Emulator offline

[ehintz]

Before somebody starts asking... :) My webhost had a hardware failure, and as such the emulator (64.151.65.200) is currently offline. I don't know what the ETA is yet; since I don't know specifics of the failure I don't have any guesses... If it's a fan, ps, memory, etc it should be back pretty quick, if it's an HD then restoring will likely take more time. Will let ch'all know when I hear something.

[TerminalAddict]

need some free hosting :)

[zollymonsta]

need some free hosting :)


I have a cable modem ;)

[brucer]

any word from your web host yet?

[ehintz]

Yo...

Responding in order here... :)

Thanks for offers of space, but I'm cool. Besides not paying for my current webhost, I've also got my own box at work on a citylink connection, so I'm not hurting for static IPs or hosting space.

The actual hardware failure was the hard drive. Worse, the admin is out of town; as Murphy's Law would have it the thing decided to die the day after he left for several days of vacation in Minnesota (from California). Everything was up and running within 24 hours on a backup box, but it's at .199, so the IP only nature of the Tivo bites us in the butt again. I checked into getting .200 forwarded to .199, but that would require a reboot of the Solaris based firewall, which he is quite understandably reluctant to do while half a continent away from the box. The earliest anything is likely to happen is Friday our time, though more likely Saturday, or perhaps even later. He may decide to keep things running on the backup box for a while, unknown at this point.

So, where does that leave us? Well, I see several options. First, the backup box does not have the emulator running on it at the moment. I could of course get it going, but frankly I don't see the point. As an IP address change is required, I personally think anybody doing so would be better served by going to the dev emulator. If you have network access to your Tivo, you have 2 options that I see: 1, change to the dev emulator, port 80 (this is documented elsewhere, I won't go into detail here), or 2, manually grab a slice or two and run via loadguide, until .200 comes back (if .200 gets pointed at .199, I will then go through getting the emulator running on it, for the folks on dial up or having other difficulties with changing tclient.conf).

For those who have trouble with modifying tclient.conf, I will get services going again as soon as possible on .200, but again this is unlikely to happen before Friday at the earliest. And again, while I have the ability to get it going either on .199 or on my citylink box, I don't see the point when the dev emulator is already there and running. If you don't want to wait, go there. :)

Future-wise, I think we should roll an nz image which uses DNS for guide data, this would solve the problem quite nicely. Tony was mentioning last night he may get another emulator, if he does and I have time I'm happy to look into creating a master image. I'm also happy to host it on my citylink server. Also, I'm contemplating just passing the emulator torch to the dev emulator crew. Having only 1 Tivo, I'm not on it, but I understand folks have been having good luck with it, and obviously the development is more active over there. I'm welcome to thoughts and comments on this issue. If this does happen, I will continue to keep .200 running for the foreseeable future; all I will do is note in the original emulator thread that .200 is deprecated and point to the newer install instructions.

Apologies for the outage folks. It's totally out of my control, and as luck would have it, it happened at about the worst time possible with the admin being on vacation. He has, by the way, been extremely helpful throughout this. He had to do some research on forwarding .200 (which he did very quickly), and also gave me root access on .199 within a few hours of the change over. But it's just bad luck I suppose...

[brucer]

Thanks ed.. I'll have to see if I remember how to use loadguide :D I would consider switching to the dev emulator but things have been so smooth for so long using your emulator I've got out of the habit of fiddling with the Tivo and I've basically managed to forget how it all works :o

[TerminalAddict]

I'm totally with brucer :)

Things have been going so smooooooth :)
Too many cobwebs to be blown off before I decide to swap to dev emulator (unles there are bulletproof instructions somewhere)

I'll wait .. and tell the wife to wait until the end of the weekend ;)

[ehintz]

:)

Thanks guys, appreciate the support... That being said, had a chat with Jaidev offline, and the general consensus here is that this would be a good time to encourage migrating to orac... From what I hear, the real dev action is on port 8000, port 80 is said to be quite stable. And, the guide data is a bit better as there's more redundancy. Essentially, Jaidev and I both see the future there. Consider us version 1.0, orac port 80 as 2.0, and port 8000 as 3.0Alpha. :) Jaidev is happy to continue supplying data indefinitely, and I'm happy to continue hosting indefinitely, but in the end we'll both end up on orac ourselves.

I believe that the only step necessary to go to orac is edit /etc/tclient.conf and change the IP to 210.48.107.133 - if someone can confirm that, 'twould be a good thing. Once that's confirmed I'll modify the original emulator post for the new setup.

Again, as we realize there are folks out there for whom changing this is non-trivial (I am aware of at least a few grandmother types who were setup on dialup by the family geek), I'll endeavor to have mine up ASAP. So if you're really keen to stick with it, no worries. But assuming someone confirms the switch over is as easy as I believe it is, I'd personally recommend doing it. And I'm confident in saying that Jaidev will concur.

So folks, it's been a good run, thanks for comin' along. And here's to a bright future with our new emulator gods, Wibble and DJC. Send a few beers their direction. :)

[jaidev]

As Ed has mentioned we'd now prefer if current users of Ed's emulator migrate over to the Orac emulator, since having all users on one emulator will make it easier to manage headend changes and guide changes.. A lot of users have already changed over.

this thread (http://forums.oztivo.net/showthread.php?t=578) by DJC explains the Emulator and how to get on to it.. (Ignore where it says the Emulator is Development Alpha, read the second post)

The short of it is...
1. Clear all programme data (from tivo remote). I have heard of users changing successfully without clearing all programme data, although I think it make more sense to clear it so you won't run into problems..

2. Edit /etc/tclient.conf or in the later oz images the emuProxy address in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.author.

