I'm now getting the impression this is more widespread a problem than i had originally imagined....

recent activity here http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/2335
shows others are getting it too....

What still remains unsolved is

#1 What is the underlying reason for it - and a solution/fix/workaround
#2 Why are some people completely unaffected by it - is it more prevalent with some hardware configs, or is there a performance bottleneck somewhere (from what ive seen its happening on fairly powerful hardware so possibly not)

Just heard from another user who has had problems previously with his capture cards overheating and causing the system to crash. Not sure if it is the same error but if anyone has the time, it might be worth just pointing a big desk fan into their system to see if it helps. Others may have already tried this but I thought I would pass on the message.

My system is down at the moment (OS corrupt) otherwise I would try myself,

Kevin

Sounds like the MythTV developers defintely see this as a bug, so it's probably not heat related.

When my box is back up I will definitly try blowing a big fan at it, just to rule out that possibility,

Kevin

I doubt heat would be the problem that would cause the error to occur only at program transistions ? Surely if heat were the cause it would happen after a period of time and then cause problems till it cooled. Ive had the problem occur with the top off several minutes from a cold boot (but at a transition) - so i dont think this is the cause for me.

declanh,

The only theory I could come up with was if an overheated card would cause the CPU to have to do 'retries' to DMA the data. Anyway, it's obvisouly a non-issue since you say it failed from cold on your system.

It would have been nice in a way as problems like insufficent cooling or power supply problems would have explained why it only affects certain users.

Clearly I am speaking from a complete point of ignorance, but I was only trying to be helpful

sorry for the diversion,

Kevin

its not a heat issue, my home machine sits in a cupboard with poor ventilation and one at work is in a/c all the time both still do it no differences.

I wonder if this problem is worthy of a poll, and if so what are the options for the poll answers ?

D

declanh,

sounds like an excellent idea to me. You probably know better than most as to what questions to poll people on, the ones that come to my mind are mainly hardware related, as oppsed to usage related:

Type of CPU? (Intel/AMD, #cores, clock freq)
Memory (size, type)
Hard drive info
Combined FE/BE?
Motherboard info
Video card/chip
Video driver/version
Tuner type(s)
Signal (OTA, satellite, cable, QAM, etc)
KnoppMyth/MythTV version + any fixes
Any USB devices?
Wired/Wirless network?

Not sure how any of these relate to the error, but maybe with a poll someone can spot a pattern,

Kevin

How have you guys been going with this?

Well I can gladly say (touch wood) this is an error I haven't seen for a while. I must admit I am getting picture freeze, but that is signal related (lack there of) and only happens on one channel at random times, usally during heavy glitches and errors from the crappy signal on that channel.

Ok so when i was doing the upgrade to R5F1 I did 2 things:

1. I spread the system to 2 drives, 1 for root, boot and swap, the 2nd for myth. 1st drive is a PATA and the second is a SATA.

2. Formatted the 2nd drive with XFS. Also running LVM, but I doubt that would have much of an effect either way.

Unfortunately time isn't something I have a lot of at the moment, so I couldn't test spreading accross the 2 drives and XFS on a seperate basis.

Hope this helps someone, this drove me up the wall for ages! Now if I can get my landlord to fix our antenna I'll be a much happier feller!!

EDIT: Oh, have been running like this for over a month now (I think, living in a time warp at the moment!). Figured I'd give it a good test before getting any hopes up

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Well, a couple of weeks ago I removed the "Wait for SEQ" for both of my DVB-T cards and was using it to watch live TV for several hours today, no problems with the error message.

Bruce S.

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Same here. I'm going to make a flash movie on how to do this. Next version of KM will have this un-ticked by default and the next version of MythTV has (AFAIK) the problem sorted.

Cheers

Mike

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LinHES 7.4
Australian Dragon
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Why not a simple one line SQL command to tweak the DB? That sure sounds a lot simpler than a flash movie to me.

Ought to do it...

This all reminds me of a customer who sent me an email message with a zip file (which had been renamed ".zap" to pass the email filter) containing a giant MS-Word document, containing a GIF screen capture, all to show me a stinking 60 character error message. Between the size of the document (which caused the first delivery attempt to fail when it was uncompressed), and the zip->zap nonsense (second failed delivery attempt), ... It took a full extra day of people running around with their hair on fire because of a "blocking bug" when it would have taken 2 minutes to answer the real question, and it was all because they were too caught up with all the whiz bang to just provide the content...

This is great for people who are Linux users. It's very sensible and far more efficient than what I propose. I've also had the massive Word document error message problem (you're lucky they knew how to do a screen shot).

However, my primary objective is to get people to migrate to open source from "that other OS". This group installs KM, and when it screws up with the video error, what do they do? They are most likely to think "What a piece of crap. Back to <that other OS>". If we're luckier, they'll look for an FAQ, and see mine "Ah. There IS a fix then". If the fix is graphical and thus familiar to them, they will try and follow it. If it is a line by line textual solution and involves leaving mythfrontend, popping up an xterm and typing commands in an exact sequence, and typing them in again and again each time they make a typo, we've lost them: Back to <that other OS> again.

I'll keep giving migrating users the help they are comfortable and familiar with, and you can keep giving help to Linux users only. Together, we've got all KM users covered. The choice is my point here: Linux users aren't likely to go with the graphical movie solution but other, less computer literate users are. I want to bridge the gap so those with very little knowledge of computers are OK with Linux.
I've been teaching people about Linux for a very long time (nearly 10 years) and I know what freaks them out about it. Command line usage is at the top of the list.

Anyway, I think you get the point

Regards

Mike

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LinHES 7.4
Australian Dragon
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Honestly... No I don't.

We're talking "grab the text with your mouse and paste it in another window", this is exactly what the client would have had to do to provide the error message text too. I watch MS-Windows users do this all the time in MS-Word or Excel, highlight, Ctrl-C, click in the other window, Ctrl-V. This is drag and drop, why does the fact that it's text make any difference?

Maybe I've just been doing this too long...

Hi,

I can see manicmike's view and understand what he is saying (I think) about the command line being a scare factor. Maybe it causes flashbacks to a dos prompt? Then again, many were probably still working on potty training 101 or 102... and so therefore have no clue about a prompt in any form.
I work with a couple of pretty bright IT guys, one is even pretty good with linux but both prefer the gui. So a simple solution for me to help them (and I am but a beginner myself) was to apt-get install gedit . If one adds it to the sudoers list, then even privilaged files can be edited gracefully (makes a .bak file too) Granted, unless one were to add it to the menus, you would still have to open an xterm, type gedit or sudo gedit to activate but then step by step milling through the tree is possible. Or example, sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf for a direct path.

Then it is also very easy to make a simple script to fix something, example is tjc's mysql adjustment:
add
#!/bin/sh
mysql -e "update capturecard set dvb_wait_for_seqstart = 0 where cardtype = 'DVB'" mythconverg
#done
then execute it as the user or root as needed.
Thanks
Mike