Linux Stability issues with XBMC built for Xvba
#1
Hi.
I have installed the modified version of XBMC as discussed on another thread to get hardware acceleration on my e350 AMP APU PC, running Ubuntu 12.04 using unity 2d.

The playback works fine with my setup, but I am experiencing what looks like to me some XBMC stability problems. XBMC seems to crash on startup up randomly. When I try and launch XBMC again, it will work. (Log of such a crash.)

Another kind of crash: If I leave XBMC running for a day, it will lock up, with no mouse inputs showing on screen. Screensaver disables, but view is locked up in the files browser view. No process uses CPU major. Log of XBMC in such a state. Only way out of this state is to kill xbmc. (I first kill xbmc process, then xbmc.bin process. This then leaves the screensaver visible, and stuck. Normal Ubuntu mouse cursor is then visible. Ubuntu desktop not shown though. As state described below when quitting XBMC.)

I'm not sure if this is related, but sometimes when I exit XBMC its window will stay visible, and I have to go Ctrl+Alt+F1, Ctrl+Alt+F7 to get X to show up properly again. This seems to happen about 70% of the time on quit.

I am running XBMC (13.0-ALPHA3 Git:41061a8) Built on Apr 5 2013. (According to the ppa its the latest tested Git XBMC for my version of Ubuntu.)

My driver version according to
Code:
ls /var/lib/dkms/fglrx/
is
Code:
8.960
.

Does anyone know how I can get more info from XBMC for debugging? Any ideas of where to start looking to troubleshoot?

Thanks
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#2
The version you have is quite old, if you look again in the ppa, you see there is a version from End of July. Which is 3 months newer than what you are currently running.

2:13.0~git20130627.0500-9372af7-0precise

As I most of the time forget the codenames of those fglrx binary blobs:
Code:
dpkg -l |grep fglrx

A very short look at your lock rather tells me that some plugin in combination with a network issue could be a source of the problem.

PS: xvba lib was not developed any further by AMD since approx 2 years now. Their drivers did not mature either (13.6 beta looks promissing - as we only found three severe bugs in it (CABAC, Fences, Vsync)) ;-)
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
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#3
Thanks fritsch,
Code:
$ dpkg -l |grep fglrx
ii  fglrx                                  2:8.960-0ubuntu1.1                               Video driver for the AMD graphics accelerators
ii  fglrx-amdcccle                         2:8.960-0ubuntu1.1                               Catalyst Control Center for the AMD graphics accelerators
rc  fglrx-updates                          2:9.000-0ubuntu0.3                               Video driver for the AMD graphics accelerators
ii  xvba-va-driver                         0.7.8-1ubuntu3                                   XvBA-based backend for VA API (AMD fglrx implementation)

I'll try and see why my package manager doesn't want to in stall the 27 June build of XBMC. I guess that might cause some problems. I will also try and see if disabling some plugins might help stability.

Thanks again for the reply.
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#4
Which ppa did you add? There is a xbmc-xvba-frodo repo and a xbmc-xvba repo.
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#5
I added the xbmc-xvba-frodo ppa, but for some reason my package manager kept selecting what looks like version 2:13.0~git20130405.0500-41061a8-0oneiric from wsnipex/+archive/xbmc-xvba. I now installed 2:12.2~git20130521.1119-frodo-0precise, and will see how it goes.

I just experienced the exit problem I described in my original post. Will report back when I use it more about the other problems.

P.S.
How stable is the xbmc-xvba repo's XBMC? Good enough for every day use?
Thanks guys.
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