Hiya,

I have setup my myth box a number of times now in a few different configurations.

My most common problem now is just as i get the thing fully working it stops functioning altogether!

My setup is a R5D1, connexant based DTV card, p4 2.4, 728mb ram, sis chipset board, nvidia fx 5200, 250gb seagate, wireless card that i can never get to work but that's ok.

Like just the other day i finished spending an hour getting it all bedded down and then the next time i rebooted it it came up into normal gnome logon screen. It wouldn't let me log on as mythtv only as root and when you login as root it just shows you a normal gnome desktop.

This has happened to me heaps now and it's real disheartening as i've had to redo the box several times now.

Just this morning i switched on the box just to see if i could nut out how to fix it and it switched on perfectly. It went to setup screen first, i escaped out of that and it's running correctly. But i haven't done anything to it since it was busted!??

Does this happen to anyone else? Is there a simple explanation to this?

Chase.

While you provided a bit of information, your problems probably lie in the missing details. What DTV card? What SiS motherboard? (Make and model of both)

Does this refer to the screen with Tux watching TV, with "KNOPPMYTH" at the top?

When it is running correctly, does everything work as expected? What do you use the system for (watching live TV, recording TV shows, watching DVDs, etc.)

This sounds like your network card (is there a card other than the wireless?) isn't being recognized properly on some reboots, resulting in the backend failing to start. This is just a WAG at this point, if you supply more details we can make more educated guesses.

Just for testing, the next time it goes into the gnome desktop on startup and doesn't load the front end, try hitting M to see if it loads the front end that way.

If that doesn't work, try restarting the desktop using the mouse and see if the front end loads there.

If you can get the front end to load ok during those times, see if the backend is running by checking the recordings, etc.

I'm not sure that the front end wouldn't run just because the backend doesn't. It sounds more like the frontend is just getting killed when it's trying to load, but I'm only guessing.

Next time it fails, try a few more diagnostic commands. Open an xterm (Alt-X) and type:

and tell us what the results are.

The first should list lines for your user account and mythtv near the end of the file.

The second should list a / and a /myth partition.

The third may not run, In which case, the first error will probably be informative

_________________
| Nigel Pearson, nigel.pearson.au@gmail.com
| "Things you own end up owning you" - Tyler, Fight Club

I had the thing running sweet too. Weather, feeds, display just how i liked it and everything. It kills me when i reboot it and it's DOA.

Yeah tried all the shortcuts. None worked. It totally ate it so i'm going to see if i can restore from an old backup and try again. Just takes a bit to get it out from under the TV where i have it and pull the hard drive out to restore the image i made.

In the end i ran a fsck and it spat up a whole lot of errors and when i rebooted it it wouldn't get past the "Loading" screen.

The screen i was talking about was the Gnome logon screen with the daisy like totally not myth at all, no penguins or smilin' dudes shakin' hands. It was like it turned back into a knoppix machine or something.

I doubt it would be the TV card as it's done it before with my old Twinhan card in it.

I ran a memory diagnostic, a cpu/mobo diagnostic and a full hard drive surface scan using a number of tools i have and it all checked out fine, so maybe there's something about my setup that one of the linux modules doesn't like.

So i gather from all the responses that this isn't normal at all huh? Crap.

Chase.

If the system is really jammed into a tight space you might be giving it enough airflow. Next time it's up, try running mbmon and see what the temp is.

"a whole lot of errors" such as? If this is a chronic occurance, your drive may be failing. If you are powering the system off ungracefully that would explain it as well.

I have never seen this on my R5D1 KM boxen so I don't have any tips for it. Have you installed anything via apt-get?

Not normal at all in my situation. You still haven't given us the specifics of your system though, and the solution may lie in one of those details.

Yeah ok thanks.

I'll pull it out tonight and get the specs of everything.

You could be right about the heat. It does only seem to happen after a few days of uptime.

I doubt it's the physical disk as i ran a complete spinrite check and it came back flawless.

I am not familiar with the fsck app so i didn't write down the errors but i've seen heat problems cause indexing errors on windows machines so it's possible it's overheating, malfunctioning and causing the disk to write poorly. Especially with the amount of data an episode takes to write.

Wish i had have written down the boot errors now. When it didn't boot past 0% progress on the loading screen i switched to tty2 (y'know the f2 screen) and it was repeating some really bad looking error and eventually stopped with kill limit reached. i remember this as it reminded me of futurama. :)

"..so i sent waves upon waves of my own men at them.." - Zap Branigan on Killbots.


Chase.

Ok so i've started again with R5E50 now.

