Some more notes on the last few days, especially TOO MANY REBOOTS!

[freymann]

I wasn't in a rush to post my latest logs, but this morning, the wife was unable to get anywhere on her computer (same as yesterday morning) and it's because the core is dead and requires a HARD RESET, so now is as good a time as any I guess.

I think the last post regarding my setup was getting the Media Directors to boot up. Using a single NIC setup, I followed the instructions here:

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php?title=DHCP_Plug_and_Play#Single_NIC_.26_Existing_DHCPd

(the suggested configuration didn't work by the way)

but was then given different advice as the network configs (see: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=4574.0) which indeed worked. Yahoo. So since Monday morning I've been thinking this thing is actually going to work, and decided to sit back and stop doing configs (no need to anyway) and see if i can find some time to actually 'use' the thing.

Some stuff I've documented since then for anybody that cares:

MON:
7:30am machine is locked up when I come downstairs. HARD RESET #1.

-mythfilldatabase doesn't run automatically. I guess you have to run it manually or schedule it?

11:56am I had to reposition our Dish farther away from the computer as the UHF remote wouldn't work from upstairs or my office. After that was done, the core isn't responding. Admin page commands ignored, then N/A. HARD RESET #2.
2:21pm I had it record a short 30 min TV show off antenna from 12:30-1pm. However, by now no mouse, no keyboard. Try quick reload with Gyro Mouse. Nope. Manage to SSH in and issue reboot. SOFT RESET #1. Total reboots thus far: 3
10:46pm Right after setting up my Dell Notebook as a test Media Director, SOFT RESET #2, Total Reboots today: 4.

TUE:
7:30am Appeared to be OK (screensaver working)
8:52am can't access admin or myth web pages (getting access forbidden). CRTL-ALT-DEL shows a file system message similar to what I started to see on Sat: EXT-fs error (device sda1). How do you bring it to single user mode and do a fsck? Anyway, this turns into HARD RESET #1 of the day. I think I was trying to map a network drive on my wife's notebook to her directory.
10:18am HARD RESET #2. Tried to map network drive again.

-noticed many of the times when I go to the KDE Desktop, if I click on the OrbiterGL icon, it doesn't go back to that screen at all. I have to do a quick reload in order to get there. This is odd isn't it?

HARD RESET #3, shortly after #2 above. can't remember why.
3:12pm: gray screen again. mouse arrow pointer moves but nothing pops up. Web interfaces responding. SOFT REBOOT #1, but 4th of the day.

I think at this point, I was adding some of my own pictures to the screensaver.

4:53pm: seems to be stuck again. There's a picture displayed but it's not moving or changing. No response to remote or gyro mouse. No Keyboard. Admin pages work. Web reload didn't work. SSH'd in and issued Reboot. SOFT REBOOT #2, 5th reboot of the day.

Somewhere in the logs I noticed it complaining my pictures were too large, so I went back and removed as many as I could remember.

I was playing with the cover art feature in the web admin. Not much luck. I added one cover and gave up.

I scheduled a recording of another 1 hour show from 8-9pm off antenna, mark commercials. Seemed to go ok. But now that it appears in the Video section, it's a weird ass number for the title? Why is that?

WED:
7:30am - wife complaining she has no internet connection. No keyboard. No Net. HARD RESET #1 of the day.

General Notes

When I was trying to play music:

- I was unable to say "play ALL my music, in random order" - is this not possible?
- while a song is playing, I was unable to go find another song and "add it to the playlist", it would just quit the current song and start the new one
- I think I know how to play an entire album, and possibly even select random order
- but I don't know how you say "play all of ZZ TOP" for instance
- the navigation is awkward. Regularly I'd be taken back to the A's or back to the playlist screen. Then it's a bunch of clicks and gyro mouse movements to get back to where you were.

When reviewing my photos:

- when I want to view an image, it comes up, but it's not full screen, there's no way to make it full screen that I know of. I don't wanna see a medium sized version, I want to see the entire image on the full screen.
- can you run slideshows of your pictures? Can I go to an album and say here, show me them all?

 I don't know what to think about the system now. If it requires 4 to 5 reboots a day it's completely unstable. The only part of it running right now is the core, and it's hardly being used (I am supposed to be working). My two media directors will be ready for installation this weekend. What is going to happen when there's actual activity?

[samuelmukoti]

hi,

I haven't had the chance to install beta4 yet, but from following your posts I'm starting to think you may have a hardware issue. It maybe gutsy or something else, but I recommend you try setup a new core on a different box. Await your next results.

[freymann]

I haven't had the chance to install beta4 yet, but from following your posts I'm starting to think you may have a hardware issue. It maybe gutsy or something else, but I recommend you try setup a new core on a different box. Await your next results.

