I have been running 5A22 for 3 or 4 days with no problems until last night. I was watching a program and set the scheduller to record another upcoming program on the same channel. When that program started the screen went blank, sound disappeared and then it all came back to normal (remember I am now watching the same channel that is being recorded). This morning my son wants to watch the reecording which worked a treat but when he went to go to Live TV the screen went blank and after a minute or so returned to the Main Mythtv Menu screen, he tried again to watch TV but this time it came up with a Box to the effect the Backend had stopped etc,etc.
I later realised that I did not have the Antenna pass thru cable fitted between the 2 tuner cards, however fiting this made no difference, even after a reboot.
What now happens is when the system boots up we can watch recordings, videos and schedule recordings, but once we select Watch TV the backend shuts down. Below is the backend log - this file grows to about 4Mb after 2 restarts of the system.

2005-11-19 18:39:43.538 Using runtime prefix = /usr
2005-11-19 18:39:43.660 New DB connection, total: 1
Starting up as the master server.
2005-11-19 18:39:44.197 New DB connection, total: 2
2005-11-19 18:39:44.306 DVB#0 Using DVB card 0, with frontend Zarlink MT352 DVB-T.
2005-11-19 18:39:44.343 New DB connection, total: 3
2005-11-19 18:39:44.850 DVB#1 Using DVB card 1, with frontend Zarlink MT352 DVB-T.
2005-11-19 18:39:45.302 New DB scheduler connection
2005-11-19 18:39:45.325 mythbackend version: 0.19.20050712-1 www.mythtv.org
2005-11-19 18:39:45.370 Enabled verbose msgs : important general
2005-11-19 18:39:45.448 AutoExpire: Found 2 recorders w/max rate of 277 MiB/min
2005-11-19 18:39:45.466 AutoExpire: space: 3.2 GB w/freq: 5 min
2005-11-19 18:39:47.370 Reschedule requested for id -1.
2005-11-19 18:39:47.467 Scheduled 2 items in 0.1 = 0.06 match + 0.04 place
2005-11-19 18:39:47.474 Seem to be woken up by USER
2005-11-19 18:40:37.126 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-19 18:40:37.131 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2005-11-19 18:40:37.194 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-19 18:40:37.198 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 1)
2005-11-19 18:42:37.166 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-19 18:42:37.171 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2005-11-19 18:42:37.198 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-19 18:42:37.203 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 1)
2005-11-19 18:42:37.218 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-19 18:42:37.224 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2005-11-19 18:42:37.282 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-19 18:42:37.287 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2005-11-19 18:42:37.306 adding: mythtv as a remote ringbuffer
2005-11-19 18:42:37.330 Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
2005-11-19 18:42:37.399 DVB#0 Using DVB card 0, with frontend Zarlink MT352 DVB-T.
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 1: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 2: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 3: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 1: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 2: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 3: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 1: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 2: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 3: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 1: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 2: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 3: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 1: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 2: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 3: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 1: No space left on device
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 2: No space left on device
2005-11-19 18:42:37.694 IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
ERROR: file I/O problem in safe_write(), errcnt = 3: No space left on device
The Error: file I/O line repeats for ages - I think it keeps writing this error until I kill the system.

my system:
Dual Dvico Fusion Lite DVB-T cards
Albatron Km18G Pro
512Mb
Athlon 2800+

Short of a reinstall I have no idea of what to do next. Any thoughts appreciated. Sorry for the long post

TIA

Has the cache partition filled up?

At a terminal, do a df and paste the results

ok I don't know how to cut/paste from a shell but here are the results from the df

Filesystem 1K blocks Used Available use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 3417316 1935736 1308484 60% /
/dev/hda3 8409172 8409172 0 100% /cache
/dev/hda4 104597176 10942028 93655148 10% /myth

Well one doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to see the cache is full. It needs cleaning out?
I had a look around the forums and found a post with a script to check the cache size, mine was set at 15GB but the cache partition was only 9 GB, I have reset the cache in mythtv-setup to 8GB.

Hi bearwood,

Good man, did your homework

You will probably need to remove the old cache ringbuffer also,
as root # rm /cache/cache/* #will clean it out.

That cache will bite you everytime, may even have to drop by one more gig if issue still happens. I only run a couple of gig personnally but it goes for days with no issue. Just shortens the pause time from what I can tell.

Mike

Thanks Mike, thats cleared the cache out and I'll drop the size a bit more once I get it running to see if it makes any difference.
Thank God for the forums, it can take some time but the answer is usually there somewhere.

Hi bearwood,



Seems to be a normal thing as it switches where the stream comes from. Live tv is from the cache, while watching during recording seems to pick up the actual drive file, hence, a ~3 second delay during the process. If you esc out of tv, you can only view the show by going to recordings.

Please correct me if I am wrong.
Mike

Hi Mike,
The 3 sec delay makes sense now, for some reason I had it in my mind that it would use the 2nd card to record and allow "live TV" from the 1st card being the one I was watching.
My box has been down for several days (self induced over zealousness) but I got it all working yesterday afternoon and set it for recording 2 programs back to back last night but couldn't watch tv while it was recording (didn't try looking at the recording) then this morning the screen was blank and required a reboot. Then whilst watching Tv for a few minutes it stopped and reverted to the main menu of Mythtv. The Cache was full again dispite setting the Cache size to 7Gigs!
I found in the Advanced recording options of the DVB card setup 2 options (Per PID driver buffer size & Packet Buffer) that where set to 8192. I have reset these to 7004, so far so good. Any idea what these numbers are Kb, Mb etc?

Eddy

Hi bearwood,

So far I have found no information on that area and a lot of other areas. I am sure it is somewhere. You ask about size? Shucks, I don't even what they are in reference too. Let us know when you find out

My settings are still default and my cache is a lot smaller than yours,
root@KnoppMyth-20:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 3.7G 2.5G 1.1G 70% /
/dev/hda3 3.8G 24K 3.8G 1% /cache
/dev/hda5 9.4G 269M 9.1G 3% /myth
/dev/sda4 103G 80G 23G 78% /mnt/usb/linux
Only time I have problems are on rainy evenings when the signal level drops. I have found the digital stuff doesn't like less than a perfect signal. The "cliff effect" I think it is called, either it is there or it has gone off the cliff.

I am sure there is a definations list somewhere, I did find what the letters mean so will keep looking.

Keep exploring!
Mike

Hi Mike,
Well I think I have got to the bottom of this problem. It appears that the antenna feed cable from one DVB card to the other (I was going to say from #1 to #2 but I have no idea which card is which) was no good. Thus when Myth tried to open the 2nd card for viewing whilst recording on the other card it couldn't and thus the error log, not sure why the buffer overflowed. What I saw on the screen was the channel ident screen come up but "no lock" and obviously no picture.
If it keeps running for the next day or two then I'll post this (ammended) to the forum for problems fixed.
Thanks to you and Mad_Paddler for pointing me in the right direction. Now to find out what those options are in the recording options of DVB cards.

Eddy