[pvrusb2] recent problem: getting frontend status failed

[A. F. Cano]

On Mon, Jun 09, 2014 at 10:16:31PM -0500, isely at isely.net wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Jun 2014, A. F. Cano wrote:
> > 
> > One thing that appears to affect this is heat.  When ambient temperature
> > was around 82-84, I couldn't record barely anything unattended.  A
> > restart would record the first show but subsequent ones would fail.
> > When the temperature dropped back down to 77-80, the lock-ups are much
> > more rare.  I'll keep tabs on this to see if it is consistent.
> 
> Have you tried aiming a fan at it?

I don't have a fan handy, but the unit is in open space (in the vertical
position) so convection should be good, but still possibly not enough.

I've been observing the behavior for the last 2 weeks.  There was a
period of about a week with sub-80 temperatures.  In that period I only
experienced the tuner-lock up twice, when the temperature was 80 or 81.

In the last few days it's been warmer: 82-86 and there have been
multiple lock-ups per day.  Today the temperature was 88 and there were
a couple of lock-ups.  However, after unplugging/replugging the next
show in line recorded just fine.  There was another show right after
that, on a different channel.  Myth changed the channel just fine and
the next show started recording, still while the commflag of the
previous one was going on.  By the time this show was over, the
temperature was 90 and something that happens at the end of shows
triggered the lock-up.  Maybe the manipulation of the tuner to collect
EIT data? This is how I fill the program guide.  Unfortunately, since
the fast-repeating lock up messages exhausted the scroll buffer, I can't
know what was the last Myth message before the lock-up happened.

This is how it usually (always?) happens: at the end of recording a
show.

While not a pvrusb2 problem, I noticed that Myth has problems with the
EIT data.  The title of the show is correct, but the content description
is often clearly that of another show.

> There have been problems with heat in the past involving the older 
> Hauppage devices.  This would be the first time I've heard of 
> heat-related trouble from an OnAir device.

I'm wondering if heat is only one factor.  CPU load might be another.
This might make some timing issue worse.  This is a slow system and when
it gets hot, the cpu doesn't go above 1.2 GHz.

I'll keep looking into it...

Augustine