mythbuntu-bugs team mailing list archive

[MarcRandolph <mrand@xxxxxxxxx>]

Howdy, and thank you for helping to improve Mythbuntu and mythtv by
taking the time to open this ticket.

In general, whole-system lockups are indeed a problem not with the
application, but with underlying window manager, OS/drivers, or
hardware.  Not to say that there aren't exceptions, but they are
relatively rare.  Hardware is one of the first suspects, and one very
easy thing to check in that regard is the memory by rebooting the system
into memtest and let that run for as many consecutive hours as you can.

The first thing to determine is if your system is truly locked up 100%,
or if it is just the frontend, or the window manager. Can you ssh (newer
form of telnet) to the box during these times?  If so, then you can
mostly rule out the OS/drivers.

On the front-end, what happens when you hit <ctrl> <alt> <D>?  If that
brings up a desktop, then you know the window manager is alive as well.

Oh, and one last thing: it can be difficult to get developers to work on
tickets which contain more than one problem.  It is best to open
multiple tickets, one for each problem.

** Changed in: mythbuntu
   Importance: Undecided => Low

** Changed in: mythbuntu
       Status: New => Incomplete

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/739983

Title:
  Lock-up of Myth-frontend while playing recorded TV

Status in Mythbuntu, Ubuntu derivative focused upon MythTV:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  Dedicated HTPC:
  Mythbuntu 10.10
  MythTV from PPA, version 0.24

  (My desktop PC runs Ubuntu 10.10)

  I am basically an end-user, so my way of expressing things may not be very
   technical.

   On the evenings of both 20/03/2011 & 21/03/11, the recording (different
   for each night) that I was watching stopped playing, but left the image on
   the screen (similar to pause).  The keyboard & mouse were also locked-up.
   I left it for 30 minutes, but nothing changed.  The only way to shut the
   computer down was by holding the power button for about 6 seconds (I
   expect that reset would also have worked).

   On both evenings, & prior to the failure, I had watched several recordings
   without incident.

   I don't know how to reproduce the problem, other than keep watching
   recordings until some factor causes one to lock-up.

   I recently upgraded to Mythbuntu 10.10, then used the PPA system to
   upgrade to Myth 0.24; I have downloaded all proposed updates since then.

   Up until 11/03/2011, I was using Mythbuntu 9.10.  This was quite stable
   for over 12 months usage (as were previous versions).  I had had problems
   with Ubuntu 10.04, so didn't want to go to Mythbuntu 10.04.

   However, I wanted to have the better shut-down screen (part of
   Consolekit?), & I hoped that there may be some Myth improvements.

   On 12/03/2011, I upgraded to Mythbuntu 10.04.  There were lots of problems
   with this, including that I could not delete recordings made on that day
   (apart from using file manager).  Another problem: WatchTV crashed the
   Myth forntend back to the desktop.

   So on 13/03/2011, I upgraded to 10.10.  This was not much better.

   So I researched the PPA facility & upgraded to stable Myth 0.24.  While
   doing this, I noticed (somewhere) a button to do something to the
   database, so I clicked on that.

   Whether it was the installation process for 0.24, or the database review,
   the system now worked as it should.

   However, I didn't have the logout screen that I wanted (& had seen on a
   live CD of 10.10).  On 19/03/11, a friend helped me fix the logout screen
   (ticking the Prompt on Logout field on the Session & Start-up screen).

   Since then, Myth frontend does not start automatically.  Should it be
   listed in Session & Start-up?

   I have copied an extract of the backend log file (covering the 30 minutes
   on 21/03/2011 when the screen locked-up) & attached that below.  (There
   was no frontend log file).

  I reported this bug to the MythTV team (ticket #9681), but they
  responded to say that it was not MythTV, but an OS problem.

   My hardware is 2.5 years old, with more than adequate "capacity" to handle
   Myth (both front & back-ends); the PC is dedicated to MythTV & is not used for anything else.

   Thanks in advance, Garry.