3. The emulator address is 210.48.107.133

The more adventurous users can use the development emulator on port 8000, as discussed in DJC's second post. Although be warned it is development, so we will be testing headend changes on it..

I can come up with step by step instructions shortly, unless someone else beats me to it.. *hint* *hint*

DON'T PANIC :) We understand that there will be some users not wanting to change, or unable to change, don't worry Ed's emulator will still be functioning and my guide slices will still continue to be created and uploaded.

I appreciate and I'm sure you all do, for the great work Ed has put into and providing his emulator for your use.

[ehintz]

I appreciate and I'm sure you all do, for the great work Ed has put into and providing his emulator for your use.

Said work would have been completely pointless without Jaidev's guide data slices. :)

[jaidev]

I've split the thread, and moved the troubleshooting to a new thread titled service unavailable 3.. (http://forums.oztivo.net/showthread.php?t=758)

[ehintz]

Just an update... A new machine is now in place for .200, but there are still issues with getting data onto it and such. To complicate matters, I'm singing for NZ Opera right now, and we're in the final stretch of rehearsals for a Saturday opening. Unless things get sorted up at the webhost by 12:30 or so today, I probably won't be able to touch it until sometime tomorrow (wed). Will let y'all know.

[zollymonsta]

*passes ed some throaties* :) Good luck man! :D

[ehintz]

Heh, throties are useful. :)

I'm pretty sure that .200 is back in business. I was very close to getting it this evening, but ran out of time before the opera call. Once I got home I made the one modifcation to apache that fixed the last issue, and tried to run a test call. Unfortunately, the ISP is still having teething issues with the new box and configs, and it seems that NFS is causing pain. And said pain decided to kick in just then. So I haven't yet had a sucessful test, because the bloody server isn't responding at the moment. However, I'm pretty sure it will work when it comes back(my last run this evening, apache was seeing the slices as cgis, due to a foolishly placed ScriptAlias directive, but otherwise the system seemed fully functional, and with 10 minutes to backstage call I didn't have anymore time to spend on it). I'll update again once I get a sucessful test, but in the meantime if anybody else does (since I'm about to go to sleep, heh), feel free to post. For the moment I'm getting service unavailable (which makes good sense as the server isn't responding), but given the machine is in California, it will probably come back up during their early morning, before I'm up...

[wbeasley]

Heh, throties are useful. :)

For the moment I'm getting service unavailable (which makes good sense as the server isn't responding), but given the machine is in California, it will probably come back up during their early morning, before I'm up...

just tried at 5.45am and no joy as yet

[ehintz]

Ok, had a couple more fiddly bits in apache, but it just worked for me... Somebody else is getting a slice right now too... :)

[brucer]

worked for me! thanks Ed.. Do you know if there is anyway to get the channel logos onto the Tivo while still using your emulator? I'm not keen to try switching to dev emulator since it seems from the other threads that nobody has been able to do it without re-imaging and there's no way I'm going thru all that again :D

[ehintz]

Heh. Fair enough... Dunno offhand. My guess would be that if you can get the slice itself you could just use the dbload bits to get it in, but I've not tried... I tried playing with a logo slice waaaay back (when we were using Daniel's guide slices), and it utterly b0rk3d my box, haven't been motivated since. :)

[SeanOffShotgun]

Do you know if there is anyway to get the channel logos onto the Tivo while still using your emulator? I'm not keen to try switching to dev emulator since it seems from the other threads that nobody has been able to do it without re-imaging and there's no way I'm going thru all that again :D
I did it (and I know of others too) fine back in May 2005.
Here's my post showing what I did:
http://www.forums.oztivo.net/showpost.php?p=3770&postcount=31
This didn't involve a rebuild or losing any programs... maybe the world has changed 'cos as I say in the post:
"The easiest TiVo related thing I've ever done, thanks."

[MMooney]

Thanks Ed - I'm back on the Ed-ulator without probs after not being able to get on the Dev emulator (80 or 8000 flavour).

I'm happy to keep trying to change over if it would be helpful - to work out why it didn't work for a few of us

[clive]

Back on the Edulator after trying everything suggested on the other thread to move to orac:80, 8000 and 8888. Indexing now. Didn't break anything in the changeover attempts so no harm done. Ed, thanks for getting us back up. Like others I suspect, I'll go with the pack when someone figures out a viable transfer path that avoids re-imaging.

Cheers ...

[cmptrgeezer]

Dumb question but how do I change the file system to read/write so I can actually edit and save the changes to /etc/tclient.conf?

Cheers,

Rick


As Ed has mentioned we'd now prefer if current users of Ed's emulator migrate over to the Orac emulator, since having all users on one emulator will make it easier to manage headend changes and guide changes.. A lot of users have already changed over.

this thread (http://forums.oztivo.net/showthread.php?t=578) by DJC explains the Emulator and how to get on to it.. (Ignore where it says the Emulator is Development Alpha, read the second post)

The short of it is...
1. Clear all programme data (from tivo remote). I have heard of users changing successfully without clearing all programme data, although I think it make more sense to clear it so you won't run into problems..

2. Edit /etc/tclient.conf or in the later oz images the emuProxy address in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit.author.

3. The emulator address is 210.48.107.133

The more adventurous users can use the development emulator on port 8000, as discussed in DJC's second post. Although be warned it is development, so we will be testing headend changes on it..

I can come up with step by step instructions shortly, unless someone else beats me to it.. *hint* *hint*

DON'T PANIC :) We understand that there will be some users not wanting to change, or unable to change, don't worry Ed's emulator will still be functioning and my guide slices will still continue to be created and uploaded.

I appreciate and I'm sure you all do, for the great work Ed has put into and providing his emulator for your use.

[SeanOffShotgun]

rw

for read write

then

ro

for read only