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Thread: Tivo freezing/hanging daily

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    Wellington, New Zealand
    Posts
    74

    Unhappy Tivo freezing/hanging daily

    Hi there, my Tivo (running oztivo v1.4) is freezing on a daily basis, some days multiple times.

    I have read the various posts here regarding things that can cause freezes and therefore am resisting telnetting, using tivoweb, or running any 'dodgy' apps. I have also created a cron job to manually reboot twice a day in the hope that this manual reboot would eliminate the undesirable ones. None of this has helped.

    Freezes will occur any time of the day and in any tivo state, ie. watching live tv, watching a recorded show, or even when tivo is in standby.

    Apart from this, it runs fine.

    Is there a log or something I can look at to try to pinpoint what is causing the freeze? I love my tivo but this is very frustrating (and my wife is getting serioulsy pissed!!)

    Cheers, Phil

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Victoria
    Posts
    1,239
    Things to try in this order:

    First point of call with any freezing TiVo is to try imaging up another hard disk and see if it is any different. Any size hard disk will do above 2GB.

    Next thing to do is disconnect/remove the network card to see that it is not an external attack locking up the TiVo.

    Next is possible power supply issues.

    After this you are possibly looking at need of seeking further advice.
    Darren King
    OzTiVo Repairs and Modifications
    If your TiVo requires repairs or modifications
    then visit: http://kingey1971.wix.com/tivorepairs

    NOW ALSO REPAIRING FETCH TOO!

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    Wellington, New Zealand
    Posts
    74

    Cheers

    Thanks Darren, I'll give these a go. I'm planning on imaging up the very latest (v1.5 I think it is now) anyway so will see if that improves things.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Victoria
    Posts
    1,239
    Yes it is R1.5 20051128 but unless something amiss has happened to your install there has been nothing done between R1.4 and R1.5 that impacts on lockups like you are describing.

    At the very least if you are intending to re-install with the latest image on the same drive I would be doing a thorough checkup on the hard disk, and this does not mean using something like Windows surface scan or similar. Try using the manufacturer's tools if available.
    Darren King
    OzTiVo Repairs and Modifications
    If your TiVo requires repairs or modifications
    then visit: http://kingey1971.wix.com/tivorepairs

    NOW ALSO REPAIRING FETCH TOO!

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Apr 2004
    Location
    Perth, Western Australia
    Posts
    3,037
    A freeze or lockup once a week or less often is usually fine.

    But less than 24 hours between freezes does point to an problem which hopefully Darren's tips will help with.

    Peter.
    Please search this forum and our Website for your TiVo questions before starting a new thread. Thanks!

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Wellington, NZ
    Posts
    16
    dyrplq, could you let us know, did any of Darren King's suggestions solve the problem?

    My Philips recently bought from George is doing the same thing I believe. I occasionally (every few days - certainly more frequently than weekly) get a complete TiVo freeze. This is most frustrating after spending a long Waitangi holiday weekend away, to discover that the unit froze on Friday evening having partially recorded a show.

    I don't have to be doing anything via the remote, telnet or web. What happens is:

    * Cannot ping the TiVo, let alone telnet or web into it.
    * The front panel LEDs are stuck in their last state (whether ON or OFF).
    * IR Remote control doesn't induce any response.
    * TV screen output shows the frame (frozen) at the time of lockup.

    This seems a little different from what many experience, which from my understanding after trawling these forums ranges between just Tivoweb crashing or some other lockup which is able to be resoved with a clean command-line triggered 'reboot'. My only solution is power cycling the unit - which (having a history in SysAdmin) seems very harsh.

    Scheduling a cron job to reboot frequently seems to be a bit of a fudge hack. If anyone knows at a lower level where problems frequently exist I'd like to solve it there.

    I have tried trawling the logs but this induced a lockup when 'grep'ing a large file. (As above the unit mostly locks under no interaction). I should really try searching the files again, but this time just FTP them off and filter them on a PC...

