[mythtv-users] Hard hangs on 0.21-fixes with HVR-2250 - suggestion or similar experiences?

Paul Gallaway pgallaway at gmail.com
Wed Jun 24 17:02:00 UTC 2009


> Any suggestions for increased log levels that might shed light on this?

Don't have a 2250 but have some suggestions.

First, make sure you're not running the frontend or backend as root.
If you run Myth as an unprivileged user then Mythtv cannot bring the
system down in a crash (so I'm told). The default behaviour for these
packages is to not run as root so you should be OK here but check.

Installing from source with debug flags and running the backend and
frontend within gdb to get the crash report would get the trace info
for developers. Unfortunately with a hard crash you're not going to
get the report. A hard lock indicates that the problem exists outside
of MythTV so I'd suggest that MythTV is not directly the problem -
although perhaps indirectly. Perhaps the new 2250 drivers require some
additional code put into Myth in the past year plus to properly
communicate with the driver. The driver, if in kernel space, could
bring down the system; just a theory. At the very least look at
getting a newer build from a repository. The debian-multimedia testing
repo has a build from April '09 last I checked (you should be able to
easily use pinning to install just the MythTV packages as there are no
new dependencies as this is the fixes branch -
http://wiki.debian.org/AptPinning). There's also an excellent
alternative repository provided by another kluser that has a more up
to date build for Lenny:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/375534#375534
Put the alternative repo info before the debian-multimedia repo in
your sources.list and it should pull mythtv from Tino's repo while
getting other updated packages (e.g. mplayer) from debian-multimedia.
Works for me.

My experience: I had similar hard locks with Lenny (but no
HVR-1600/2250 here) and a new hardware build on AMD64 although my
crashes were daily. I tried everything I could think of. My problem
went away when I converted my XFS file systems to EXT4. My system has
been running without crash for >two weeks now. As a result of my debug
attempts and subsequent upgrades in pursuit of a solution, I am
currently on Squeeze with the 2.6.29 kernel but the problem first
manifested with 2.6.26 and Lenny. I used XFS without problem for a
year or so in Etch and/or Lenny and i386 2.6.18 kernel. Not implying
this is your problem but merely giving you other avenues to
investigate. The second link with the response to my original post
gives some sage advice with respect to hardware troubleshooting.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/384525#384525
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/384538#384538

~pAul.


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