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System (still) freezing up
http://forums.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14861		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  soundguy95 [ Sun Apr 08, 2007 7:41 pm ]
Post subject:  System (still) freezing up
Howdy, all... I'm posting this in the Hardware forum because I'm not sure where else to put it. Let me know if this is incorrect...

I have a MythTV system...

IBM NetVista (Intel chipset)
P4 1.8GHz
512MB of RAM
Hauppauge PVR-150
GeForce FX 5200 PCI graphics card (128MB RAM)
40G & 80G hard drives (80G mounted as /myth/tv/)
KnoppMyth R5E50
Onboard sound

...which I've been running for a few months now. It's been working fine, with one exception: It freezes up usually a couple of times a day (at completely random times) - by "freezes up" I mean that if I'm watching TV, the frame rate slows to one frame every minute or so, and if it's just sitting there, the next time I try to use the menu system, it takes a minute or two for it to respond to the keyboard or remote (the mouse is functional, and I can even work within the shell a little bit). I originally thought it was just completely locked up, but that doesn't appear to be the case. It's just absurdly slow. And it doesn't record scheduled programs while in this state.

I've run hardware tests, upgraded the RAM (it used to be 256MB), monitored the temperature of the CPU (which never rises above 110F)... I'm completely out of ideas. I'm about to give up and try Freevo (which is NOT my preference by any stretch of the imagination - I'm just sick of missing 24 because the system's buggered). I'd assume that this is a software issue, but I haven't been able to find any similar problems on this board.

Does anyone have any idea as to what the problem could be? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I really like MythTV, but I'm also losing waaaay too much hair over this. :?

Thanks!

- Sean
Author:  Tremor [ Tue Apr 10, 2007 10:50 am ]
Post subject: 
I am betting its a problem with power and/or cooling. I was using the same ibm netvista 8307 model type with a 225 watt power supply and got the same results. Every so often it would die.

Replaced case and powersupply with and Antec Sonata II that was on sale for $50 after rebate and runs great now.

Tremor
Author:  alien [ Wed Apr 11, 2007 1:31 am ]
Post subject: 
A couple of things to check:
    What does top say? Is something unexpected grabbing all the CPU cycles? Is the available memory going continuously down?

    Is there a lot of unusual disk activity when it slows down? Maybe something is using up all your RAM/SWAP.
I suspect the second one. I had that problem and it was because the frontend would consume all available memory when I used certain combinations of theme and screen resolution. The problem went away when I changed to 800x600 and MythCenter.
Author:  soundguy95 [ Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:05 am ]
Post subject:  APIC/BIOS clock responsible?
Thanks to both Tremor and alien for the input.

Top doesn't report anything unusual, and the machine has more than enough RAM. When the box becomes slow/unresponsive, the HD light is perpetually off. I may look at the power supply as a possible culprit next.

However, I have found some interesting posts via. Google which refer to this specific problem with NetVista/Linux combinations (most of which seem to be Debian distros.). It has something to do with APIC and the BIOS clock. Essentially, the clock starts either losing time, stopping, or actually running backwards. Bizarre, no? If anyone has any insight about this particular phenomenon, I'd love to hear it.

I'm going to give the "noapic nolapic" kernel options a try. I'll let you know if I figure anything out. If that fails, I'll give another power supply and adjusted resolution a shot.

Thanks!

- Sean
Author:  Tremor [ Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:40 am ]
Post subject: 
Just so you know...I had tried mythdora before switching out the case and power supply and still had the same results, it would die within a day or so. I even followed Jarod Wilsons guide and rolled it up using FC6 but same results. Thats when I broke down and bought the Antec case w/ 450w. After that I reinstalled mythdora and it worked fine. I am currently running that distro but if I ever have to switch back to knoppmyth I am confident the system would run. I still read in both forums to try to get info, I am just a little less of a linux noob with Fedora since I use it at work with Nagios.

Tremor
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