Tivo freezing/hanging daily

**gregs** · 07-02-2006, 07:55 PM

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

**timl** · 07-02-2006, 09:59 PM

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!

**zollymonsta** · 08-02-2006, 08:30 AM

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

**dyrplq** · 08-02-2006, 02:45 PM

...if you have a cron job setup and your Tivo crashes, the cron won't run. I've now gone to the extent of having it connected via a Dick Smith Timer switch which literally cuts power for 10 mins everyday at 3pm (Bold and the Beautiful is on I think so thats safe enough to avoid) just to ensure it isnt frozen when I get home from work.

It ran for about 3 days non-stop up to yesterday, then crashed 3 times. This is my second image on a second disk. I am going to try with another image and will also try the network card suggestion below. I never use Tivoweb now and have no other 'hacks' running.

A friend of mine tried 5 seperate images on 3 disks before getting one that is pretty much stable now so maybe its the luck of the draw.

**dyrplq** · 08-02-2006, 02:50 PM

...wheres the 'nic_config_tivo' file?

**T1voZA** · 08-02-2006, 04:39 PM

Originally Posted by dyrplq

...wheres the 'nic_config_tivo' file?

It's in the '/sbin' directory, which is in the $PATH. When connected to your TiVo via telnet (if using PuTTY, make sure to have the "Return key sends Telnet New Line instead of ^M" unticked, see here for details), just type:

Code:

nic_config_tivo

**thomson** · 08-02-2006, 04:34 PM

Originally Posted by dyrplq

I've now gone to the extent of having it connected via a Dick Smith Timer switch which literally cuts power for 10 mins everyday at 3pm just to ensure it isnt frozen when I get home from work.

One other potential cause could be a high level of IR interference. I'm thinking that if there is a lot of IR noise then some items of the TiVo may be getting overloaded trying to determine which ones are for it. So you might try a different spot for the TiVo (if possible).

If you do use the "phone" module under TivoWeb then you might like to comment out the line that reads "event register $TmkEvent::EVT_DIALUPEVENT DialupCallback" (this can be done by adding a hash '#' to the start of the line). This can be found in the modules directory and is called phone.itcl. I do not know if this will help, but it might be worth a try if you are having trouble.

**dyrplq** · 08-02-2006, 05:53 PM

Originally Posted by thomson

One other potential cause could be a high level of IR interference. I'm thinking that if there is a lot of IR noise then some items of the TiVo may be getting overloaded trying to determine which ones are for it. So you might try a different spot for the TiVo (if possible).

If you do use the "phone" module under TivoWeb then you might like to comment out the line that reads "event register $TmkEvent::EVT_DIALUPEVENT DialupCallback" (this can be done by adding a hash '#' to the start of the line). This can be found in the modules directory and is called phone.itcl. I do not know if this will help, but it might be worth a try if you are having trouble.

Thanks for the tip TivoZa. Thomson, what does this line do?

**thomson** · 08-02-2006, 06:43 PM

Originally Posted by dyrplq

Thomson, what does this line do?

It reduces the number of hooks into the event handler... which could be a reason why the system becomes unresponsive (as any hung event handlers can cause this to occur).