[mythtv-users] Frontend lock-up

Chris Woelkers cwoelkers1 at comcast.net
Sat Feb 23 06:58:32 UTC 2008


George Mari wrote:
> Chris Woelkers wrote:
>   
>> Please note: My system configuration can be found at the bottom of this message.
>>
>> I have been having an issue with the frontend.  Every so often, about
>> every 1-2 weeks, the frontend would freeze up.  After a reboot I
>> checked the logs and found that the video driver was crashing. I have
>> an NVIDIA card so I updated the driver to the latest one available,
>> version 169.09, and haven't had a problem for a whole month, twice the
>> time I got before the driver update.
>>
>> However I just discovered that the frontend had frozen up again.  I
>> was able to log in through SSH and found that the process had zombied.
>>     
>
> [deleted]
>
> Perhaps your video card or some other system component is overheating? 
> The nvidia-settings utility has a thermal monitor that will tell you the 
> temp of your GPU.  Not that that does you any good after it crashes, but 
> you can keep an eye on it beforehand.
>
>   
>> I tried to restart kdm, through /etc/init.d/kdm restart, to clear
>> everything up and according to the output it was successful.  However
>> the process remained in top and the image of the frozen frontend is
>> still on my TV.(Picture of it available here:
>> http://www.stpauls-fsu.org/newmancenter/images/frontend.jpg)
>>
>> At this point the only thing I can think of is a system restart.  If
>> anyone has an idea on how to solve this issue without a system restart
>> than please suggest it.
>>
>>     
>
>
> If you want to avoid a restart, you can try:
>
> init 3 - This goes to runlevel 3, stopping X
> init 5 - Enter runlevel 5, starting X
>
> I just noticed your running Ubuntu, so not sure if these Fedora-ish 
> commands will work, although there should be an equivalent.
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>
>   
Although I didn't try to change the run level, yes Ubuntu does support 
it, X is actually controlled, ie started and stopped, by the KDE Display 
Manager(kdm).
I could see the video card overheating as a problem but I have no way of 
finding out because I have no way to log it.  The nvidia-settings 
utility will not work in a shell unless run from a shell within KDE, ie 
konsole.
What I could do, at least short term, is to write a script that 
identifies the issue through the dmesg program or the messages log file 
and then trigger a reboot.  However that is more than what needs to be 
done.  I will try changing the run level the next time this happens but 
I would like to have a better solution if one is available.
Chris


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