Should I be worried? U4

[KGL]

Late last year I had some serious issues with my U4 and ended up buying a new 3T hdd which seems to have resolved the problems.

Last Tuesday night the U4 did not record the evening news as it usually does. In the phone app, it was marked as queued to record and when I checked the timers on the U4, there wasn't one for the news. There were no other recordings scheduled at the same time. For some reason the U4 did not receive the timer information. I assumed/hoped it was a one off glitch.

By the time I realised the news hadn't recorded and I started investigating other recordings had kicked in. I was navigating around the timers and media file lists and the U4 became slower and slower to the point it was really painful. Even though there were recordings going, I decided to reboot the machine to refresh the system. I tried several times and it would get stuck "loading" at 49%. In the end I gave up and went to bed.

Next morning I tried again. I got stuck at 49% again, so I thought I will give it 10 minutes and went off to do sometime else. After just a few minutes later I noticed it had completed loading. The system seems to be working fine now, navigating is quite responsive and programmes are being recorded. Everything seems ok. There is no trace of the recordings that were active when I turned to box off, so I wonder if they were really recording at all.

I haven't tried turning the U4 off again, only to stand-by which is what we normally do when not using it. Having had the previous problems and then this latest issue, I hope it isn't going to be a problem. I am rather scared to turn it of completely in case it gets stuck loading again.

Is it recommended to turn off completely sometimes to refresh the system. As with PCs if you have an issue try rebooting.

TIA

Greg

[MrQuade]

Last Tuesday night the U4 did not record the evening news as it usually does. In the phone app, it was marked as queued to record and when I checked the timers on the U4, there wasn't one for the news. There were no other recordings scheduled at the same time. For some reason the U4 did not receive the timer information. I assumed/hoped it was a one off glitch.

When you say "the app", I assume you mean IceTV? Otherwise, I am unsure how a timer should show on the WizOS app and not in the U4 GUI.

Next morning I tried again. I got stuck at 49% again, so I thought I will give it 10 minutes and went off to do sometime else. A

It sounds like a networking problem. The U4 was unable to fetch IceTV timers from the internet, and then when it rebooted it got stuck trying to re-establish network connectivity and mounts perhaps?



Have you changed a any network equipment or cables recently? Thunderstorms?

[KGL]

When you say "the app", I assume you mean IceTV? Otherwise, I am unsure how a timer should show on the WizOS app and not in the U4 GUI.

Yes, IceTV - I should have been more specific.

Have you changed a any network equipment or cables recently? Thunderstorms?

No

It sounds like a networking problem. The U4 was unable to fetch IceTV timers from the internet, and then when it rebooted it got stuck trying to re-establish network connectivity and mounts perhaps?

I guess this is possible. We have HFC and for us it seems pretty stable. I almost never find it without connection. It seems unlikely that on Tuesday night it would persist as long as I tried and then still be the same the next morning.

Cheers

[Paul_oz53]

Re rebooting regularly: I reboot both of mine daily by an AutoTimer to prevent progressive slowdown and unresponsiveness.

Although rare, I have occasionally lost network connectivity and that might be a factor in unresponsiveness.

[prl]

Stuck at "Loading 49%" means that the Linux has started, but the application that runs the box as a PVR, enigma2, has not. 0-49% is Linux starting up, 50-100% is enigma2 starting up.

The IceTV plugin isn't started on our in-use T4 until the loading percentage gets to about 83%.

I'm not at all convinced that the problem at startup time here is IceTV.

[MrQuade]

I'm not at all convinced that the problem at startup time here is IceTV.

Agreed. I suspect network mounts and other network initialisation activities are in play here.

[prl]

I'm not at all convinced that the problem at startup time here is IceTV.

Agreed. I suspect network mounts and other network initialisation activities are in play here.

Fstab SMB mounts happen very early in Linux startup. NFS mounts happen a bit later, but not right near the end (49% is pretty much the end of Linux startup). Autofs starts straight after NFS mounts are done, but even if there are network hangs for that, they will be in the autofs daemon, which should have been backgrounded before any hangs.

[Paul_oz53]

Just building on the other replies, my experience is rebooting daily is reliable on two U4s.

Rarely I get a lockup faffing around, as I do. Occasionally, it didn't restart on the first attempt. Rarely, when I've managed to upset the software, a USB refresh has restored functionality.

Having become pretty practised at it, it takes me around 15 minutes to do a full reinstall, switch to beta, reinstall S2F, IceTV description, OverlayHD and other plugins and restore settings.

Bottom line is that recovering even corrupted firmware is pretty straightforward once you get the steps sorted. No need to worry about it.

If a network resource is off at startup I get a boot delay around 53% and later around 80 something.

[MrQuade]

Regular reboots are unnecessary.
My U4 only gets restarted for updates and doesn't suffer any showdowns or lockups.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

showdowns

Hey Trevor, in SA they have the Crows vs. Port Power "showdowns", here we have the Eagles vs. Dockers "derbies"

[KGL]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts. The U4 seems to be working ok and I have rebooted once to see what would happen. It seemed to reboot okay. All I can do is hope it was a one-off occurance and won't happen again. Having just been through a major fail I was dreading something sinister happening again.

Cheers

Greg