Unhappy with design of Sage's Wiz.bin recovery

[stevech]

Power failure yesterday. Lasted an hour or so.
PC is on a UPS. While still on UPS, I tapped the power switch on the PC, it shut down orderly.

power up several hours later. Sage (v4) then displays the virgin-system menu: what country are you in? GRRR.

I renamed files to use the Sage wiz.bin backup. Same problem.

I note that both wiz.bin and the backup are 1/3 the size of a wiz.bin that I duped and saved away a month ago. Looks to me like Sage corrupted both the main and each time sage is started, it uses then junks the prior backup file.

I saved my butt in terms of preserving the favorites and probably the watched programs by going to MY OWN BACKUP files that Acronis TruImage does every night.

FLAME ON

>>> WHY can't Sage have an adequate, even robust, protection for loss of wiz.bin? The world isn't perfect out there, my dear computer science grads.

After I did the fallback 24 hours, I still lost a lot of recorded shows. They mysteriously appeared in the IMPORTED directory instead of the recorded shows.

Makes one want to buy a TiVo for $70.

Sorry Sage staffers if you read this - you need to make the product more robust instead of adding features used by a small minority of current/prospective users.
FLAME OFF

[Lucas]

It's frustrating. It caused me a lot of pain early on.

I have however found that things have improved in versions 4 and 5 as follows.

I now make a backup(automatic) of the entire SageTV dir every day. When I get a corruption, and I haven't had one over the last 6 months or so, I recover the wiz.bin and sage.properties from the last non-corrupted backup and I find that SageTV automatically recognises the recordings made since using the uptodate EPG info so total impact is zero.

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by stevech

Sage (v4) then displays the virgin-system menu: what country are you in?

This is indicative of a corrupt properties file not wiz.bin. Did you try first restoring just a backed up properties file? You may also want to upgrade to the latest version of Sage if you are still using v4.

[stanger89]

You should contact support, Jeff has commented before that they thought they had all the wiz.bin corruption problems fixed, I think they'd be very interested in your corrupt wiz.bin, and any associated logs.

[mayamaniac]

I remember Narflex posted that wiz.bin shouldn't corrupt anymore, but my wiz.bin did messed up anyway. But even if they found a way to secure all files, I still would not trust it completely and still prefer to do my own backup. When data security is important, if you can, then always do your own backups. I have scheduled backup of the files sagetv.properties and wiz.bin using the method in my signature and it saved me quite a few times from total disasters.

[blade]

Originally Posted by stevech

After I did the fallback 24 hours, I still lost a lot of recorded shows. They mysteriously appeared in the IMPORTED directory instead of the recorded shows.

No mystery there, that is the expected behavior. You went back to a wiz.bin from before the shows were recorded so Sage doesn't have any information about them. When this happens they're added to the imported directory.

[blade]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

I remember Narflex posted that wiz.bin shouldn't corrupt anymore, but my wiz.bin did messed up anyway.

Was it fixed with v4 or a later version?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by stanger89

You should contact support, Jeff has commented before that they thought they had all the wiz.bin corruption problems fixed, I think they'd be very interested in your corrupt wiz.bin, and any associated logs.

Due to using v4, I think support would suggest using the latest version before they try to track something down, since many things have been fixed or changed since then.

- Andy

[Paul365]

How can you rant at Sage for not fixing something and still be using an old version ???

[abel]

Would it be possible (or have I missed this in the doc) for Sage to automatically back up the properties and wiz bin file to the recording directories or preferably a user defined directory.

My Sage is running on a PC in the living room, but the recording directories are actually on a server in a different room. That way it would still be safe if one of the machines crashes.

Abel

[nielm]

Originally Posted by abel

Would it be possible (or have I missed this in the doc) for Sage to automatically back up the properties and wiz bin file to the recording directories or preferably a user defined directory.

This sort of thing is trivial to do yourself (link from Mayamaniacs post above)

[blade]

Originally Posted by abel

Would it be possible (or have I missed this in the doc) for Sage to automatically back up the properties and wiz bin file to the recording directories or preferably a user defined directory.

My Sage is running on a PC in the living room, but the recording directories are actually on a server in a different room. That way it would still be safe if one of the machines crashes.

