Is IceTV down?

[csutak40]

I've had some family drama, so haven't watched TV for a few days. Thought I'd try to relax and watch some. The Wiz refused to come on. Tried with the Harmony, the Wiz remote and the front of the Wiz.
Had to reset it from the back.
Came on, but IceTV wanted me to log in (never seen that before) then wouldn't accept the log in. I presumed it was a Wiz problem, until I attempted to open the IceTV forum
I am still confused. Even if IceTV is down, what has that got to do with the Wiz refusing to come on?

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[Paul_oz53]

You're not alone Judy. Same problem here since 9:54 tonight.

[paullings]

Same thing here last night and this morning. U4 was also unresponsive. Powered down using the rear switch this morning, logged onto ICETV and all seems good now.

[Paul_oz53]

Still offline and demanding a token or a login.

Did a restore settings and that has fixed it for me.

[nexus7]

I had exactly the same problem on my T4.
Finally, I fixed it - here is how

1 Reboot the T4 - it comes up with 'password' (on the Wiz screen).
2 Turn on your TV - it will have a screen like shown above with a place to enter the password.
3 On the TV screen at the bottom right-hand side it shows 'keyboard' - press the BLUE button on your remote and a keyboard pops up.
4 Fill in your IceTV password and press enter
5 Now you should be good to go.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

I entered my IceTV account password - job done.

[prl]

The problem was caused by an IceTV server outage overnight.

As Grumpy_Geoff says, all that's needed to fix the problem is to enter your IceTV password in the IceTV password popup screen.

[Trial_Master]

Peter why was the password required to be entered? Is it not stored in the Beyonwiz client? Since Ice TV didn’t email their customers about the requirement to re-enter password I would be concerned if I’d been away on holidays for example and not realised that the connection to Ice server was broken.

[prl]

Peter why was the password required to be entered? Is it not stored in the Beyonwiz client? Since Ice TV didn’t email their customers about the requirement to re-enter password I would be concerned if I’d been away on holidays for example and not realised that the connection to Ice server was broken.

The IceTV password is not stored on the Beyonwiz client. An IceTV authentication token is stored on the Beyonwiz client (in config.plugins.icetv.member.token).

When the plugin tries to contact the server and that fails, it assumes that it was because of an invalid token and requests the password to generate a new one.

[Trial_Master]

Is there a way to avoid the password being requested again if a connection failure occurs?

[prl]

Is there a way to avoid the password being requested again if a connection failure occurs?

I'm not sure exactly what happened in the server downtime. Our in-use T4 demanded a password last night when it tried to contact the server and the server was down. It didn't re-request the password last night, so I assumed that it was all OK, but this afternoon when the T4 was started up, it asked for the password again.

From looking at the logs, when the T4 contacted IceTV last night, it got an explicit HTTP "401 Unauthorised" error with a "Email address was not found, or token invalid" message. A 401 error causes the authentication token to be discarded. That means that a new one must be fetched.

IMO, that's a correct response to the server saying that the token or email is invalid.

The logs seem to show that the connection couldn't be made last night, so even though I'd entered a password then, a new token wasn't granted by the server. It was only granted when the T4 first connected today when the servers were back up.

tl;dr: No, it seems that the plugin did what it should in the circumstances.

[Trial_Master]

Thanks for the explanation Peter. I would of thought the client should just reconnect when the server was available again? I’m not speaking with experience just my view. It’s crazy the link breaks in that situation. If that’s going to be the case Ice really should advise people of the need to enter their password again.

[prl]

I would of thought the client should just reconnect when the server was available again?

It does. But our in-use T4 got an "Unauthorised" response at 21:59 last night, and I provided it with a password, but the following attempt got a "502 Bad Gateway" error, so I stopped trying to enter a password. It was unable to connect to IceTV in any later attempts, up to 22:54, so no new token could be issued by the IceTV server. The T4 was put into shutdown shortly after that last fetch attempt.

I’m not speaking with experience just my view. It’s crazy the link breaks in that situation. If that’s going to be the case Ice really should advise people of the need to enter their password again.

