[mythtv-users] mythfrontend hang with no diagnostics

Ross Boylan rossboylan at stanfordalumni.org
Tue Aug 30 00:30:32 UTC 2016


When I go into settings | video | channel groups my frontend (0.27.5)
consistently hangs.  I have found no  diagnostics in .xsession-errors
on the machine where it's run, or in the system or myth logs on that
system or the backend.

Any suggestions how to diagnose or cure this?

While hung the process doesn't use much CPU.  I can still use
ctl-alt-Fn to switch to a different virtual terminal and kill the
mythfrontend process.  Even after ps confirms it is dead the original
screen still displays the myth GUI and is unresponsive to any keys
except those switching VT's.  The mouse still responds to my
movements, but not to my clicks.  So I have to kill my entire login
session to recover.

I saw this behavior before, perhaps a few months ago, and then after
some weeks  it went away.  I've been updating my software (Debian 8.5
+ Marillat's multimedia), but there haven't been any big changes.

The frontend is on a system running off a USB stick, which seems to
cause periodic hiccups in which the system becomes unresponsive for
~30 seconds (I assume this is retrying disk accessses, though I
haven't isolated it).  The mythfrontend hangs more consistently than
those disk seizures.

Running under XFCE using Intel  i3's onboard video.

The recent run of problems started right after I ran the frontend
using a different unix account than usual, and noticed that the
favorite channels list (judging from the channels shown in the
scheduler) seemed to have lost some channels.  I tried to reset it in
that other account and got a hang.  I then switched back to my regular
linux account, noticed the same missing channels, and got the same
hang.  Both accounts connect to the backend using the same
user/credentials.

Thanks.
Ross Boylan


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