Standby issues

[tawd1992]

My pc will go into standby by itself after 3 minutes with Sage open, but if I set it to 5 minutes it won't go into standby. Without Sage open I can set it to 15 minutes or whatever amount of time & it will go into standby by itself, but when Sage is open 3 minutes is the longest amount of time I can set it to. Does Sage do something at 5 minutes that would cause this? I have the Sage screensaver disabled.

[bluenote]

Im by no means an expert, but I suggest having a look at the "rescan for imported files" setting in settings. I cant remember which tab so you'll have to look closely though.

Cory

[tawd1992]

After fiddling around with this on & off for the last few months & a few dozen searches here I finally found the problem. I had unc paths set for the recording directories & every 5 minutes Sage checks those directories. Windows sees this as network activity & resets the sleep counter. Thought this would be useful for the archives.

[mskitty666]

I am just curious. How do you get your pc to come out of standby when it's time for SageTV to record? I have to leave mine running all the time.

[tawd1992]

As long as Sage is open when your pc goes to sleep it should automagically turn your pc on 2 minutes before the recording starts (default time.) Are you sure you're using standby & not hibernation? I don't think hibernation will work.

[mskitty666]

It's definitely standby and not hibernation. I have hibernation disabled. To be honest, I was having some trouble with this and never got around to troubleshooting it yet. I will conduct some tests to make sure it works properly. Thanks.

[steven017]

mskitty666, your post and some of the answers are not particularly clear. Here's some info that I hope will be helpful.

First, SageTV should wake from standby or hibernation. I originally thought that it would not wake from hibernation, but after searching for a while, I found that others seem to indicate that it works.

The key here is that either SageTV application, or server, must be running. You cannot shut it (them) down and expect SageTV to wake from standby for a scheduled recording.

Your original post is not clear on this matter.

I have to leave mine running all the time.

Does this refer to leaving your PC running all the time or SageTV running all the time?

Steve

[mskitty666]

Sage is running all the time. I use the system service. I meant that my HTPC is always on. I have set Windows to go to standby and will fine tune this later as well as verify that it will wake up. I'm sure you're correct, but I get paranoid about my shows recording .

[Sagebrush]

Originally Posted by tawd1992

After fiddling around with this on & off for the last few months & a few dozen searches here I finally found the problem. I had unc paths set for the recording directories & every 5 minutes Sage checks those directories. Windows sees this as network activity & resets the sleep counter. Thought this would be useful for the archives.

tawd9992,

I have the same problem getting the sage server to sleep with more than a 3 minute system standby time setting... as have many others over the last 4 years. It's not like we're doing something wrong or even that unusual here.

I'm discouraged that Sage has not come up with a resolution for this <5 minute sleep counter constraint when using UNC on the server. Or if they have, not done a good job communicating it.

If anyone has come up with a work-around for this (other than setting the sleep time to 3 minutes or less), I'm sure many users would be grateful.

[Madz]

Same problem here too - extremely annoying to find it has been around and unresolved since 2004: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ead.php?t=7635 (Also reported here: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ead.php?t=9156)

I don't have unc recording paths, but do have UNC media library import paths. I think turning off the regular library scan did the trick for me, but I found this more frustrating than leaving the PC on so gave up for a while. Just got my last power bill so am back on the case. As soon as I can get a maintenance window approved by the "boss" I'll try again to confirm this.

My current thoughts for resolving this are:
1) post here to see if there's already a solution available
2) beg/pester the sage devs for the ability to set the frequency of the media library scan - so I can set it to longer than my sleep time (ideally sage would do the scan a few minutes after waking up too, but not fussed on that).
3) if no joy with (2) turn off regular scan and try to come up with a bat file that could trigger the scan - I could then run that on my own schedule...

Any thoughts guys?

For people recording to UNC paths (which incidentally is a nice thing to do even if your target folder is on the same server as it allows you to abstract (change) the physical location of the folder without making config changes) it's going to be more difficult to get a fix I think unless you can have a similar setting controlling how often sage looks at its recordings...

[Madz]

I can confirm turning off the Media Library Scan allows the computer to go into Standby as expected. Now, is there any way to control the frequency of this scan??

