I've been running Knoppmyth for about 2.5 years, with no real problems since I got it configured correctly.

Recently, I upgraded to R5F27, so I could continue to get schedule info. Since then, I've had several reboots a day, usually while recording.

Hardware info: eMachines desktop box with Athlon XP 3400 (possibly Athlon 64, the manual and advertising disagree) VIA chipset, 1 gig RAM (upgraded from 512 meg while debugging the recent problems), Hauppauge PVR-150 and PVR-500 cards, three IDE drives, and NVIDIA GeForce video card(I don't recall the exact model)

After the upgrade (auto upgrade option from the R5F27 install disk), video capture was jumpy. I found a post suggesting turning off VBI and that fixed most of the jumpyness.

It will reboot 1-3 times a day, usually while recording a show. If I'm watching it at the time, the screen goes blank and then the BIOS boot up screen appears. Nothing in the logs indicates any problems. Everything appears normal, then the boot up and myth startup messages appear in the logs. CPU temperature runs around 38C, going up to maybe 42 if there's a lot going on.

I found info on BIOS settings that can help with Hauppauge cards and VIA chipsets, but eMachines has deleted anything useful from the BIOS settings. I'd blame it all on VIA/Hauppauge DMA problems, except that it worked with the older software.

Any ideas on debugging this?

If I can't fix this, I will probably try a new motherboard. Any suggestions for a solid AMD socket A motherboard (so I can re-use the CPU), or a good, but not too expensive motherboard/CPU combo?

Oh, there's one other problem: on playback, the video will freeze and pixelate for a fraction of a second, once in a while. I haven't checked to see if it's a capture or playback problem.

When I was setting the system up originally, I had several rebooting problems, caused by a bad power supply, corrupt SQL database (I've checked for that one this time), a bad UPS, and a cat walking on the power switch. I don't think any of those are the problem this time.

Bill

You could try a few things:

1. Run a test on your memory to see if you have any bad ones (Many linux distributions have this test when booting up to a live CD).

2. Swap in a new power supply.

3. Take your hardware out of the slots and re-seat them back into place.

I am having the exact same problem. I upgraded and the reboots started. This did not happen before the upgrade to R5F27.

I didn't expect it to work but I downgraded the nvidia driver in hopes that that was the problem. It was not.

I ran Memtest86 and the memory came back fine.

I scanned through some of the logs in /var/log and didn't see anything.

I am fairly inexperienced with linux so I am at a loss about what to do.

novellahub, you give good suggestions. However, I am thinking that this is a software issue since it started with this version.

Please help.

You could try a few more things:

1. Update your BIOS on the motherboard to the latest version. Some VIA chipsets had issues with PCI slots and PVR-150, 250, 500 in the past.

2. Check the follwing wiki page:

http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... imizeHowTo

Pay attention to the sections on IVTV and backend log sections. Also check the "Increase vmalloc space" portion. Use more and grep to find the specific messages.

Examples:





You will have to become root to view at least the kern.log file:

http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=BecomeRoot

This is a long shot, but have you tried changing the capture resolution to 720 x 480 as outlined in tjc's Hints and Tips under "known issues"? I seem to recall that the severe jumpiness on some channels with the PVR-500 caused a reboot for me occasionally, until I changed capture resolutions. Just turning off VBI in Myth Setup wasn't sufficient.

novellahub, thank you for your suggestion. I ran a more on the logs that you suggested and nothing showed up. I have not tried the wiki page yet.

jzigmyth, I changed all of my settings to 720x480 and set the bitrate to 2200. Thank you also for you suggestion.

I thought that it may have been fixed but it did a reboot today. It does appear to only do it when it is recording or playing back. I know that it not much.

I will leave the machine running for the next couple of days while I'm away on travel and see how badly it runs.

I know I am jumping in on wb6otg's thread but I do appreciate everyone's help.

