[mythtv-users] PM-Suspend/Cron job/motherboard Woes

[Stephen Worthington]

On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 12:43:48 -0400, you wrote:

>I am using a Harmony One on my Mythbuntu 12.04 frontend (MythTV .26, latest
>fixes).  I've been able to get it to wake using the Harmony One and an MCE
>USB iR receiver and just about everything works well, but I cannot get it
>to sleep/suspend with the button on the remote.  I'm not so much concerned
>with that so I'm trying to use a cron job to evoke pm-suspend daily at 2:30
>a.m.  I had this working previously on another front end and it was working
>fine.  For some reason, it will not run on this purpose-built frontend.
>
>Here are the contents of my crontab file:
>
>30 2 * * * root /usr/sbin/pm-suspend 2>&1 ./home/user/Templog/Cron.log
>
>The pm-suspend command never runs, so I attempted to force it to log to a
>cron.log log file, which doesn't work either.  I can manually run the
>command "sudo pm-suspend" and it suspends just fine, so I'm not sure what
>the issue may be.  I don't see any entries about failing to run in the
>syslog, but for some reason
>
>*Issue 2*
>If I wake this front end from suspend, it often will not reconnect the NIC
>and just hangs at a black screen until some timeout value is exceeded, at
>which point the Myth frontend tells me it cannot connect to my backend.
>The motherboard is an ASRock B75M-DGS 2.0 with the latest BIOS.  This
>motherboard has an onboard Realtek RTL8111E NIC, which, from the best of my
>research should be supported in *buntu.  When this happens, if I reboot, it
>resumes working fine.  I did try updating the driver to the Unix/Linux
>driver listed on ASRock's website, but this did not change anything.

The drivers for the RTL8111E are likely the problem.  I have an Asus
M5A97 EVO motherboard with an ethernet chip the kernel identifies as
RTL8168E-VL/8111E-VL.  That is likely the same chip you have, or very
similar.  The builtin driver that loads for this is r8169, which does
not work very well at all as it is not actually the correct driver for
the chip.  So I found and installed the r8168 driver and made it work
with DKMS so it automatically gets compiled with each new kernel. This
works much better, but is still problematic as it sometimes simply
stops working under heavy SMB traffic from my Windows PC (eg copying a
DVD image file).  So I then wrote a Python script that pings the
WebSmart gigabit switch the MytTV box is connected to, and when the
ping fails, it automatically unloads and reloads the r8168 driver,
which gets the connection working again.

I have the r8168-8.035.00 driver installed, but a quick google showed
that it has since been updated to r8168-8.036.00 - just search for
that if you want to try it.  Let me know if you would like a copy of
my DKMS setup for it.  And if anyone needs a copy of my Python script,
let me know about that too.

I eventually got fed up with the r8168 driver stopping and when I
needed a second ethernet port on the box, I bought an Intel PRO/1000
PT Dual PCIe ethernet card that was going cheap on an auction site.
That works much better - the builtin drivers in Mythbuntu 12.04 seem
to have excellent support for it.

>This motherboard works well otherwise and was only $54, so the question is,
>do I replace the motherboard (still returnable) with a more expensive one
>without Realtek LAN (I realize that Realtek LAN is supposed to be widely
>supported but this has soured me on it), or should I just add a $30ish
>Intel PCI-e NIC.  The problem with adding a PCI-e NIC is that I often use
>wake on LAN and I'm not sure if the motherboard supports it with PCI-e
>devices (my last one didn't, but it was an Intel OEM Dell board).
>
>Thanks for any suggestions.

I can't really help with Wake On Lan as I do not use it.  I do know
that my PRO/1000 PT card supports it, and the specifications for the
motherboard in its manual lists "WOR by PME" under "Manageability",
which I think means that PCIe cards can wake the motherboard.  So you
might like to check if your motherboard's manual says it has that
option too.  And check in your BIOS settings for APM options for
waking from PCIe cards.