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PVR-350 stopped working, no video0, ivtv not loading
http://forum.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=14936		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  harriet [ Sat Apr 14, 2007 10:23 pm ]
Post subject:  PVR-350 stopped working, no video0, ivtv not loading
Up until last week, I was running R5D1. Everything worked great, no problems. I had a PVR-350 and a pcHDTV card; I never got the HDTV card working, but that's a different topic. The PVR-350 recorded hour after hour, no problems.

Then it started failing to record. The system would think it had recorded - the "recording" would show up in the Media Library - but with no thumbnail, and trying to watch it gave a file not found error.

I tried "upgrading" (reinstalling) R5D1, and that didn't help, so I upgraded to R5E50.

My main drive is a regular hda drive. My storage is two SATA drives lumped together in a LVM:

Code:
df -kh

Filesystem          Size  Used  Avail  Use%  Mounted on
/dev/hda1           4.6G  2.6G   1.8G  59%   /
/dev/mapper/vg-myth 602G  512G    91G  86%   /myth
tmpfs               505M  4.0K    515M  1%    /dev/shm


Before I attempted any upgrading, I discovered I couldn't probe the video cards anymore. It appeared to have lost track of both of them. When I tried re-setting up the capture cards, I got:

Video device: (no choices)
Probed info: Failed to open

I'm not positive if, at the time, I had no /dev/video entries (no /dev/video, no /dev/video1, nothing), but that's definitely the case now.

Also, I think something's messed up with IVTV. When I do

dmesg | egrep -i "ivtv|btt|vid}"

I get the START INIT IVTV and END INIT IVTV lines, but none of the Autodetected or loaded messages I've seen in other people's dumps, and no messages starting with ivtv0.

Can anyone offer any suggestions? I've tried the suggestions at

http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=CompileIvtv

but I don't even have any kernel-source files (no tarballs, no dirs) in /usr/src.

I did the upgrade as a manual upgrade (after an attempt at auto upgrade failed - I really should read more carefully before I do these things). I did do the recreate-lvm.sh step, and needed to fix the Suspend2 error that's been documented elsewhere (I changed /etc/lilo.conf
to
append="resume2=swap:/dev/hda2 noresume2", and that made the Suspend2 error go away).

But I can't use my cards at all - not via cat, not via mplayer - because I don't have a video entry in the dev directory.

What should I try next?


THANKS!
Author:  harriet [ Sun Apr 15, 2007 12:03 am ]
Post subject:  a few more details
A few things I left out:

When I start up, I see

KnoppMyth found no Multimedia video cards

although it goes by too fast to see much else.

I am currently able to watch all the programs I recorded before the problems started; they're all there in Media Library / Watch Recordings; this is under R5E50 of course.

When I try Watch TV, I see "MythTV is already using all available inputs for the channel you selected."

According to System Status, mythfilldatabase updated successfully today.

Although I clearly AM connected to the master backend now (or else I wouldn't be seeing listings of programs and so on), when I'm in System Status and move to Tuner Status, I see "Could not connect to the master backend server". I think this is the only place this comes up now. (I was getting it a lot and having a really hard time connecting to bacckend after upgrading, which I solved by going into mysql and doing

Code:
insert into settings (value, data, hostname) values ('MasterServerIP','111.222.333.444','mythtv')

(not my real ip address).

When I dismiss that dialog, I see one that says, "The connection to the master backend server has gone away for some reason, is it running?"

And then the first "cannot connect" again, and then I see Tuner 1 is not recording, Tuner 2 is not recording.

After that message comes up, I can no longer see listings for my recordings in Media Library. I have to reboot.



Also, I think the trouble may have started around the time of the daylight savings changeover.


I hope that helps track this down.

Thanks.
Author:  slowtolearn [ Sun Apr 15, 2007 7:24 am ]
Post subject: 
It sounds to me like your 350 has died, but the system is still trying to "do it's thing". If you have another hard drive laying around you could try a fresh install of either R5D1 or R5E50, you should know early into it whether it finds the tuner card or not.

Which pcHDTV did you not get working? Was it ever working?
Author:  harriet [ Sun Apr 15, 2007 10:04 am ]
Post subject:  I'll test the card
Thanks - I'll test the 350 in another box and post results.