    Does anyone have a silver bullet? I've only had the unit for 2.5 weeks now but after I've learned more about the platform would like to help with development etc (my key areas are in UNIX and Cisco / IP networks). I just need to get past this hurdle first so I can *play* unhindered.

    Tim (Wellington, NZ).

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    South Africa
    Posts
    59
    Both TiVoWeb and Turbonet cards have been known to cause issues.

    TiVoWeb is most commonly the problem with the cause usually associated with the modules that link into the TiVo events. Another potential cause seems to be when your LAN router crashes, this can also kill your unit. Both of these issues have been the cause of some of my users problems and have been discussed in further detail in the "Tivo Web dies" thread. Unfortunately there is not much that can be done if the cause is your router crashing. If the fault lies with TiVoWeb then the "KeepTivoWebResponsive" guide may solve your problems.

    Turbonet cards have also been known to cause issues. If your unit crashes frequently without you making use of TiVoWeb then this can usually be attributed to the Turbonet card. The first thing you may want to check is that the card is properly secured, you may also want to remove the card and clean the board connectors on your TiVo motherboard with some alcohol then reconnect the card and make sure it is properly pushed in. If this still causes problems then you may need to adjust the Turbonet timing value. This has been discussed in further detail here and here. The conclusion drawn in both cases was to set the timing value to 'failsafe', this can be done via 'nic_config_tivo'.

  8. #8

    Smile R1.5 is better from here

    My tivo was crashing daily with the R1.4 image, I tried 3 different drives two seagates and 1 maxtor, all of which passed their manufacturers diags. I imaged my seagate 160 gb drive with the newer iso and its been up 12 days without a hiccup!!!
    Current Temperature: 42C
    Software System: 3.0-01-1-000
    Remote Address
    Uptime 12d 1h 44m 39s

    life is good

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Wellington, NZ
    Posts
    16
    Mmmm. I should have been a little more helpful re: my setup.

    * My temperature stays around 34 to 35 deg C.
    * I'm running R1.5 (2005/11/28) of the OzTivo image and have only ever run that version.
    * I have a 60GB Seagate Barracuda (pre Fluid Bearing generation) although I'm planning on buying a 250GB 7200.8 series drive. Default 127MB swap.

    My router is a Cisco and I've just checked the syslogs (on the router) from the last week or so. It's stable as. I've configured it to assign a static DHCP (ie. always leases the same IP address matched up to the TurboNet MAC address) which has a loooong lease. The router definately is stable (I've worked on (admittedly bigger) Cisco's with uptimes of 5 years).

    I do have external web access enabled through the Cisco from the outside world. Although, I have mapped an unpopular port number on the outside to the Tivoweb server on the inside of the Cisco. My DSL external IP address is dynamic (due most NZ ISPs!!) so I'm a roaming target any time I wish to reset the DSL session - so I figure it's safe enough. The router logs report that it is only me from my workplace and my Blackberry's web client that has even attempted access from the outside world - so I can rule out an external denial of service attack. ....I'll firm this up at a later date by setting up a SSL VPN and tunnelling the TiVoWeb application through that to secure browser sessions terminated on the Cisco.

    Also, my load average never drops below 1.0 and frequently sits up near 2.0. Is this normal quiescent CPU activity?

    I have now set my TurboNet timing from 'optimal' to 'failsafe' and rebooted. I'll report back if I still have grief. I have yet to FTP off the TiVo logs and trawl them.

    Many thanks for your suggestions!

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    Wellington, NZ
    Posts
    573
    Current Temperature: 34C
    Uptime 0d 6h 19m 00s (I reboot via cron every morning at 4am to avoid lockups)

    Memory Statistics:
    total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached:
    Mem: 14274560 14143488 131072 49975296 110592 4673536
    Swap: 133165056 4300800 128864256
    MemTotal: 13940 kB
    MemFree: 128 kB
    MemShared: 48804 kB
    Buffers: 108 kB
    Cached: 4564 kB
    SwapTotal: 130044 kB
    SwapFree: 125844 kB

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