I have a problem, but I can't find related posts. Perhaps someone can suggest some better search terms.

Here is my problem: During SDTV playback, the picture will hesitate for several seconds. I discovered that almost all of my 512MB of RAM is being used. However, this never used to be the case and I have not changed my system for several months. What would cause my RAM to be nearly 100% used up?

A side note, lately I see some interference or "snow" on the screen. This occurs even during the BIOS boot prior to Linux being loaded. Would a faulty video card contribute to my RAM issue?

Here is my setup:
R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200 video card; Dell 4300; Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD
Also, I connect the mythbox to my TV via DVI-->HDMI.

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R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

There is a known issue with a memory leak. Try doing a "pkill xinit" -- if this solves it, then you're hitting this problem and see item 2.3.2 in http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=18453

Marc

Hmm. When I "pkill xinit", the system seems to hang. In other words, the blue menu screen disappears and the screen flickers. Finally it hangs on one of those one-color screens that appears between the boot-up and menu display.

Alternatively, when I press "control-alt-backspace", the blue menu is restarted and does not hang. However, as I repeatedly check the "system information", I can watch the RAM quickly fill up from 30% free to 15% free to 4% free, etc. It very quickly reaches a point where it can no longer playback video. So, this does not seem to be a solution. (I have not changed this system for months, so I am very confused why this is happening now)

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R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

My related post: http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=19105

Adding the pkill xinit (with the idle.sh script) to my crontab to run once a week is working for me. I did in the end upgrade my ram also.

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-Roseville, Michigan USA
LinHES R8: FE/BE, FE (x2)

Still unsure how to solve this.

Just in case I'm doing it wrong, let me explain how I did the "pkill xinit". First, I opened an xterm window. Then, I logged in as root. Finally, I typed "pkill xinit", pressed enter, and experienced the previously posted result.

By the way, I did a backup & auto-upgrade again just now to see if it had any effect. However, there was no change in the RAM behavior. It still quickly fills up.

_________________
R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

Which processes have the large memory allocation?

You want to run pkill xinit as user mythtv. If you run it as root, it will restart your frontend as a root process rather than a mythtv process. You should be able to see the if you check processes in top.

How can I determine this? Is there a specific command I can use?

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R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

in an xterm as a standard user or root, run then just press once. I think it is case sensitive. It should sort them by memory usage. To exit top, press

Here are the key codes that can be used to sort "top"

OK. I just rebooted. Here is the "TOP" result, sorted with "M".



Here is a text excerpt:

top - 17:16:01 up 15 min, 1 user, load average: 0.07, 0.15, 0.18
Tasks: 85 total, 1 running, 84 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.3%us, 0.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 98.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.3%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 512400k total, 503060k used, 9340k free, 65656k buffers
Swap: 779144k total, 0k used, 779144k free, 177260k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3371 root RT -10 128m 106m 14m S 0.3 21.3 0:06.24 Xorg
3414 mythtv 20 0 204m 71m 21m S 0.7 14.2 0:16.59 mythfrontend
2895 mysql 20 0 125m 32m 5336 S 0.0 6.6 0:07.20 mysqld
3124 mythtv 20 0 156m 23m 9.8m S 0.3 4.7 0:01.18 mythbackend

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R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

Run top while watching a show. See what happens to your memory utilization over time. Right now you are showing no swap in use. Some things to watch while the show is playing:

1. Does swap use grow?

2. Do the problems start to happen after swap starts getting used?

3. Does the % of memory used by xorg & frontend grow?

OK. I am watching a show. I'm not sure why, but there is no choppy video today. I swear I didn't change anything since last night's problems. After if froze up one last time last night, I let it sit all day in the frozen state. I came home from work today, rebooted, and its working OK at the moment. However, I don't trust it.

Here is "top" when I begin to watch a recorded show.



Here is "top" at a mid-way point of the show, after a lot of FF/REW.

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R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD

OK, I have a feeling that we're barking up the wrong tree here. Let me explain. Linux almost always uses 100% of available RAM. Whatever isn't needed for the active processes is used to buffer and/or cache stuff. So 100% memory utilization is a normal / good thing. When I look at your screen snapshots, I'm not seeing anything that looks like out-of-control swap utilization. ie, Your last snapshot shows 32MB of swap in use, so unless that is growing rapidly as you continue to watch shows, I suspect your problem is something else.

As I look back at your original post I notice you stated


I doubt that has anything to do with your memory. It could be a bad cable connection from the video card to the TV, it could be a hardware problem in your PC or it could be something else. Let me ask a few questions:

1. Has this hardware worked as a reliable mythtv box in the past?

2. If so, have you made any hardware, software, BIOS or lilo.conf changes since it last worked reliably? When answering this question, be sure to consider the following: Did you move a card to a different PCI slot? Did you enable or disable an on-board device in the BIOS, such as serial/parallel/USB ports? Did you attach something to a USB, serial, parallel or other externally accessible port?

3. Did you move the machine, with the possibility of loosening a card?

At a minimum, I would power down and make sure that all your PCI and AGP cards are all properly seated into the MOBO slots and properly secured to the case. Doing this has solved problems for me in the past.

Marc

Mark, thank you for educating me. I have indicated my response in blue below.



Currently, the machine is still working. So, I'm reluctant to open the case and touch the cards. However, I will 100% make a point to post the result, whenever I next open the case. I really appreciate everyone's patience and thoughtful advice.

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R5.5; PVR-250; FX5200; Dell 4300 with Intel Pentium 4 (1.5 GHz);
BIOS Revision A02; 512MB RAM; 500GB PATA HDD