Simen Thoresen wrote:
> Hi Michael, Rey,

> Michael, Rey, can you confirm that you are running with a speed 
> management utility, or (possibly) that your kernels are compiled with 
> support for speed management?
> 

> 
> I'll report back when I have run a while with this, or have seen errors.

Hi again Michael, Rey, List

I'm very happy to say that since my previous posting (almost 2 weeks ago), 
I've not seen a new dma error. I've increased my grabbing-schedule from 
~-1.5 hours a day to ~17h a day to for this whole test, and the only change 
I have made is disabling the cpuspeed service.

I do note that Michael still is experiencing the problem, so it is possible 
that changing the cpu frequency in mid-DMA is only one of the cause that can 
lead to this problem.

I have now loaded the powernow-k8 module on my system and will run with it 
loaded (not cpuspeed running) for a while, and then write my own manager to 
quickly toggle CPU frequencies to see if that reliably introduces the DMA-error.

Yours,
-S

> Yours,
> -S
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> Am 05.08.2006 um 12:46 schrieb Simen Thoresen:
>>
>>> Hi Michael, Rey,
>>>
>>> I have not seen any new replies to this, nor anything from any 
>>> developers. As I wrote in my problem report, I've been an ivtv-user 
>>> for a while, but only recently subscribed to the list - thus I don't 
>>> know what to expect from developer interest and such.
>>>
>>> Still - assuming the developers are reading the list and and are 
>>> interested in the problem, I thought I'd try to summarise our systems 
>>> so that we can get similarities or differences sorted out.
>>>
>>> My system (as previously written) is an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe 
>>> motherboard, with an Athlon64 X2 chip, running in i386 mode, with 
>>> ivtv 0.7.0 on a 2.6.17.6 kernel.
>>
>> My system:
>> ASUS A8V (VIA-chipset).
>> tried kernel 2.6.14 and 2.6.15 (I cannot use >=2.6.16 because of 
>> missing support from dmraid)
>> tried ivtv-0.4.x
>>
>> The best results I got with 0.4.0. The system stays up for about 2 
>> days. The worst case comes with 0.4.5. ivtv crashes after about 10 
>> minutes.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> This means
>>> -NForce4 (I would not thing that mobo brand or chipset features 
>>> matter too much)
>>> -SMP (This may be important. I've run my card with ivtv-0.4.x 
>>> 'forever' in UP-mode on older kernels without issues)
>>> -kernel 2.6.17 + ivtv 0.7.0
>>>
>>>
>>> Michael;
>>> From your mail, I understand you are running an A8V board (That would 
>>> be a ViA K8T800pro-board, right?). Are you running an X2 CPU in SMP 
>>> on this? In i386 and not x86-64 mode?
>>
>> Yes, it is the A8V with the mentioned chipset. I do not have an X2 CPU 
>> and tried both, SMP and not SMP. I tried a fresh x86 install and a 
>> x86-64 install. I still have both of them on my drive so I can test 
>> them both.
>> 2 weeks ago I put my old HD from my PIII mythbox into this PC and 
>> tested with this. For two days I could run the system without one 
>> error. Unfortunately I had a disk headcrash and the working system is 
>> now away (I know I'm too lazy with backups).
>>
>>> Also, you're writing that ivtv 'crashes' - are we talking about the 
>>> same DMA error;
>>> warning: ENC: (0) DMA Error 0x0000000b
>>> reported some or many times during a capture?
>>
>>> The actual error number may be important, altho I don't know what it 
>>> signifies.
>>>
>>
>> Right. It is the same Error and also the number matches. The message 
>> appears just as the System load goes up. For example when running one 
>> recording and mythcommflag or running 2 recordings and watching one at 
>> the same time. I couldn't find a certain point of CPU load causing the 
>> problems. Probably the DMA-access from the hard disk and the 
>> ivtv-cards at the same time are disturbing each other.
>>
>>> Altho my errors were a lot less frequent that I have seen others 
>>> report, they never caused ivtv to stop working, nor impaired system 
>>> stability.
>>>
>>>
>> My system throws out some DMA errors and then the one:
>>
>> ivtv: DMA still pending while stopping capture.
>>
>> After this message the card is unusable and I have to reboot the 
>> system. Unloading and reloading the ivtv module doesn't help.
>>
>>>
>>> Rey;
>>> You write that you have the same setup as I have. Could you please 
>>> expand on that?
>>> Did the patch work for you as well as it does for me?
>>
>> Of course the patch works well since DMA for the ivtv-cards is totally 
>> switched off. Unfortunately its not a solution for me since I cannot 
>> watch any recordings when both cards are capturing because of the CPU 
>> load.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> So - assuming Michael is experiencing the same problem I am, it would 
>>> seem that his is /not/ a chipset issue (or, if it is, both NForce4 
>>> and K8T800pro chipsets are affected), but the common line is that it 
>>> applies to Athlon64 CPUs, possibly SMP setups.
>>
>> I agree with the chipsets but its not the SMP setup.
>>
>>>
>>> From my own experience from my own setup, I feel pretty confident 
>>> that the the main change I introduced was the SMP CPU. I see others 
>>> have reported this issue with other kernels and ivtv-versions, but 
>>> good information is typically missing.
>>>
>>> With a little spare time, I will build an UP kernel and give that a 
>>> spin with an unmodified ivtv-driver. Given that my errors never were 
>>> very frequent, testing will take time to be conclusive.
>>
>>
>> I did some more testing but couldn't find out any setups working fine.
>>
>> As mentioned above I think it could have to do something with the DMA 
>> transfers of the hard disks. I am using a SATA I -Raid 0 setup. Are 
>> you using SATA and/or RAID?
>>
>> Hope this helps. Let me know if you need some more information. 
>> Currently I'm not at home so I cannot do any testing for the next week.
>>
>> Michael
>>
> 

-- 
Simen Thoresen, Dolphin ICS

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