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Installating a 3rd pchdtv card cripples my backend
http://forum.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19503		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  da_king_phelps [ Wed Feb 04, 2009 11:17 am ]
Post subject:  Installating a 3rd pchdtv card cripples my backend
My backend box is running RF27 with an AMD 4850e, 2x1 GB of memory, no video card, 2 pchdtv HD-3000 cards, and a gigabit NIC. I have 2 sata harddrives, a dvd recorder, and an IDE harddrive in it. Also connected is a wireless LAN stick. I have been recording and watching HD with Knoppmyth since may of 2005.

With the digital transition, I need a 3rd tuner, because my FOX station is switching to VHF. I'm 60+ miles from the TV stations and need a dedicated UHF antenna for all the other stations.

I bought a HD-5500 card, which claims to be compatible with the HD-3000 cards. If I have any combination of any 2 cards installed in my box it works fine, I can record 2 shows at once. With all 3 cards installed, only 1 show will record (it will record to any of the 3 cards). Trying to record a 2nd and/or 3rd show at the same time will fail to record. The mythbackend.log states that it can't open the DVB device. At one point I pulled 1 of the 2 memory chips out and the all 3 were recording. So I thought, power problems. I installed a beefier power supply (with more amps available on all the volt lines). No go, same problems.
Taking the memory chip out was a one time fluke.

Swapping cards around didn't help, and /usr/proc/interrupts shows nothing significant.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Below are clips from the mythbackend.log and at the end, a line from dmesg. I added comments.

Thanks, Todd.
--------------

# Start recording using 1st tuner, no other recordings occurring
# Works fine

Reschedule requested for id 1337.
Scheduled 187 items in 0.5 = 0.03 match + 0.49 place
Reschedule requested for id 0.
Scheduled 187 items in 0.5 = 0.00 match + 0.49 place
TVRec(2): Changing from None to RecordingOnly
TVRec(2): HW Tuner: 2->2
Started recording: FOX 2 News Morning: channel 1021 on cardid 2, sourceid 1
DVBRec(1) Error: Failed to set demux buffer size for pid 0x31 to 3600384
eno: Cannot allocate memory (12)

--------------

# Start recording using 2nd tuner, no other recordings occurring
# Works fine

Scheduled 187 items in 0.5 = 0.00 match + 0.50 place
Reschedule requested for id 0.
Scheduled 187 items in 0.5 = 0.00 match + 0.49 place
Reschedule requested for id 1337.
Scheduled 187 items in 0.5 = 0.03 match + 0.49 place
Reschedule requested for id 0.
Scheduled 187 items in 0.5 = 0.00 match + 0.52 place
TVRec(4): Changing from None to RecordingOnly
TVRec(4): HW Tuner: 4->4
Started recording: FOX 2 News Morning: channel 1021 on cardid 4, sourceid 1
DVBRec(2) Error: Failed to set demux buffer size for pid 0x31 to 3600384
eno: Cannot allocate memory (12)

--------------

# Start recording using 1st tuner, no other recordings occurring, records
# Start recording using 2nd tuner, fails to record

Reschedule requested for id 0.
Scheduled 187 items in 0.5 = 0.00 match + 0.49 place
Reschedule requested for id 0.
Scheduled 187 items in 0.5 = 0.00 match + 0.50 place
TVRec(2): Changing from None to RecordingOnly
TVRec(2): HW Tuner: 2->2
Started recording: Today: channel 1041 on cardid 2, sourceid 1
DVBRec(1) Error: Failed to set demux buffer size for pid 0x31 to 3600384
eno: Cannot allocate memory (12)

Reschedule requested for id 0.
Scheduled 187 items in 0.5 = 0.00 match + 0.50 place
TVRec(4): Changing from None to RecordingOnly
TVRec(4): HW Tuner: 4->4
Started recording: FOX 2 News Morning: channel 1021 on cardid 4, sourceid 1
DVBSM(2): Failed to open DVR device /dev/dvb/adapter2/dvr0 : Cannot allocate memory
--------------

dmesg log has these messages in it.
allocation failed: out of vmalloc space - use vmalloc=<size> to increase size.
Author:  alien [ Thu Feb 05, 2009 2:31 am ]
Post subject: 
This might sound weird.....

Try taking out one of the 1G RAM sticks.

The less RAM you have, the more vram is allocated to the system. 1G RAM is easily enough for knoppmyth.

From what I've read, changing vmalloc= boot parameter tends to break things. Especially when you have >1G RAM.

An interesting discussion of this is here:

http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-kerne ... 75376.html
Author:  cecil [ Thu Feb 05, 2009 3:17 am ]
Post subject: 
alien wrote:
From what I've read, changing vmalloc= boot parameter tends to break things.
I forget the reason but I had to do this on an old setup. I had no issues w/ it...
Author:  paulsid [ Thu Feb 05, 2009 2:17 pm ]
Post subject: 
cecil wrote:
alien wrote:
From what I've read, changing vmalloc= boot parameter tends to break things.
I forget the reason but I had to do this on an old setup. I had no issues w/ it...


Changing vmalloc also seems to be required to get the HVR-1600 to work with the nVidia drivers, and I haven't had any problems with it so far, nor have I seen any such reports from others who have done it.

I should point out that the cited discussion is almost 4 years old. The kernel's stability WRT hardware has improved substantially since then.
Author:  da_king_phelps [ Fri Feb 06, 2009 9:45 am ]
Post subject: 
adding vmalloc=256m to my append line in the lilo.conf file seems to have worked.

Thanks for helping me with this.
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