System stability

rwalker · Post by **rwalker** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 6:01 pm

Does anyone using Brooktree based cards have a stable system? I can't seem to get my system to run more than a couple days before a kernel panic. I have tried BT849 cards, BT848, still get panic after a day or 2. Running Fedora 8 (it's fully updated) with ZM from rpm.

I will see messages like this in /var/log/messages before the kernel panic.

Jan 26 10:43:14 spot kernel: bttv0: OCERR @ 2ef9b000,bits: VSYNC HSYNC OFLOW FBUS FDSR OCERR*
Jan 26 10:43:15 spot kernel: bttv0: OCERR @ 2ef9b000,bits: VSYNC HSYNC OFLOW FDSR OCERR*
Jan 26 10:43:16 spot kernel: bttv0: OCERR @ 2ef9b014,bits: HSYNC OFLOW OCERR*
Jan 26 11:05:32 spot kernel: bttv0: OCERR @ 2ef9b014,bits: VSYNC HSYNC OFLOW FDSR OCERR*
Jan 26 11:05:49 spot kernel: bttv0: OCERR @ 2ef9b000,bits: HSYNC OFLOW FBUS FDSR OCERR*
Jan 26 11:05:54 spot kernel: bttv0: SCERR @ 2ef9b000,bits: HSYNC OFLOW SCERR*

Hardware is:
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.53GHz
Intel 830M Chipset

bttv: driver version 0.9.17 loaded
bttv: using 8 buffers with 2080k (520 pages) each for capture
bttv: Bt8xx card found (0).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:02.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
bttv0: Bt848 (rev 18) at 0000:02:02.0, irq: 19, latency: 32, mmio: 0xf6aff000
bttv0: using: *** UNKNOWN/GENERIC *** [card=0,autodetected]
bttv0: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=00fffffb [init]
bttv0: detected by eeprom: Hauppauge (bt848) [card=2]
tveeprom 1-0050: Hauppauge model 58302, rev A , serial# 458283
tveeprom 1-0050: tuner model is None (idx 0, type 4)
tveeprom 1-0050: TV standards none (eeprom 0x00)
tveeprom 1-0050: audio processor is None (idx 0)
tveeprom 1-0050: has no radio
bttv0: Hauppauge eeprom indicates model#58302
bttv0: tuner absent
bttv0: i2c: checking for MSP34xx @ 0x80... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9875 @ 0xb0... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA7432 @ 0x8a... not found
bttv0: registered device video0
bttv0: registered device vbi0
bttv: Bt8xx card found (1).
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:04.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
bttv1: Bt848 (rev 17) at 0000:02:04.0, irq: 21, latency: 32, mmio: 0xf6afe000
bttv1: using: *** UNKNOWN/GENERIC *** [card=0,autodetected]
bttv1: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=00ffffff [init]
tveeprom 2-0050: Huh, no eeprom present (err=-121)?
bttv1: tuner type unset
bttv1: i2c: checking for MSP34xx @ 0x80... not found
bttv1: i2c: checking for TDA9875 @ 0xb0... not found
bttv1: i2c: checking for TDA7432 @ 0x8a... not found
bttv1: registered device video1
bttv1: registered device vbi1

Thoughts?

robi · Post by **robi** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 9:10 pm

Mine is working for 8 months without problems... Using Mandriva 2007.0 LiveCD.

rwalker · Post by **rwalker** » Sat Jan 26, 2008 10:40 pm

Are you using BT8XX cards? How many and which models/manf if you know?

Thanks

robi · Post by **robi** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 12:53 pm

rwalker wrote:Are you using BT8XX cards? How many and which models/manf if you know?

Thanks

See my signature.

Lee Sharp · Post by **Lee Sharp** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 5:19 pm

Several systems with several different models of BT878 capture cards. A few are mixed with a ProVideo card, and our in house card. Ubuntu feisty and gutsy.

rwalker · Post by **rwalker** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 1:50 am

After looking at other posts, the difference between my setup and others, is the 848/9 vs 878. I am going to guess that the drivers used for the newer cards is a lot more stable.

As no combination of 848 or 849 cards (only cards I have right now) seem give me a stable system.

jendik · Post by **jendik** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 9:30 am

Hi!

I have exactly the same problem with 8 chips BT878a card.
Everything works fine with resolution of 320x240 until I change it to some higher i.e. 640x480... Then It starts to generate these errors and after some times(usually depends on the number of running monitors) kernel tells me that he's panic.... Really funny is that "panic" means "virgin" in Czech. So I'm really confused, because I don't know how could I help him"-))

Please is there any solution for this strange issue?

Thanks a lot
Jan

example error messages:
kernel: bttv0: OCERR @ 7bd8f000,bits: HSYNC OFLOW FBUS OCERR*
kernel: bttv2: OCERR @ 7bd92000,bits: HSYNC FBUS OCERR*

Secutor · Post by **Secutor** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:28 am

For what it is worth, my system works with no problems so far.
PC ASUS Athlon 1.2GHz, 512MB, 60GB+120GB
- Mother board: ASUS A7A266
This socket A motherboard, supporting 100/133MHz FSB processors, is based on ALiMAGiK 1 chipset.

