, so far (2 months in) it's never failed.
>
>Since I had a decent GPU, I decided to try playing with XvMC.  I installed
>envy, had it upgrade my nvidia drivers, and all was well.  I added another
>playback config with XvMC, and it worked!  The OSD was in black and white,
>but that was an acceptable trade off to me.
>
>
>EXCEPT that now the front end will randomly freeze while playing back
>content.  It doesn't matter if I'm watching Live TV or something recorded.
>I'll be watching something, and the screen will just freeze on that frame.
>Sometimes I'll be watching for twenty minutes, sometimes it'll be for two.
>There's no rhyme or reason as to when the freezes happen.
>
>Once frozen, the front end is *completely* dead.  If I SSH into the machine,
>I can kill the front end and restart it OK.  If I then go and view the same
>recording at the same point, it will NOT crash again.  (i.e. this isn't a
>"bad content" issue.)
>
>What's throwing me is that there is absolutely NOTHING interesting in the
>log files.  Just the standard "switching from none to live TV" and "using
>XvMC" type messages that you normally see.  No warnings, no errors, nothing
>"interesting".  I've also checked the nvidia core temperature via nvclock,
>and when the frontend freezes the GPU is sitting around 55C.  (It's *always*
>at that temperature, whether using xv or XvMC.)  So I don't think it's a GPU
>overheating issue, either.
>
>
>
>Where/how do I begin debugging this?
>
>(Note that if I switch the playback profile back to the xv profile, the
>system goes back to being stable as a rock.  So I have a work around, but
>I'd like to use XvMC if I can get it working reliably.)
>
>
>It is likely a hardware driver issue.  Myth can't cause your machine 
>to lock like that, only something at a very low level like a driver. 
>I'd back down the nvidia version to something less recent and see if 
>that helps (or even your previous version)
>

humm 7300LE, that's similar to the 7300 is in the AppleTV. I would 
experience random freezes and green blocky video corruption using 
XvMC until I under-clocked the gpu. See 
http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloader/wiki/UpdateNvidiaDriver for 
details.
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