[mythtv-users] Suggestions for a stable backend

Tony Gould antonyjgould+myth at gmail.com
Fri Jan 31 15:09:25 UTC 2014


bad luck. You've got my sympathies. I had a similar problem in 2008 with 
random kernel hangs, some without any logs, and I jumped through a lot 
of hoops (I tried various custom kernels, some of which improved 
things). It was pretty horrendous, but the problem eventually went away 
with some software upgrades -- I found a kernel that worked and stuck 
with it (i.e. I never upgraded once it became stable).

You've got several great answers already that go into the hardware side 
of it in a lot of detail, but you /might /find that if you upgrade your 
ubuntu to 13.10 and your mythtv to 0.27 that things will improve. 
Another thing you might try is a real-time kernel and see if that makes 
any difference (I'm not an expert here but see e.g. 
http://askubuntu.com/questions/72964/how-can-i-install-a-realtime-kernel 
and 
http://askubuntu.com/questions/126664/why-to-choose-low-latency-kernel-over-generic-or-realtime-ones).

I eventually ended up with a system that was rock-solid for 6 years, but 
I remember the pain!

EJS wrote, on 31/01/2014 02:42:
> Hi there,
>
> My backend works but it just isn't very stable.  It experiences two 
> types of crashes relatively frequently (one every other day or so). 
>  The first one is  a kernel dump that typically occurs when both of my 
> tuners are recording at the same time- although not always.  The 
> second type occurs when the whole box just freezes and won't respond 
> to any keyboard/mouse input.  This one doesn't seem to be related to 
> recording.
>
> I had taken the kernel dump problem as far as I could.  It seems to 
> have been introduced on 12.04, but i haven't seen any resolutions. 
>  The second problem doesn't write anything to the log files so I am 
> not sure how to even begin to debug.
>
> In any case, I'd love some suggestions or recommendations for a rock 
> solid system.  Here is my current configuration:
> Motherboard:GA-73PVM-S2H/GA-73PVM-S2H
> CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 Wolfdale 3.33Ghz
> Ram: 2GB
> Tuners: 2  HVR-1250
> Mythbuntu 12.04
> Linux version 3.2.0-33-generic
> mythbackend version: fixes/0.26 [v0.26.0-42-g10479af]
>
> The backend also runs a SD front end that I use on occasion, but it 
> mainly drives 2 zotac zbox HD frontends. I record perhaps 5-7 shows a 
> week mostly HD QAM. I assume that this isn't considered very heavy usage.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions?  Is my hardware appropriate what 
> what I am trying to run?  Do I need more ram or a faster cpu?  It took 
> a lot of tweaking to get the 2 HVR-1250s to run. I like them because 
> they are cheap but would a different card be more stable?  I had to 
> install a special version of the motherboard bios to get the server to 
> even recognize the second card without crashing.
>
> Would upgrading myth or the os make any difference?  I am willing to 
> buy new hardware if its needed, but I'd hate buy new components if the 
> problem is really in the software.
>
> I know this is a relatively vague request, but I'd love some 
> suggestions or even example configurations of stable systems similar 
> to mine.
>
> Thanks in advance!
> J
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
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