I've done many searches for why my mythtv box freezes in the middle of the night and I have to reboot at least once a day. True it is annoying but after searching previous posts like this one.
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... ght=freeze
and this one
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... t=freezing

I'll probably end up building a new machine soon. It seems as though I have problematic hardware.

In the mean time, is there a way that I can just reboot, or stop then restart just a process or program and not the whole machine?

Yes, you can always kill a process or start a daemon.
kill pid
/etc/init.d/daemon restart

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

The Live TV hasn't died but just testing different things, this is what I get...

root@mythtv:/myth/tv # /etc/init.d/mythfrontend restart
-bash: /etc/init.d/mythfrontend: No such file or directory

Why would that be, I'm guessing I need to restart the frontend when my Live TV dies. Is that right?

The frontend is not a daemon. The frontend may be dying for a reason. Have you ran it from an xterm and see why it is dying?

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

No I havn't I believe it's my hardware.

What do you suggest?

The frontend may be dying for a reason. Have you ran it from an xterm and see why it is dying? In addition, have you taken a look at the backend log? It is in /var/log/mythtv/...

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

The log is clean, other then the usual .qt stuff...
I'll have to wait until it freezes before I see anything good to go on.
I figured out how to restart the front-end from the machine with the keyboard by just ESC'ing all the way out and re logging in but what I'd really love is to be able to restart the front-end from another machine by ssh.

If you want a quick script to kill the front end at any time, create the file killfe.sh and put it in your mythtv home directory. The contents of the file should be as follows:


Once you have saved that file, run the command 'chmod +x killfe.sh' to make the script executable.

Now any time you encounter the front end freezing during live TV, or for any other reason, you can press [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[F1] to switch to text mode, run the command './killfe.sh' and you will get a response letting you know if Linux was able to kill the front end or not. If you are not sure if it killed the process, try running the script again, and if there are no MythFrontEnds running, you should get the message saying as much.

To run MythFrontEnd from an xterm, switch back to the gui by pressing [LeftAlt]-[F7]. You should be presented with a blank grey screen. Move your mouse to confirm that you can see it, then left click anywhere. You should get a drop down menue from the mouse that allows you to launch either an xterm or mythtv. Select xterm. At the command prompt type 'mythfrontend' and hit enter. MythTV should launch and you can use it as normal.

Now if Live TV freezes again, go back to text mode, run killfe.sh again as noted above, and switch back to the gui. Capture the contents of the xterm and let the forum know what messages are coming up.

If you would like to capture whatever is being printed to the xterm, into a file for easier retrieval later on, you can use the command:

mythfrontend > mythfrontend.cap 2> mythfrontend.err

That should capture all output into the two files .cap and .err that you can edit, or merge to provide better feedback.

cesman, is there a --debug, or -dd parameter to mythfrontend to provide more complete diagnostics information?

-Rusty

_________________
Master:
- AMD 1800XP on a MSI KT4V motherboard, via KT400 bios
- 120 G Segate Baracuda /, /cache, /myth, swap
- 200 G Segate Baracuda /myth/tv
- 3 Haupauge! WinTV PVR250s
- 19" Daewoo Monitor (1280x1024 ni)

That's great, I've made the file and it works perfectly... although it would be fun to have the script restart the FrontEnd.

I've had a problem with it freezing in the middle of the night too...Cesman suggested I reduce my Live TV buffer size a bit, since it was almost to the limit of the /cache partition. So far so good...

To do that, simply add


You are welcome to use some of the pipe commands mentioned elsewhere to capture messages for review at a later date. If you are unsure, '> filename' will capture stdout, (stuff you would normally see at the console when nothing is going wrong) and '2> filename' will capture stderr messages, which are what you often want to report as problems. You can use both at the same time, so the line starting mythfrontend could read:



Hope that helps.

-Rusty

_________________
Master:
- AMD 1800XP on a MSI KT4V motherboard, via KT400 bios
- 120 G Segate Baracuda /, /cache, /myth, swap
- 200 G Segate Baracuda /myth/tv
- 3 Haupauge! WinTV PVR250s
- 19" Daewoo Monitor (1280x1024 ni)

This aproache didn't completely work for me. although the process is killed, the screen still displays a frozen frame. I know that the machine isn't dead because I can ssh to it and confirm that there are no mythfrontends running.

If even restarted Gnome Display Manager with no effect.

Here is what I got in the log from mythfrontend:

2004-04-08 06:58:43 mythfrontend version: 0.14.20040123-1 www.mythtv.org
2004-04-08 06:58:43 Enabled verbose msgs : important general
2004-04-08 06:58:44 Registering Internal as a media playback plugin.
2004-04-08 06:58:45 Registering MythMusic Media Handler as a media handler
2004-04-08 06:59:09 Connecting to backend server: 192.168.1.100:6543 (try 1 of 1)
2004-04-08 06:59:09 Using protocol version 1
2004-04-08 06:59:09 Using protocol version 1
2004-04-08 06:59:09 Using protocol version 1
2004-04-08 06:59:11 Opening OSS audio device '/dev/dsp'.
2004-04-08 06:59:11 Using XV port 111
2004-04-08 06:59:12 Changing from None to WatchingLiveTV

I don't think that this is very helpful. Is there any way to get more robust logging out of mythfrontend? the backend, is also happy.

Adrian

when my LiveTV freezes, I just ssh into my MythTV and run the command, /etc/init.d/gdm restart
That will restart xwindows, and everything will work again without rebooting

yeah, I restarted gdm. That's what I meant by Gnome Display Manager. no effect.