[mythtv] Re: Backend hang after ivtv error

Axel Thimm Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
Wed Jul 27 05:11:49 EDT 2005


On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 08:13:00PM -0700, John Freer wrote:
> I've been having a fairly similar problem.  Hauppauge PVR-250 and a
> Win-TV dbx, and also an HD-2000.
> 
> Whenever the bttv card is recording, there's a 1 in 4 chance that the
> computer will hard lock and require me pushing the reset button.
> 
> For me this means a hang about every two weeks.
> 
> I see something in the logs befor the hang about IRQ problems and
> some OCERR lines.  Nothing smoking.
> 
> This problem has been with me since FC2 and through a couple of
> kernels.  I was hoping the recent atrpms update to bttv would fix the
> problem, but I can't prove that out since the July version of bttv
> and v4l breaks PVR-250 tuning for me.

ivtv ships its own modules for tuning. The long term plan is to use
the v4l ones, but if they don't work use the ones from ivtv. Use the
alias trcik in modprobe to chose the ivtv versions of tuner.ko etc.

> Good luck.
> JF
> 
> 
> 
> > For users & devs:
> > I'm using two cards in my system: A hauppauge PVR-500 and a
> > hauppauge
> > bt878-based card.
> > Has anyone had any problems with:
> > 
> > 1) ivtv giving a DMA error in the log, and then
> > 2) mythbackend fails to record using that tuner until restarted,
> > and
> > 3) frontends/web stop responding and repeatedly logs "waiting for
> > thread" forever.
> > Everything works 90% of the time.  This error just comes up
> > occasionally - more often when I'm recording 2-3 shows at once.
> > 
> > Anyone have any suggestions to improve stability?  What encoder
> > firmware are people having luck with out there?  I'm using
> > 0x02040011
> > and ivtv-0.3.7a.
> > 
> > For the devs:
> > I've tracked it down to a pthread_join() statement in tv_rec.cpp. 
> > It
> > appears that when the scheduler things the recording has finished,
> > the
> > backend gets stuck waiting forever for the "encoder" thread to
> > complete, which is started with pthread_create() in the
> > "SpawnEncoder"
> > function (or something like that....near the top of the same file).
> > 
> > So I know it's an ivtv error and trust me, I'm working on trying to
> > fix that as fast as I can.  But for now, would it be possible for
> > mythbackend to recover from it?  Perhaps replace the pthread_join()
> > with a non-blocking call and timeout after waiting a few seconds? 
> > Or
> > perhaps the encoder thread can exit prematurely if it doesn't get a
> > buffer from the ivtv module for awhile?
> > 
> > Also, I just checked out the source from the subversion "fixes"
> > branch
> > last night and installed it today.  Should I expect any better
> > behavior from that?  Or should I just roll with the 0.18.1 release?
> > 
> > I'm not using DVB.....just a PVR-500 and bt878 card.
> > _______________________________________________
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> > mythtv-dev at mythtv.org
> > http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
> > 
> 
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-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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