[mythtv-users] Could realtime commercial flagging cause hard lockup/freeze/hang?

[Brian Foddy]

On Wednesday 04 June 2008, Greg Grotsky wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 10:10 PM, Brian Foddy <bfoddy at visi.com> wrote:
> >  I'd guess its some kernel deadlock with a device driver.  What tuner
> > card is (are) running during the process.  If the machine is really busy,
> > and you have some of the kernel preempt settings on, and there is a bug
> > in the driver, it could cause a hard crash.
>
> I am using a pchdtv HD-3000 tuner using DVB.  If that was the case should
> it spit something out in the syslog?  Maybe there's a setting somewhere I
> can flip to increase verbosity when logging...?
>
> > What type of computer?  Multi-core, dual CPU?  Using SMP kernel?
> > These can cause driver bugs more readily.  If its an SMP instance,
> > try your test with SMP disabled (there is a kernel param that will do
> > this).
>
> It's an AMD X2 4200+ cpu, with SMP enabled in the kernel.  I'm using a
> custom built kernel so I'd have to recompile it without SMP enabled but
> that's something to try, it has been working fine for at least a year with
> this processor.  I previously had a AMD 3200+ single core and it worked for
> like three years with this processor.

Add "maxcpus=0" or "nosmp" to the kernel argument in grub.
Much easier than recompiling the kernel.

Brian