[Sagebrush]

And I can confirm that on 6.4.4 Beta for Windows, turning off Media Library Scan makes no difference when using UNC recording directories... at least on my system.

Set standby to 3 minutes, and it does so.
Set standby to 5 minutes, and it stays on.

[Madz]

Yep, I think there are really two variations of the same problem. If you are using any UNC paths, when Sage accesses them Windows sees this as network activity and therefore resets the sleep timer - PC stays awake. In Sage there are two different sets of folders which are accessed regularly:
1) your library import folders, which are only accessed regularly if you have enabled the library scan and
2) the recording folders which are checked regularly as Sage performs its normal recording management

Using UNC paths in either will cause a problem. It's not Sage's fault this access keeps the PC awake - all we can ask for is the ability to control how often this access occurs so that the PC has time to go to sleep before the next scan resets the timer. Currently the scans seem to happen every 5 minutes, so the to achieve this the timer must be set for 3 minutes, but that's a bit too short to be practical in my view.

I've sent an email to Sage support regarding the possibility of an option to control the frequency of the library scan. I'd encourage others to do the same if they'd like this resolved. I'll post here any reply I get.

[Madz]

Just been having a look at what has changed in the latest versions of sage. From the release notes on 6.4.7:

6. Added property seeker/thorough_lib_scan_period which controls how often a thorough library scan will be performed if regular scanning is enabled (thorough scans also check for any changed files not just new/removed files)

Haven't tried it yet, but it's sounding very promising!!

[Madz]

In case anyone is following this, just tried the update and no luck. My library scan just runs continuously so I had to turn back off the regular rescan. I emailed Sage Support and here is their response:

That new setting won't help your problem. That's an issue we're addressing for V6.5 which should be in beta soon. You'll need to turn off periodic scans to resolve that problem for now.

I'm happy they are looking into it and am looking forward to the next beta!

[Mucaro]

Has anybody checked if the latest beta (6.5.8) fixed this?

[planetc]

Hmmm, I'd quite like to get this one sorted too. I'm currently on 6.4.8 using unc paths for everything, which I'd rather not change as it's all been sweet for some time. I recall that for comskip I can't change them anyway without a great deal of hassle matching drive mapping throughout the network.
I was set to 30 minute standby which left the server running 24/7 but power bills for my house are at stupid levels so every little bit I can save will help. I'm using the 3 minute thing at the moment, but it does tend to make client connections a little erratic if you are slow navigating menus and I'm not entirely happy about the effect of such short cycles on component life either.

Maybe if more people show a concern it will ramp up the priority?

[Madz]

Wish I could help but at the moment something else is keeping my server awake (not sage) so I'm not a good test case... I'm running the latest version though so will try it out if I can get this other issue sorted. Tracking down standby issues is really the worst isn't it - no logs or any real way to work out what's going on. I rely on SysInternals FileMon, but it won't help you if it's network traffic keeping the machine up....

[dbaxley]

I am having similar problems with sleep.

SageTV version 6.5.9.204
NO scanning of directories
NO UNC paths
Standby in Power Options of control panel set for 3 minutes
Windows XP SP3 (all latest updates)
Java - latest update
Comskip addon is installed

With some careful observations, I have found the following:

If I leave the HTPC running (main menu on STANDBY), the HTPC fails to go into standby mode. It records programs I have set to record, but will NOT go into standby mode when done (idle).

If I force the HTPC into standby (power it down using the remote), it wakes up to record programs on schedule and then goes back into standby mode automatically.

I believe there is a bug in SageTV that does not let the OS know that it is idle and can therefore go into standby mode. But, I can't explain why SageTV operates as expected when forced into standby using the power button on the remote.

[tomfisk]

My observations:

Windows standby/hibernate options are really meant to be watching activity that indicates a user is interacting with the system. So, standby/hibernate options are not probably going to do you much good on a server system.

Should Sage determine if the system should be suspended? What other processes should it watch in order to not prematurely suspend a system that is otherwise "active"? Examples abound...comskip, dirmon, showanlayzer, etc...of processes that may be active and Sage may not know about.

To this end I have written a Kixstart script that looks at parameters I specify to determine if the system should be suspended. I believe it is the only way that you are going to be able to reliably control standby/hibernate of a server system.