That seems awfully low for 720x480, I've got mine in the 6000-8000 range... Versus the default MythTV defaults of 4000-6000 at 480x480. Over compressing the image could make it look jumpy all by itself...

OK, thanks for the pointer. I thought I saw a table that used that bitrate but I'll kick it up to 6k.

I had similar problems with spontaneous reboots while recording, and what seems to have fixed it for me was adding the option noapic to my lilo config.

Like some of the other posters, I have a pvr 500 and a 250 in my box, and I didn't have problems on older versions, so maybe it's related to the upgraded version of ivtv? My logs didn't show anything either.

I dont know if this is related and I certainly don't want to hijack the thread.

I first noticed the issue like this. Most of my shows were not completely flagged for commercials.

I checked and everything was still set to start the Commflag as soon as the show started.

What I saw in watching this run, Commflag would kick off almost immediately after a show would start and it would try to be running at about 60fps. eventually it would stop usually about 10-15 minutes into the recording of the show and say it was done.

The only reason I am thinkin this is remotely relative. Three things. The video during the commflag running was not smooth, and it would glitch right about the point the commflag would abort saying it had completed. I noticed in looking at RRD, the Disk IO traffic seemed about 3 fold higher on one stream than it had been prior to the upgrade.

Thinking about it recording a stream and commflagging it can generate a bit of traffic, Some see CPU issues. Maybe it is a contributor to the symptoms you are seeing.

What I did is set Commflag to not start until the recording has ended. Now my Commflag completes very well. I don't see the glitching in the video as described before. Playback is very smooth now.

oh and my default profile Bitrate is like 1600 -2200 and it works well for 720x480 still better than a good recording at 6hr on vhs tape.

hth

Gosh, thanks for all of the suggestions.

bigbro, are you talking about the check box in the setup about starting commercial flagging before the recording ends? That is off.

I did notice that it seems to sometimes not let me watch a show while it is recording.

On the other hand, while it is still crashing, it does seem to be crashing less.

OK, now I don't know what to do with the bitrate. I have a pretty crummy connection to the TV so I can probably get away with a lower bitrate.

jigawho, thanks for the noapic suggestion. That's one that I didn't know a thing about but after googling it, it seems to be fairly common for people. I did see that it has something to do with Intel <http://tinyurl.com/35385p>, since I'm running an AMD processor, does it still apply?

I did a little searching and it looks like I add "noapic" inside the quotes on the append line of /etc/lilo.conf and then run lilo before rebooting. Is this right?

Thanks for everyone's help and sorry to wb6otg, it looks like I've hijacked your thread. Sorry.

BTW, is there a log that I can look in to see when the computer reboots?

I was having the same problem with the PVR 500. Took it out and the spontaneous reboots stopped.

I found this on the Myth site: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Ha ... us_Reboots

It seems to point the finger at ivtv and a conflict when a 500 is co-existing with a 150/250/350.

I tried MythDora and found the same problem.

What is the version of ivtv on R5F27 and can it be upgraded easily?

Thanks!

_________________
Running:
Asus P5ND2-SLI
Intel Dual Core 3.0 Processor
Corsair 2GB Memory
ThermalTake Tenor (VB2000SNS)
Adesso ACK-573PB (IR Keyboard)
2 Hauppauge 150's
1 Hauppauge 500

Well, I think jigawho nailed it for me. I put noapic in and the system has been up for eight days. Before it would crash at least twice per day. Thank you so very much.

mymythtv, thanks for the suggestion though the section you link went over my head. But anyway, I can't remove the 500 since it's my only card.

Thank you to everyone that has helped, I wouldn't be a Myth user if it wasn't for all of you.

As of now my system has been up for over 19 days since putting the noapic in the lilo config. That just about qualifies it for the most stable version I've used with this hardware. Amazing what one little setting can do.

I agree about this being the most stable one yet. My previous install would have the backend crash about once a day.

This has eliminated the wife comments of "The Mythbox is broken again." when her soaps wouldn't record or get chopped into four pieces.