In my case, the plugin was told explicitly by the IceTV server that the authentication information was invalid. Why should it not request re-authentication in those circumstances?

If you want to ask about what IceTV should have done about notifying people, the IceTV forum is probably a better place to ask. The relevant topic is the Token Error that you initiated.

Daniel Hall@IceTV has added some detail about what happened, and why there was a relatively small window when people were getting "Unauthorised" errors.

[Paul_oz53]

Thanks for the explanation Peter. I would of thought the client should just reconnect when the server was available again? I’m not speaking with experience just my view. It’s crazy the link breaks in that situation. If that’s going to be the case Ice really should advise people of the need to enter their password again.

It was not a welcome surprise when it popped up the request to reenter the password but that's exactly what it asked for. So IceTV did advise of the need to enter the password again.

It's been sometime since I last had to reset IceTV so I'm not too upset about it. Since I couldn't recall the password I restored a backup which had the desired effect.

IIRC, the token is stored in the settings file. Strangely, rebooting the U4 didn't restore IceTV access but restoring settings did.

[prl]

IIRC, the token is stored in the settings file.

Yes:

The IceTV password is not stored on the Beyonwiz client. An IceTV authentication token is stored on the Beyonwiz client (in config.plugins.icetv.member.token).

Strangely, rebooting the U4 didn't restore IceTV access but restoring settings did.

As I also noted, when the plugin gets a "401 Unauthorised" error it clears its stored authentication token. Restoring settings would retrieve a token, so not really all that strange, but it might appear to be.

Also, retrieving a very old token from a settings backup won't work if a newer one has been issued in the meantime.

[Trial_Master]

M’mmmmm as per my Ice TV posting I didn’t attempt to enter a password so I was surprised this morning it kept prompting when the server was working again. I had to enter password this morning to get it working. I would of thought it would have connected automatically since I didn’t attempt to cha he password last night?

EDIT. Your reply to Ian answers my question.

[prl]

M’mmmmm as per my Ice TV posting I didn’t attempt to enter a password so I was surprised this morning it kept prompting when the server was working again. I had to enter password this morning to get it working. I would of thought it would have connected automatically since I didn’t attempt to cha he password last night?

Your getting the password prompt is a direct result of the IceTV plugin trying to automatically connect after it had cleared its authentication token.

Really, I think I've already explained the process in some detail.

[Trial_Master]

Yes I acknowledged that

[prl]

My post appears to have crossed with your edit.

[Trial_Master]

Yeah, thanks for your assistance. I understand what has happened at least now. As has been mentioned this is certainly not a regular occurrence from Ice.

[prl]

No problem.

Some of what Daniel Hall has posted in the topic on the IceTV forum confirmed my thinking about what happened.

[nexus7]

I had the same problem. After entering my password, all was well.
Except than no ICE programs have been downloaded since Sunday.
Can anyone help please?
Mike

[prl]

I had the same problem. After entering my password, all was well.
Except than no ICE programs have been downloaded since Sunday.
Can anyone help please?

On the My Week Web page for your IceTV account, are the shows that should have been sent to your PVR showing as "Queued" ("donut") or as set for recording (solid dot)?

[Paul_oz53]

After restoring my access I had to resend all timers as they all disappeared.

[prl]

After restoring my access I had to resend all timers as they all disappeared.

Yes, but isn't that because you restored your access by restoring settings? Restoring settings will also reset your timers list back to its state at the time you made the backup, but IceTV still thinks that the timers that it has already set are still valid.

That's why just re-entering the password to get new IceTV authentication information is usually less disruptive.

[Paul_oz53]

After restoring my access I had to resend all timers as they all disappeared.

Yes, but isn't that because you restored your access by restoring settings? Restoring settings will also reset your timers list back to its state at the time you made the backup, but IceTV still thinks that the timers that it has already set are still valid.

That's why just re-entering the password to get new IceTV authentication information is usually less disruptive.

It didn't reset the timers. Rather, it deleted them all except autotimers. The backup was only a day old so I would have thought many of the future event timers should have survived.

Regardless, resend all worked to fix the problem.