[mythtv-users] mythbuntu backend still crashing

[Ross Campbell]

On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 4:07 PM, Francis Hartojo <fhartojo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 11:14 AM, Brad DerManouelian
> <myth at dermanouelian.com> wrote:
>> For posterity, I'm runnning the i386 version of Mythbuntu, imported
>> the database I was using on the x86_64 version (so.. same exact
>> settings) and I haven't seen a crash in 2 days. This, opposed to
>> several crashes a day, particularly when starting recordings, but not
>> always. Sorry I don't have the patience to look into it more and file
>> a bug report. Now that I have a viable work-around, I'm leaving my
>> system alone for a while.
>
> This is quite similar to my experience.  In my case, the backend
> process crashed every time I switched in and out of LiveTV.  This was
> with an Asus M3A motherboard and an AMD Phenom Quad Core.  The i386
> version is a lot more solid though sometimes either the frontend or
> backend processes still die with a segmentation fault.
>
> If I may ask, what's your MB/CPU/RAM config?  Because I'm thinking
> about getting an Intel-based combo and trying the 64-bit version
> again.  May be it's more stable than an AMD one.

I run X64 Mythbuntu on a system with an Intel quad core cpu and 4gb of
RAM. I experienced many backend crashes starting with my mythbuntu
7.10 install. At the time, I read some supposition that this could be
an issue that was related to multicore cpus. I put a little script in
place to restart mythbackend if it dies, and this has made me somewhat
oblivious to mythbackend dying -- I just notice that some recordings
get chopped into a few pieces every now and then...

Some time after my 8.04 upgrade, I hit a bad ram issue that caused all
sorts of unpredictable and unexplainable crashes. As mentioned
earlier, I definitely recommend running memtestx86 for people who are
experiencing many unexplained crashes or application errors. After I
found this RAM issue, I replaced my RAM but I still see mythbackend
die around once a week on X64 Mythbuntu 8.04 running the latest
mythtv-21-fixes debs.

-Ross