System unresponsive after long gaps in use

[Hansaplastique]

Finally found some time to do some tests.

Yesterday evening;
The ATV kept rebooting into a black screen after a freeze.
I did notice that the usual green/pink flash of the screen would NOT occur in those cases.
I tried booting when the ATV was till warm (not much time to cool down), and when the absolutely cold (off for a quite a while), to make sure it is not temperature/overheating related.

This morning;
Without any modification I booted the ATV again this morning and it did boot normally ...

Obviously no info in the debug log, since I had to disable the XBMC debug to make it actually freeze (my suspicion after running it in debug mode for a few days and no freeze occurred - running a day without debug resulted in a freeze).

I attached the dmesg output as a text file - not sure if it will provide more detail on the culprit.

[bwatson]

Hi... I'm new to openelec, been running crystalbuntu for a while and XBMC on osx before that. Switched to crystalbuntu when I installed the BCM970015.

I'm adding a "me too" to this problem. Every day since installing (about a week now) it runs beautifully while I am using it, but when I leave it running and come back the next day the display hangs when I start to use it. Sometimes it gets as far as letting me select a show to watch, but never actually starts, sometimes it hangs while navigating the menus.

I just experienced it hang, but then left it for some time (~5 mins) and it is working again. I can't see anything unusual on the console (dmesg) or Xorg.0.0.log.

When it hangs I can still ssh in. "top" shows [irq/43-snd_hda_] consuming pretty much all CPU.

I'm running 1.95.7. All media is on SMB. Using HDMI video and Optical audio.

As per the discussion above, I'll try to figure out how to turn on debug mode and leave it like that when I finish with it tonight and report back tomorrow.

Thanks!

[bwatson]

OK, so I went to the ATV this morning and was unresponsive. I rebooted it, went to XBMC and turned on debug mode. Left it for a while and came back. Tried to watch a show and it hung after the show was selected for play. Even stopped updating the debug info on the screen. I left it for a while, came back and tried again and it played. There was a bit of stutter at the start, but then it seemed OK.

Here is my debug xbmc.log: http://sprunge.us/eXFj

Thanks.

[[-andi-]]

I add a "me too", too.

I had no freezes with 1.95.4, but with 1.95.5 and later my box freezes from time to time.

It could happen a few seconds after the boot or after watching a whole movie, I haven't found any way to reproduce the freezing.
From what I've seen on command line, it's just a XBMC-problem, SSH works like expected and killing the XMBC-process is my current workaround.

Like experienced by Hansaplastique, it also happens that when rebooting after a freeze, the box just boots to a black screen.

Any ideas?

[sethach2]

I found this thread while looking for a solution for the same problem on my installation.
Is there a solution for this problem?

[chewitt]

I have only seen freezing issues on systems with damaged hard drives or defective plugins that cause memory leaks. If you are running OE 2.0 you should update to 3.0 RC5.

[sethach2]

I did the upgrade today.
I will have a look at the freezing problem.
But while playing back an ISO image from a NAS I have suddenly had a kind of "snowy" screen and the playback stopped.
It happend short after I have changed the sound from DD to DTS.
After that it run without any problem.

[Vodka]

I am also having an issue with the system freezing. Essentially after a day or two of idling, I go to use it and it's completely frozen or so laggy that I have to turn it off manually and turn it back on.

It's very easy to spot for me (and quite annoying) as the ticker at the bottom disappears or has stopped moving.

I see that you mentioned that improperly written add-ons can cause this, I guess the only option is to install a fresh copy and run it, installing on plugin at a time until I find the problem? Is there any way to track this with a log file or (ironically) a plugin that can keep a log of memory usage by plugin?

TIA