The HD card is a pdHDTV 5500. I never got it to work because the documentation was pretty sparse and I didn't find time to get it figured out. However, when I installed it, it did show up and I was able to probe it and enter it in the Capture Cards setup page in MythTV. Now, just like the 350, it's saying it can't be probed. Since both cards stopped being probed at the same time, it seems like it's more likely a software problem.

Thanks!
Author:  bruce_s01 [ Sun Apr 15, 2007 10:10 am ]
Post subject: 
It does sound like your card has died.
At the command line it might be worthwhile trying :
Code:
lspci |grep Multimedia
. You should see something like:
Code:
05:06.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC15 MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)

I think it may be worthwhile shutting down your PC, opening it up and removing the card (while observing Anti-Static procedures) having a look at the card, checking to see if any components look like that if they have blew up. Also check that the heat sink is properly seated.
Reinstall the card and ensure it's properly seated, power the machine up and see what happens.

Bruce S.
Author:  slowtolearn [ Sun Apr 15, 2007 1:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: I'll test the card
harriet wrote:
The HD card is a pdHDTV 5500. I never got it to work because the documentation was pretty sparse and I didn't find time to get it figured out. However, when I installed it, it did show up and I was able to probe it and enter it in the Capture Cards setup page in MythTV. Now, just like the 350, it's saying it can't be probed. Since both cards stopped being probed at the same time, it seems like it's more likely a software problem.
Hmmm, they both quit at the same time? I would start with Bruce's suggestion of opening up the system and removing and inspecting the cards. While you have the system open blow out all the dust as well.

Did you install any software or make any configuration changes just before the cards stopped functioning?
Author:  harriet [ Mon Apr 16, 2007 7:07 pm ]
Post subject:  cards reseated, happier now
Thanks for the help.

I reseated both cards and removed about twenty cubic feet of dust, and when I rebooted, the ivtv drivers did whatever they're supposed to do, and I was able to see both cards in Setup and probe both successfully.

Unfortunately, it looks like whatever's new in R5E50 (I've seen a few posts about it) that can cause cards to be renumbered is happening to me, and I'm not getting any audio (and the pcHDTV card is still not working, although I think it did a more impressive channel scan than it had last time, and I'm pretty sure at this point the problem is just having a good enough antenna).

I'm planning to try reverting to R5D1. Thought I'd try manual upgrade using that disc, once I've finished carefully reading

http://www.mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewto ... r5e50+r5d1

Any other threads I should read before trying to revert?

Thanks again for the help. None of the trouble indicators I saw made me think the cards might need reseating.
Author:  slowtolearn [ Mon Apr 16, 2007 7:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: cards reseated, happier now
harriet wrote:
I reseated both cards and removed about twenty cubic feet of dust, and when I rebooted, the ivtv drivers did whatever they're supposed to do, and I was able to see both cards in Setup and probe both successfully.
harriet wrote:
Thanks again for the help. None of the trouble indicators I saw made me think the cards might need reseating.
Glad to hear you got it working. I'm guessing it wasn't so much the reseating but the cleaning that got it working for you - The dust buildup will actually cause shorts in the sockets. I remember working on a system in a machine shop that was literally covered in metal shavings. Worked like a champ until they took a hit to the power grid and the UPS finally gave out. Couldn't get it back up until we spent ~2.5 hours clearing all the dust and shavings out of it. (This was quite some time ago, in the XT/286 days). Had the same problem with a number of their office machines - Not metal shavings, just dust. I have to admit I haven't seen that happen recently (Thank goodness! :) ).

harriet wrote:
Unfortunately, it looks like whatever's new in R5E50 (I've seen a few posts about it) that can cause cards to be renumbered is happening to me
See http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=13520 for hints on pinning those devices down

harriet wrote:
and I'm not getting any audio
How do you have the 350 hooked up? Have you changed anything physically since the initial problem began?

harriet wrote:
I'm planning to try reverting to R5D1. Thought I'd try manual upgrade using that disc, once I've finished carefully reading

http://www.mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewto ... r5e50+r5d1

Any other threads I should read before trying to revert?
I don't have any recommendations for "downgrading", do you have a large number of recordings you are trying to keep? Try the link I posted above and a good antenna, then see where you are.
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