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PVR-150 Black Screen
http://forum.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6729
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Author:  tomes [ Tue Nov 01, 2005 8:12 pm ]
Post subject:  PVR-150 Black Screen

I am running R5A16 on an MSI motherboard, Athlon 2800 XP, with two Hauppauge PVR-150's. I got the box running about two weeks ago. Over the last two weeks I've turned on the TV to find a black screen on my Mythbox. If I hit ESC and I'm patient it will get back to the MythTV main menu, but when I attempt to return to WatchTV I get a message telling me that the connection to the backend server has been lost.

I checked and the backend is still running.

I also notice that the disk is running constantly when this happens.

Up until tonight if I rebooted everything ran OK again. Tonight that was not the case. Even after each reboot I could not get the system to run properly. After a reboot I could watch TV, but if I paused and then hit play it would run for a second and then video would freeze. Hitting ESC along with some patience got me back to the main menu, but then I got the backend message again.

I poked around on the web and decided to try running mythfilldatabase. I was not sure if this would be helpful, but I was in a rush to try to get the box working. Mythfilldatabase did not seem to have any positive effects.

I rebooted again and when I got back to watching TV I switched to my second tuner. It took a very long time during which the disk activity was very high, but the second tuner did function. I then switched back to tuner1 and now everything seems to be working again.

Any thoughts on what's up? I plan to try an R5A22 install in a few days.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Author:  tomes [ Tue Nov 01, 2005 8:14 pm ]
Post subject: 

Sorry...I hit sumbit a bit too fast.

I meant to say that generally everything has been running fine and that I've turned on the system and found the black screen a couple of times...

Author:  tjc [ Tue Nov 01, 2005 8:21 pm ]
Post subject: 

Do this:
Code:
df -k /cache
ls -al /cache/*

the results should look something like this:
Code:
root@black2:/cache# df -k /cache
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3             15750200        24  15750176   1% /cache
root@black2:/cache# ls -al /cache/*
/cache/cache:
total 8
drwxrwxr-x  2 mythtv mythtv 4096 Oct 31 01:09 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 root   root   4096 Jun  4 18:28 ..

/cache/lost+found:
total 20
drwx------  2 root root 16384 Jun  4 18:15 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root  4096 Jun  4 18:28 ..

If there's any junk there you should clean it up manually.

Author:  tomes [ Tue Nov 01, 2005 8:36 pm ]
Post subject: 

I ran the commands tjc suggested and saw pretty much what he posted.

Could switching back and forth between tuners have fixed some problem here?

Thanks...

Author:  tomes [ Sun Nov 06, 2005 3:12 pm ]
Post subject: 

Still no solution to this problem.

I have found that the problem is evident after I see this message in the mythbackend.log

Couldn't read data from the capture card in 15 seconds

There is also an entry in this log that reads "unknown socket" although the problem does not coincide with the appearnce of this message.

A reboot makes everything work. The system will operate fine for a day or two then I get the black screen problem.

I've searched the forums but I'm not sure where to look next. If anyone has any suggestions they would be appreciated.

Author:  tomes [ Wed Nov 09, 2005 7:26 pm ]
Post subject: 

I am still having this problem. I guess there is nobody out there who has a solution or suggestion...

Is there any resource that will help me understand the meanings of the entries in mythbackend.log?

Here's what's in there now:


Code:
2005-11-09 06:25:59.023 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-09 06:25:59.645 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2005-11-09 06:25:59.668 Reschedule requested for id -1.
2005-11-09 06:25:59.669 unknown socket
2005-11-09 06:25:59.888 Scheduled 1 items in 0.2 = 0.20 match + 0.01 place
2005-11-09 19:30:10.103 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-09 19:30:10.131 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2005-11-09 19:30:10.162 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-09 19:30:10.164 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2005-11-09 19:30:10.175 adding: mythtv as a remote ringbuffer
2005-11-09 19:30:10.187 Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV
2005-11-09 19:30:10.321 Can't enable VBI recording
vbi: Invalid argument
2005-11-09 19:32:48.097 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-09 19:32:48.101 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2005-11-09 19:32:54.536 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-09 19:32:54.539 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2005-11-09 19:32:55.531 MainServer::HandleAnnounce FileTransfer
2005-11-09 19:32:55.535 adding: mythtv as a remote file transfer
2005-11-09 19:33:13.449 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-09 19:33:13.453 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2005-11-09 19:33:24.866 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-09 19:33:24.870 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2005-11-09 19:33:30.321 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-09 19:33:30.326 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)
2005-11-09 19:33:30.387 Reschedule requested for id 25.
2005-11-09 19:33:30.638 Scheduled 2 items in 0.3 = 0.23 match + 0.02 place
2005-11-09 19:33:33.854 MainServer::HandleAnnounce Playback
2005-11-09 19:33:33.858 adding: mythtv as a client (events: 0)


I don't know if any of these statements indicate a problem or if they are indicative of normal behavior.

Help would be appreciated.

Author:  griffindj830 [ Fri Nov 25, 2005 12:05 pm ]
Post subject: 

just wanted to let you know that I'm having the same problem. I have almost the exact same hardware. Although I have not found a solution here is the link to my thread

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7044

Any update you can give me on your situation. Did you give up and shoot urself in the head like I'm about to do? Or did you solve your problem?

Author:  tomes [ Sun Nov 27, 2005 10:26 am ]
Post subject: 

Hello,

It's too early to say it's fixed, but I thought I would try newer a newer ivtv driver.

I originally had the 0.3.8 driver installed and I tried installing 0.4.0 but it caused new problems so I went back to 0.3.8 and things seemed to have improved. Why, I have no idea?

I've been playing it safe and rebooting before I record anything I care about, but the system has not had a problem since I went through the ivtv exercise. I'll try to just let it go and see if it bombs again. I'll post again if the problem reappears.

Author:  tomes [ Mon Dec 26, 2005 1:40 pm ]
Post subject: 

This is an update for anyone who's interested...

The system ran for nearly a month with no problems. I turned on the TV the other day and found everything in black and white. This turned out to be a problem with my Svideo cable, but during the debug process I restarted the system. A few days later I had the black screen problem again.

The last time I rebooted the system before the black and white incident I shutdown mythtv and started it from a shell so I could direct the output to a file. I don't understand why this would make a difference, but I'm wondering if starting it in this way had something to do with it running for a month with no problems.

Once again, if anyone has any advice I would appreciate it. I may try R5A26 soon if this problem continues.

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