Abel

I wouldn't want mine in a recording directory, but backing it up to a drive on another machine is always a good idea. There are plenty of free programs that would allow you to setup an automated backup.

I agree it would be handy to have something built into Sage, but I'd rather see them continue to improve the product instead of adding something that can easily be done through free 3rd party software.

[abel]

Originally Posted by nielm

This sort of thing is trivial to do yourself (link from Mayamaniacs post above)

Thanks. I just wasn't sure if the files were open (but unlocked) at any point and you could grab an incomplete update. If that's not the case then this works fine.

EDIT: ok, that was mentioned too, further in the thread. Make sure to also backup the wiz.bak and backup properties.

Abel

[Narflex]

This bug has been fixed since V4. So upgrade if you'd like it fixed on your system.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by Paul365

How can you rant at Sage for not fixing something and still be using an old version ???

Old? Not.
V5 has been out what, 3 or 4 months? I don't think it's prudent to take a new version right out of the oven, given the risk to WAF.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by blade

No mystery there, that is the expected behavior. You went back to a wiz.bin from before the shows were recorded so Sage doesn't have any information about them. When this happens they're added to the imported directory.

Nope. First thing I did was use the bakup file created by Sage v4. That was not smart on my part, in hindsight, since Sage stupidly propagates the corrupted file to that backup each time Sage is started.

And by the way, where's the Sage function to move the recorded shows from Imported back to Recorded, given that I installed my own backed up wiz.bin?

Went to a wiz.bin that was 24 hours old. The number of shows in the Imported area were far more numerous than were recorded in the last 24 hrs. I think Sage v4 erronously moved these files to the Imported directory due to my use of Sage's own created backup of wiz.bin which, as I said earlier, was 1/3 the size it should have been.

Corrupted Properties causing sage to launch into the fresh-install "what country are you in?" mode - this is intolerable. Sage's design should not allow that to happen, by having a robust fallback strategy.

I have never heard a friend with TiVo say their box was screwed up by a power failure.

[blade]

Originally Posted by stevech

Old? Not.
V5 has been out what, 3 or 4 months? I don't think it's prudent to take a new version right out of the oven, given the risk to WAF.

When you're having repeated problems as you said you were then upgrading to a newer version for bug fixes seems like a wise move to me. Also v5 has been out for 5 months now and was available as a beta before that so it has been around awhile.

[blade]

Originally Posted by stevech

Corrupted Properties causing sage to launch into the fresh-install "what country are you in?" mode - this is intolerable. Sage's design should not allow that to happen, by having a robust fallback strategy.

I have never heard a friend with TiVo say their box was screwed up by a power failure.

You can continue to complain because an older version had a bug or upgrade to the newer version that is supposed to have fixed the wiz.bin corruption problem you had as well as other various bugs. It's up to you.

You can easily do a regular backup of the entire SageTV folder which will make it very easy to fix many problems you may experience. Personally I've had numerous power failures and have never lost anything in Sage. Just because you're having problems doesn't mean everyone else is seeing the same thing. If the product was that unstable and everyone was having to reinstall or apply backups on a regular basis most of us wouldn't be using it.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by blade

You can continue to complain because an older version had a bug or upgrade to the newer version that is supposed to have fixed the wiz.bin corruption problem you had as well as other various bugs. It's up to you.

You can easily do a regular backup of the entire SageTV folder which will make it very easy to fix many problems you may experience. Personally I've had numerous power failures and have never lost anything in Sage. Just because you're having problems doesn't mean everyone else is seeing the same thing. If the product was that unstable and everyone was having to reinstall or apply backups on a regular basis most of us wouldn't be using it.

I have always had Acronis TruImage do a backup of the entire C: drive every night (6GB) and a backup of the Sage folder every night. This backup is what I used to get partially back on the air after the simple power failure w/UPS.

Believe me, I am not a masochist staying with v4. But reading here about v5 problems, I am reluctant to change - from frying pan to fire, as is often the case with a major release in anyone's software. Indeed, what you read here are the people with problems; people without problems (in v5) are of course silent. But Sage has been problemmatic enough that I, as the tinkerer, defending "why not TiVo like everyone else", want to hear that v5.xxx is stable.

[ToxMox]

v5 is more stable than v4 as long as you run Java 1.4.x