 The only other core I would be able to "try" is what I have set aside for a Media Director in the living room, and that's an AMD 4200+ CPU, 1GB RAM. It'll have a 40GB and 500GB hard drive and PVR-150-MCE inside. I could try that as the core if I had to (but the current core has more power and RAM I think). My USB-UIRT's won't be arriving till next week. I ordered one for upstairs and downstairs.

 Strangely enough, today I set up the Media Director (destined for the living room) in my office and it has worked flawlessly all day. I watched live tv on it for at least 2 hours, with a little browsing mixed in.

 The "core" in the meantime has been working flawlessly too. No lockups and no reboots or resets required today, other than first thing this morning.

 I've even booted up my wireless notebook with the MythBuntu 7.10 LiveCD and connected to MythTV and was able to watch Live TV or previously recorded tv shows, view the guide, etc. I did that right after rebooting the core at 7:30am. Sucker for punishment.

 I just walked the wife through booting up her wireless notebook with MyBuntu 7.10 LiveCD and was showing her how to watch Live TV, view recorded programs, browse the guide, schedule recordings. (it's now 7pm-ish).

 I keep coming downstairs waiting for the core to be frozen or something but it's working, perfectly!

 Go figure.

 My existing "core" was my work station, running under Ubuntu 7.10 since early Dec 07. It has worked great. That machine was brand new in Dec 07. For my work station now, I took my HP Pavillion a1730n (with Vista) and turned it into a dual booting machine running Vista and Ubuntu 7.10 (with a virtualXP OS too!). I mainly use ubuntu nowadays, but there are a few windoze programs I still prefer and they all run under the VirtualXP quite nicely, to the point where I'm moving over all my data into the VirtualXP OS so I don't have to keep rebooting into Vista, and then right back into Ubuntu (and yes, I have legal licenses for all).

 Today was likely the 'most' the LinuxMCE system has been ever used, in regards to actual viewing by users. And it has <crossed fingers> worked fine. My wife and are joking about what state the core and md will be in, in the morning. I truly hope it remains stable. She will be up early for work and likes to use her notebook to browse the web and catch up on emails before leaving, and if the core is dead so will her internet connection.

 I believe there may be some hard drives issues due to all the resets I've been forced to do. I wonder if it did an auto file check this morning? I think I can do this manually by using Ctrl-Alt-F1 (or F2) thing, logging in as linuxmce, and issuing a

shutdown now

 command. Doesn't that bring it down to single user mode? And then I should be able to run

fsck -y

 or something to tidy up the drive. That was going to be my next 'thing to try' but if the machines remain stable by morning I will skip that step for now. But if anybody wants to qualify this step, I'd be happy to hear confirmation that's how it is done.

 My other Media Director for use in the master bedroom arrived today during lunch but I didn't hear anybody knocking on the front door while in the basement office, so I had to call and have them redeliver tomorrow. The bedroom machine I should have set up and installed by this time tomorrow, it's pretty well coming complete (all I'm doing is adding a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse which arrived today). It has an 80GB drive that I think currently currently has Vista on it. I'll likely wipe it and create a swap partition and use the rest as an EXT3 partition for network storage.

 I got excited and ordered some X10 home automation equipment the other week and that has yet to arrive, so as you can see, I have a lot riding on this. I guess I should have waited before going nuts and ordering the other parts. Hindsight is 20/20.

 My backup plan is to go with MythBuntu. I much prefer all the bells & whistles that LinuxMCE offers but if the core is going to freeze up multiple times a day it isn't much good. I really really am hoping I have something stable now. I suppose if the core continues to freeze up it may be worth rebuilding with the AMD system. Lord knows I've spent plenty of hours trying to achieve my goal here. But as I approach one full week of pretty well continuous tinkering, my patience is starting to wear thin :-(

 Thanks for your feedback though.

[tschak909]

i've installed both cores and md's onto various hardware configurations, without the locking-up problem you're describing... of course, they're all using the i386 target....

-Thom

[freymann]

i've installed both cores and md's onto various hardware configurations, without the locking-up problem you're describing... of course, they're all using the i386 target....

 Hi Thom.

 I'm not sure what you're saying?

 I'm in disbelief right now. it's 10:18pm (ET) and the system recorded a tv show from 8-9pm, the core is still running, the media director is still running... (and I just checked) the Myth web backend shows the recording, and the admin panel in LinunMCE is still responding.

 That's 15 hours without a hiccup. A record. lol

 (after edit)

 And did I mentioned I issued a mythfilldatabase in a shell session too? and it completed)

[alphapenguin]

I'v had multiple core hangups as well. Not sure what the deal is.

[gazlang]

Maybe its the xorg using 100% of the cpu issue in beta4

see here http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=4417.msg27627#msg27627

Hopefully everybody's system will be a bit more stable on the RC's and final release.