CPU: Athlon 1.2GHz

Mem: DDR 512MB
I have yet to attach a third and fourth camera so I don't know how well it will work then-remains to be experienced.

Lee Sharp · Post by **Lee Sharp** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 4:51 pm

jendik wrote:I have exactly the same problem with 8 chips BT878a card.
Everything works fine with resolution of 320x240 until I change it to some higher i.e. 640x480... Then It starts to generate these errors and after some times(usually depends on the number of running monitors) kernel tells me that he's panic.... Really funny is that "panic" means "virgin" in Czech. So I'm really confused, because I don't know how could I help him"-))

This means it is either load related, or memory related, or both. Do you have heat sinks on your bt878 chips? If not, add them... Also use something like memtest86+ to seriously test your memory. One bad chip high will do this.

rwalker · Post by **rwalker** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:29 pm

I have one of the cameras hooked up to a Bt848 based card and as long as I leave ZM on "monitor" for that camera (which is all I want for it anyway) the system is perfectly stable (been up a for over a week without problems).

I did not try putting heatsinks on the cards which might explain the problem.. they get hot after running for a day straight and locks the system up.. this seems unlikely though, since the chip would reach max temperature in an hour MAX, probably less..

It could be the Intel 830M chipset used on the board, but I am going to bet there are a LOT of people using it.

I ordered a USB video input off Ebay (was like $20 shipped) and will try that out if it works, may just stick with it.

Roy

Gary S · Post by **Gary S** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 3:57 pm

I'm running a BT878 based card with 4 cameras using the Bluecherry Ubuntu system. It currently is at 11 months of 24/7 runtime without any hiccups. Mine is running on an old 1 gig Celeron I retrieved from the trash.
My secret is that I'm probably too dumb to set it up right so I just used Bluecherry's CD the way they set it up. They definitely have it right.

rwalker · Post by **rwalker** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 10:01 pm

Got the Easycap USB input and it turns out to not be supported by the default Linux kernel right now. I am going to look around and see if anyone has started writing a driver for it.

pdurod · Post by **pdurod** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 7:08 am

same problem:
HSYNC FBUS FDSR OCERR

I had two camera's on/dev/video0 and 1. worked flawlessly. Added a new cameral on /dev/video2, on the same pv149 card. The new camera: TP-989WIR-S.

I hooked it up to /dev/video2 and I had a blue screen at first and an unsettled vertical hold I haven't seen since the 60'-70's TV's. I did a couple reboots and a yum update (fedora 7). The next day was the same. Came back in that afternoon and things are stable as heck. I haven't rebooted since the yum update but I'm thinking it was a burn-in on the newly used capture cpu (4 on the board). It's still solid/stable as hell. I bumped up the shared memory also. Do a man on sysctl and adjust if necessary. I don't think that was the problem. I could have been using upper memory that wasn't being used yet. It could be a heat problem that solved itself. Dont know --it's woking!

sledgehammer · Post by **sledgehammer** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 8:31 am

I had these errors only the other day on a system that has been stable for months. However I had done something different in that I had been streaming video from the VDR software running on that machine and this process did not appear to finish properly. Whether this caused lack of memory or over writing memory where it shouldn't I do not know but its been quiet since.

This suggests the problem may not be your card but some other program or hardware.

Good hunting.

technicavolous · Post by **technicavolous** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 3:36 am

I have several live systems in the field and most are stable to the hilt using the LiveCD based on Mandriva 2007. The jumpy video (image seems to pop up n down in the screen) is due to low signal voltage - a passive balun solves this every time. For long cat5 runs an active balun is better on the receive side.

As I started to find that the 2007 livecd would not find the newer hardware that was available to me, I started to try to use Mandriva 2008 and MAN did I have lockups, instability, slowness ... it was horrible.

The livecd group is developing the 2008 version based on PCLinuxOS and it seems a little more stable, but I don't have a production unit in the field.

One system I had multiple / random lockups with two Pico cards for 8 monitors. Turned out the 'tang' on the second card was not holding the card firmly in the pci slot so if there was any movement of the siamese cables connected to the BNC's it would move in the PCI slot and lock the PC up. THAT sucked! Once I replaced the card with one that had a proper tang the problem went away. Our rack servers have brackets that press on the back of the card ensuring no movement in the slot.

I've also found serious version issue when trying to use the latest of everything. I found it's best to use the oldest version of each package that supports the features you need. Those have been around the longest and have been worked on the most for stability.

Let us know what you finally come up with. Always good to know.

ZoneMinder Forums

System stability

System stability

Using BT8XX cards?

Re: Using BT8XX cards?

BT878 chipsets in PV153PA card working well, two cameras

After further research

Easycap 2.0 USB device