[mythtv-users] canceled recording (Recorder Failed) mystery

[Bob Gamble]

Still no solution to the below.  Other errors in addition to "Canceled
recording.  Recorder failed" include:

Error: Failed to set channel to 241. Reverting to kState_None

This error can happen when watching livetv and trying to change channels
using my remote.  I will also get "excessive retries" errors intermittently.

As I said below, I had this working flawlessly before early last summer.  It
has been unreliable since then but still does record a fair amount of shows
on each tuner.  I wonder if this is specific to Ubuntu's kernel since IVTV
is now included in the kernel and ivtv-utils is the only installable
component for IVTV (that I now of).  I am considering once again switching
to Centos which seemed to give me the least amount of problems regarding
reliability.  Since the post below I have eliminated the theory that one
version of Ubuntu was better than the other (reinstalling and upgrading to
9.10).  I have checked and rechecked permissions, time between both servers,
network and have done much research.  I don't see any one else having this
problem.  I have also wiped the cards and channel sources a few times,
carefully readding according to documented steps.  I am at a loss.  The only
thing I can think to try is compiling my own vanilla kernel which I used to
do on a regular basis several years ago.

Does anyone out there have additional ideas?  I'd love to hear from you.

On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 10:41 AM, Bob Gamble <kiksadiweb at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have been troubleshooting this for a couple months.
>
> Setup:
>
> Ubuntu 8.04 with a master/slave backend mythtv server.  These also act as
> frontends.
>
> Two hauppauge pvr350s.
>
> Serial->USB converters similar to this setup...
> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Controlling_DirectTV_D11_via_USB#The_DirecTV_H21_Satellite_STB
>
> I use NTSC and I don't scan for channels during setup as I live in Alaska.
>
> I use a shared NFS share that resides on the master backend.
>
> This setup has worked flawlessly in the past, save for a problem with my
> Directv receivers which have since been updated to H21 models.  I am using a
> the latest directv.pl script from
> http://www.pdp8.net/directv/directv.shtml.
>
> I have recorded many gigabytes worth of shows.  My problem is I get the
> error "canceled recording (Recorder Failed)" from my backend log
> intermittently. I have tried deleting all tuner cards and deleting video
> sources several times, being very careful to start from a clean
> configuration. I've looked at several posts where this solved the similar
> problems. When doing this, I am careful to not go to the channel editor
> until I mythfilldatabase has been run at least once.
>
> Yet I still get failed recordings. There is no consistent failure (i.e. a
> program will fail one time, then succeed another). I have been using manage
> recordings to get rid of the failures regularly. One thing I haven't tried
> is uninstalling all the mythtv software and reinstalling.
>
> I wonder if there might be a database setting causing this. I would be
> bummed to have to wipe out the database and start cleanly, but that may be
> what I need to do. Before wiping out and maybe upgrading to the latest
> mythbuntu I wanted to see if anyone had other ideas. I have been using
> mythtv for a couple years and have been happy with its stability until
> recently. Thank you to the developers and to anyone that might help solve
> this issue.
>
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