G'day all,

While everything seems to work nicely, I do get freezes.
I would say about every 2 hours.

So long as you don't watch anything it is fine (I do get backend lock ups every now and then as well).

But if we sit down to do some serious watching then we eventually encounter a lockup.
There is nothing in the log files, you can't connect to the box (IP not responding).
What ever was on the screen last is displayed,like you have paused the show.

The lock seems to happen after 2-3 hours and they don't need to be continuous, I.E. can watch a few 30 minute shows, then be watching a film and it will stop after 30 minutes.
The timing is my guess, I have not timed it.

Any idea, I am stumped

I have run with the backend debug in verbose mode.
My next step is to run the frontend from a term session and trap the output to a file.

I have not proved it, but I am assuming either...
- The kernel crashes and the pvr-350 displays the last frame it got.
- The kernel is looping due to a module bug.

Since I use the 350 for output is is pretty hard to debug.

Stinga

Maybe usefull stuff...
root@mythtv:~# df -hl
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 2.6G 2.0G 500M 80% /
/dev/hda3 4.1G 24K 4.1G 1% /cache
/dev/myth/myth 234G 137G 98G 59% /myth


R5A22
MSI KM4M-V
PVR-350
PVR-150

40gb pata HD
250gb sata HD

The exisiting /home/mythtv/.xsession-errors log should have any front end output. See the Troubleshooting pages on the wiki for more ideas: http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... ngLogFiles

I was hoping someone with an answer would reply. What I can tell you is that you aren't alone. My machine freezes too, only it seems more random than yours. Sometimes it will go several days without a freeze and then it will freeze 3 times in 20 minutes. The logs have never revealed anything.

Vigorous scouring of the forums offered several tidbits about such issues. One was a chronic bios issue with a fix that Cesman has made a permanent part of the distro. After that were pieces about the nforce chipsets and via chipsets and a few others causing such problems. But when it is all of them, the solution isn't very apparent.

The upshot seems to have been that there are certain AMD motherboards (primarily in the socket A class) that a prone to freezing. I'm not sure if there is a specific combination of factors that create this. I also have a 350, but don't do video out. Is there something about the ivtv driver/AMD combination. Perhaps but I know of no one who has been able to track it down.

I hope to take another shot at tracking it down in a few months, but if you if you can find out first let me know. In the meantime, I've got my kids trained to hit the reset button.

- Many Via chipset have nasty DMA related problems. There's a FAQ about this on the Hauppauge website and a link to it in my sticky "Hardware to Avoid" thread. I don't know of any good work around since you really need working DMA for the PVR card and the harddisk.

- Some Nforce2 mother boards don't play nice if you have one of the power saving options enabled in the BIOS. I forget the option name but posted all the details long long ago. Try my Tier 2 posting for the old Shuttle box. Once you turn off the option the box should be rock solid. (Turns out it was in the FAQ instead...)

I saw the post you cite when I did my original research.

My motherboard has the nforce chipset. The C1 disconnect doesn't show up in the bios settings of my paarticular mb, but that was the one that had a kernel patch that Cesman has permanently included.

However, the computer still shows the same symptoms. If you have any other ideas, I'd be open to them.

The kernel patch didn't do it for me, it had to be set in the BIOS for some reason. It sometimes hows up under another name that escapes me right now. Look at the description of what it does (disconnects the CPU from the memory bus so it can nap while DMA activity is happening) and it should be obvious. We've got a couple folks around here who like to to talk about using the athcool utility which uses basically the same mechanism. You're not running that by any chance?

G'day all,

Thanks so far!

I am not running athcool.
I need to check the bios for the disconnect setting.

I realised after posting that the .xsession_* file would contain the output from the frontend.

I am wondering if the disk is going bad, this might explain why there in nothing in the logs.
Is there anyway to get syslog output directed to a screen when running with tv out on the 350?

I need to now put a screen and keyboard on the box and it is in the basement

G'day all,

I download athcool and ran it, here is what I got...




So it look like the CPU diconnect is not set, I will check in bios as well

Out of interest is there anyway to tell if I have 'Nasty DMA problem'?
It looks like I might be buying a new nforce board, how do I move data?

Stinga

If you browse back up the thread the same posting tells you where to look...

My motherboard (Asus A7N8X-Deluxe) doesn't have a Bios option for turning off the C1 Disconnect under any name.

I tried the Athcool program. The stat option reported that the bit was enabled. However, using the off option to turn it off hasn't changed anything. It still freezes.

Any other ideas?

What eviltwin said. Here is the thread: http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6321 about the 3rd post contains this URL http://www.hauppauge.com/html/lockups.htm please follow the link and read what the nice folks at Hauppauge say about it. Apparently the folks at Via have gotten enough customer feedback that they finally responded to Hauppauge and there are now some things to try instead of just "Game Over - All your bases are belong to us!"

It may also be with checking that your memory is working properly. memtest86+
Memory corruption can cuase this sort of lockup.

What is the proper way to run the memory test?

Its a while since I tried it but I basically followed the readme in the source tarball. Had to compile it and then put a file from the build into /boot. Then edit /etc/lilo.conf to include that as a boot option. Re-run lilo and then reboot. When the lilo selection menu comes up, select the memtest option and it will run.

On my machine it ran for quite a wile before detecting the problem. When I found which test was failing, I could run just that test and re-produce the problem quicker. Then I fiddled with the memory timing settings in the bios and found a setting that didn't have a problem. I then ran memtest for 24+ hours without an error. Going back to myth, my lockups had gone away.

I see you can download an iso now, so perhaps it would be easier just to get than, burn it to a cd and then boot the cd.

The iso was definitely the way to go. Simple as popping in the disc and booting.

After the first 3 passes, I was ready to pack it up as another dead end. No errors whatsoever. However, twice during the last year the post test failed but then was fine on reboot, so I decided to let it run while I was at work. It turns out that the first 10 passes were error free. The 11th pass came up with 16 errors.Then it was fine until the 20th pass where it picked up 6 more errors. I ended up with 76 errors over 9 hours and 36 passes.

All were in the 5th test, which is typical of AMD processors according to the documentation. Apparently there is something about the speed with which AMD accesses the memory that messes up certain types of allocation patterns and shows up in the 5th and 8th tests of this program.

I don't know how rock solid memory has to be or how forgiving linux is to the errors, but I suspect that when those little errors come in clumps, it could cause the problems I'm experiencing.

So my question is:
1) How did you tweak your settings to make the memory more stable? Does your system take a noticable hit when you use them?
2) If I have to replace the memory, what do I look for? I bought Kingston value ram because I thought they were a reputable producer. But I know there are different variations even there that I've not taken the time to learn the distinctions on CL 1, 2 or 3, ECC or non-ECC, and so on. Are there ways of improving my odds of solid memory?

Can you offer guidance?