[mythtv-users] MythTV freezing up

SBMythTV SBMythTV at cox.net
Sun Jan 7 09:19:50 UTC 2007


For the past month MythTV has been intermittently (but daily) freezing up
on my machine. About two months ago I transitioned from FC3 to FC6 (arch
i686). The problems started soon thereafter but I can't say that they are
related. The system had been otherwise working fine for the last year and a
half. I hadn't made any hardware changes to the system before these
problems started occurring. 

About once a day the entire system freezes up and there is nothing to do
but to reboot. Each time the system was either in the process of recording
a show or in the process of a commercial detection job.  I currently have
commercial detection start up as soon as the program starts recording. I'm
thinking of discontinuing commercial detections to see if the problem goes
away but I have not yet done so. 

I have, however, checked the system memory (386MB) and the two hard drives
(40GB + 250GB). I've added another case fan to keep the system from
overheating (if indeed it was...). I've tested the system with another
(bigger: 550W vs 350W) power supply. I've replaced the CPU (1.4 GHz Pentium
4, 423 Socket) with a slightly faster one (1.7 GHz). I've replaced the CPU
fan. I've also moved the hard drives to give them a little bit more
breathing space. I updated to the last available kernel (2.6.18-1.2868)
about two weeks ago and just today updated to 2869, but the system hasn't
been running long enough to find out if it solved the problem. I've updated
to the latest available kernel modules for ivtv (0.8.2-123.fc6.at), lirc
(0.8.1-65_cvs20061130.fc6.at), alsa (1.0.13-56.fc6.at), and nvidia-graphics
(0.9629-81.fc6.at). 

The system also freezes when I'm trying to create a DVD. I have a batch
file that I run that calls mpeg2desc, mplex, dvdauthor, makeiso, makeisofs,
and growisofs (no I haven't used Myth Archive yet, but I have other
problems ;-) The file burns 8 half-hour shows on a DVD (usually Dora for my
2 yr old daughter). This used to work without any problems before. Turning
off the backend and frontend seemed to help, but it still froze further
along the batch file. 

I guess I should say that it is a two tuner system (PVR-350 and PVR-250)
and I'm using the TV-Out. One master backend and one front end. The
freezing up is somewhat random in that we can be watching a previously
recorded show while it is recording another and doing commercial flagging,
and it works fine. Then, when recording a single show without any other
activity (that I know of), it freezes up. I have also had it freeze up
while doing two things at once. Previously we used to have problems only if
we tried to record two shows and watch another recording at the same time.
I figured we were just pushing the limits with the PATA hard drives and it
was easily avoided by not using the system when recording two shows. 

Well, thanks for reading through all of the above. If you have _any_ ideas
I would really appreciate them. I'm willing to build another system (and
it's probably about time), but I _hate_ not knowing what the problem is.

I've heard that the PVR-350 does get hot. I'm not sure how to go about
trying to determine if it is the problem. 

Any help would be appreciated. 

Thanks!

-Kenan





More information about the mythtv-users mailing list