Hope it works better for me, already noticed it scans channels quicker for me.

It appears my spec is:

P4 2.4Ghz
Gigabyte GA-8SIMLH Motherboard
My main tuner says ultraview plus www.alsotech.com.au on it but it detects as a Zarlink MT352 DVB-T card
Video card is a Nvidia 5200 GV-N52128DS
Ram is 768mb DDR1 running at 333mhz
Seagate 250gb PATA hard drive.
Onboard SIS 900 10/100
Onboard SIS AC'97
I've removed the wireless card and just run a big ass network cable across the edge of my lounge.
I've added a Twinhan DVB-T card also to see if i can do PIP but it doesn't seem to detect.
It shows up at bootup as a Brooktree but i can't select it in the card setup.

Erm..

Pionerr DVD-RW 111

um..

Pretty weak ass SFX power supply in a mini case.

*Stares blankly at the TV apathetic and a little daunted about starting to tweak everything up all over again.*

...

*Gets down to bizness.*

Cheerio.

Chase...

Ok so i've pulled the pin on R5E50 along with not detecting the Twinhan card i had alot of trouble with the grabber. Then it was doing weird things with the backend not starting.. for a while there i thought it was the few pints i had with dinner... wasn't the case.

So i thought if i'm going to have a good go of it and you say that the crashing thing isn't normal i'll go back to R5D1 and get it all good again and make a full backup again in case it eats it.

Already looks better, it's detected the Twinhan properly and the grabber worked straight away. So i'm happy it's a good starting point.

Turns out that ultraview plus is a DVB and Analog in one with a composite input as well BONUS!... my mate just gave it to me.

Ok well... back to the beers... err.. Myth...

Chase.

Chase:

One of my mythtv builds was a p4-system using a motherboard based on the SIS chipset and I had stability problems. Every 2-10 days the front-end would freeze-up and it requried a reboot to get things going again. Winds up that some of the SIS chipsets have known-issues when used with Hauppauge tuner cards. I realize that you aren't using a Hauppauge tuner, but I suspect the problem is not exclusive to that tuner card. I never found a way to fully solve this problem other than replacing the motherboard...

Marc

Extract from Hauppauge's website:

Some "non-Intel" PCI chipsets are incompatible.

Certain motherboards that are based on VIA, SIS, or ALI PCI chipsets may cause system lockups.

If you are getting lockups with WinTV, or black streaking in the picture with a:

VIA based motherboard, first try:
- a) Look in the BIOS for CPU to PCI write buffer. set this to disabled. Also, check the BIOS for a Latency Timer setting. If applicable, change this to a setting of 12 or lower. Also, Enable AGP FASTWRITE Setting in the BIOS(advanced) if applicable. If lockups continue...
- b) Download VIA's 4 in 1 update. If lockups continue...
- c) Try moving the WinTV board to another PCI slot in the system. If lockups continue...
- d) Try obtaining an updated BIOS for the system...
- e) As a last resort, try using DIB DRAW mode

For SIS Based motherboards:
- a) Check for a BIOS update with SIS or the motherboard manufacturer
- b) Look in the BIOS for CPU to PCI write buffer, set to disabled. PEER CONCURENCY- set to disabled.
- c) Move WinTV to a different PCI slot
- d) Try using DIB DRAW mode

For ALI Based motherboards:

If the ALI chipset is the ALiMAGiK 1 as used on the Asus A7A266, download and apply the ALI update which should correct the lockup problem. This update is available on ALI's Website . Download and install the latest AGP driver (Version 1.9 or higher).

- a) Download and install the latest WinTV Driver from here
- b) Check with ALI for any possible PCI bus updates, or BIOS updates with them or the motherboard manufacturer. Look in the BIOS settings for a "PCI Latency Timer" setting and set this to 8 (some systems may have problems at any greater setting (i.e. 16,32, etc.). If you get bad horizontal lines (with movement) when used with the Soundblaster Live Player 5.1., enable 'Delay Transaction' in the BIOS (or using another soundcard will eliminate the line problem.)
- c) Move WinTV to a different PCI slot
- d) Try using DIB DRAW mode

Marc yeah vid did freeze a couple of times in the old setup.

I'll look in the bios for those settings and give it a go.

I don't generally use sis chipsets in any of my pc's though originally i thgouht sis would be ok as aren't those shuttle pc's people are using based on sis?

I'll keep an eye out for an intel/via based mobo it's a little tricky tho as my case have limited space it has to be a particular depth of micro atx.

Thanks guys for all the help.

I half expected nobody to respond to my post at all. I'm really glad to see that wasn't the case.

Peace out.

Chase.