[vdr] VDR hangs for a few seconds

[Karsten Mueller <kmu@ratio.de>]

Hi Listies :)

During this week I discovered a strange behaviour:

The VDR seems to "freeze" for a few seconds (1-3) from time to time,
sometimes freezes for a fraction of a second, works for a second and
then again freezes for 1-3 seconds...

I noticed this behaviour first while I was watching a DVD, so I assumed
it has something to do with the DVD part. But then the same behaviour
appeared during MPlaying divX'es and also mp3 playbacks... Even on
fast-forwards and rewindings the VDR freezes from time to time...

I digged somewhat deeper into this and recognized, that on these
"freezers" the vdr task "simply" grabs all CPU time it can get.
The syslog doesn't say anything at these times...

So what could this be ?  Needless to say that this behaviour is **very**
annoying and I hope to be able to fix this soon...

There are no unecessary tasks running on my VDR machine (1.2 GHz Duron):

player:~ # ps ax
   PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
     1 ?        S      0:06 init [3]
     2 ?        SW     0:00 [keventd]
     3 ?        SWN    0:00 [ksoftirqd_CPU0]
     4 ?        SW     0:29 [kswapd]
     5 ?        SW     0:03 [bdflush]
     6 ?        SW     0:10 [kupdated]
     7 ?        SW     0:00 [kinoded]
     8 ?        SW<    0:00 [mdrecoveryd]
    12 ?        SW     0:00 [kreiserfsd]
   327 ?        SW     0:00 [eth0]
   367 ?        S      0:02 /sbin/syslogd
   370 ?        S      0:00 /sbin/klogd -c 1
   381 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
   442 ?        S      0:00 /usr/sbin/cron
   566 ?        S      0:06 /usr/local/sbin/lircd
   578 tty1     S      0:00 /sbin/mingetty --noclear tty1
   579 tty2     S      0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty2
   580 tty3     S      0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty3
   581 tty4     S      0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty4
   582 tty5     S      0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty5
   583 tty6     S      0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty6
  6972 ?        SW     0:18 [rpciod]
17649 ?        S      0:00 /USR/SBIN/CRON
  6478 ?        SW     0:00 [arm_mon]
  6479 ?        SW     0:02 [fe_thread]
  6480 ?        SW     0:00 [arm_mon]
  6481 ?        SW     0:59 [fe_thread]
  6482 ?        S      0:00 /USR/SBIN/CRON
  6495 ?        SW     0:00 [arm_mon]
  6518 ?        SW     0:53 [fe_thread]
  6545 ?        S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl
	/usr/local/src/vdradmin-0.16/vdradmind.pl
  6546 ?        S      0:00 /bin/sh ./suse8/runvdr
  6552 ?        S      0:00 su -c nice -n -5 /usr/local/bin/vdr -c
	/usr/local/src/VDRtmp -E /usr/local/src/VDRtmp -r
	/usr/local/src/VDRtmp/se.sh -s /usr/local/bin/vdrshutdown
  6553 ?        S<     0:02 /usr/local/bin/vdr -c /usr/local/src/VDRtmp
	-E /usr/local/src/VDRtmp -r /usr/local/src/VDRtmp/se.sh -s
	/usr/local/bin/vdrshutdown
  6554 ?        S<     0:00 /usr/local/bin/vdr -c /usr/local/src/VDRtmp
	-E /usr/local/src/VDRtmp -r /usr/local/src/VDRtmp/se.sh -s
	/usr/local/bin/vdrshutdown
  6555 ?        S<     0:49 /usr/local/bin/vdr -c /usr/local/src/VDRtmp
	-E /usr/local/src/VDRtmp -r /usr/local/src/VDRtmp/se.sh -s
	/usr/local/bin/vdrshutdown
  6556 ?        S<     0:00 /usr/local/bin/vdr -c /usr/local/src/VDRtmp
	-E /usr/local/src/VDRtmp -r /usr/local/src/VDRtmp/se.sh -s
	/usr/local/bin/vdrshutdown
  6557 ?        S<     1:21 /usr/local/bin/vdr -c /usr/local/src/VDRtmp
	-E /usr/local/src/VDRtmp -r /usr/local/src/VDRtmp/se.sh -s
	/usr/local/bin/vdrshutdown
  6558 ?        S<     0:05 /usr/local/bin/vdr -c /usr/local/src/VDRtmp
	-E /usr/local/src/VDRtmp -r /usr/local/src/VDRtmp/se.sh -s
	/usr/local/bin/vdrshutdown
  6559 ?        S<     0:54 /usr/local/bin/vdr -c /usr/local/src/VDRtmp
	-E /usr/local/src/VDRtmp -r /usr/local/src/VDRtmp/se.sh -s
	/usr/local/bin/vdrshutdown
  6560 ?        S<     2:00 /usr/local/bin/vdr -c /usr/local/src/VDRtmp
	-E /usr/local/src/VDRtmp -r /usr/local/src/VDRtmp/se.sh -s
	/usr/local/bin/vdrshutdown
  6561 ?        S<     0:00 /usr/local/bin/vdr -c /usr/local/src/VDRtmp
	-E /usr/local/src/VDRtmp -r /usr/local/src/VDRtmp/se.sh -s
	/usr/local/bin/vdrshutdown
  8124 pts/2    S      0:00 -bash
  8150 pts/2    R      0:00 ps ax


Thanks in advance for any help or hint


-- 
with best regards
---
Karsten Mueller
Softwaredevelopment / Keyaccount Manager
RATIO Entwicklungen GmbH
Admiralitaetstr. 59
20459 Hamburg
Email: mailto:kmu@ratio.de