Standby issues

[Madz]

Yep I don't think it can be up to Sage to signal the OS to go to standby - the OS should monitor the system (disk, processor and network I/O) and determine when it's been inactive long enough to go to standby. Processes are able to operate in the background (idle priority) without preventing this. Indeed low resource programs (think powerpoint presentations etc) need to actively prevent this by singaling the OS via SetThreadExecutionState or else the OS thinks they are doing nothing and goes to standby.

It's relatively easy to determine whether Sage is the cause of your problems - simply shut it down or stop the service and see if your PC goes to standby as expected. If not, then it's not Sage and move on to killing the next process until you track down the culprit.

You can also go into power management for some devices and prevent them from waking the system, which can often be the cause of your problems. Network traffic is another one - I believe I've traced my current issues to SageTray which I have running on my laptop. It appears to be polling my server every couple of minutes which is keeping it awake.

@dbaxley: I've also noticed sometimes the system just gets itself into a state where it wont standby and it needs a reboot or forced standby to remind it what it should be doing. Haven't got an answer for that yet, I guess it may be an issue with Sage, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's due to other applications or Windows. I actually have some suspicions about the Windows Update reminder/baloon thing at the moment.

Now that I've got my server sleeping again (on a 30 min timeout too) I'm going to try the latest sage and see if they have made any progress on the media rescan issue.

[r00st3r]

I am using event ghost to control the PC through my remote. A buddy if mine has a timer or script in Event Ghost that states if there is no activity from the remote for 2 hrs (can be adjusted), then it sleeps (or turns off) the client, tv and any other device that's on. This is convenient for when someone turns on the tv and walks away (eh hm ..kids, wife). If there is no activity (channel change, volume change, pause, play anything...) then it sleeps. I am going to talk to him today about it to see what's involved in creating this on my system. This willl take Sage out of the loop. Sage is a PVR software, we can't expect it to control everything...

I asked him, what if your watching a movie that's two hrs +. He said it's never shut off on him because someone usually pauses, or changes the volume on the remote, thus resetting the timer.

[scat]

r00st3r

I am interested in your friends EventGhost code for the timer, please post his EventGhost file here or at the EventGhost forum and link back here.

Thanks
Scat

[planetc]

Originally Posted by Madz

It's relatively easy to determine whether Sage is the cause of your problems - simply shut it down or stop the service and see if your PC goes to standby as expected. If not, then it's not Sage and move on to killing the next process until you track down the culprit.

Sage will work with standby if set up correctly.
I've never had a problem getting the server to put itself into Standby, as long as the idle timeout is set to 3 minutes it drops in no problem and wakes itself for recording duties. I has been like this with media scans turned off or on and I believe that this suggests the issue relates to Sage checking the recording directories (UNC) for new/changed files as mentioned earlier in the thread. Prior to building the network at my current home I ran a Sage server as a Local System which IIRC didn't have this issue. If there were a way to change the frequency of this then it would be simple to confirm if this is the answer. Though I suspect if it were that simple this would have already been done. If my system were busier I'd leave it on 24/7 and swallow the cost, but the fact is that it regularly has idle periods of up to 8hrs and sometimes more.

Originally Posted by Madz

I actually have some suspicions about the Windows Update reminder/baloon thing at the moment.

Agreed, I find that any update notification in the tray will more often than not keep a machine awake. Supported by the fact that this happens on more than one machine.

Originally Posted by Madz

Now that I've got my server sleeping again (on a 30 min timeout too) I'm going to try the latest sage and see if they have made any progress on the media rescan issue.

See above re recording directories, if your setup allows you to play without upsetting the family (awkward on mine) it may be worth some experimentation. Do please keep us posted if you learn anything new.

[Madz]

Originally Posted by planetc

If my system were busier I'd leave it on 24/7 and swallow the cost, but the fact is that it regularly has idle periods of up to 8hrs and sometimes more.

For sure - I worry too about the risk of fire or something like that, probably unlikely, but better all round if it's not running when it doesn't need to be.

Originally Posted by planetc

Agreed, I find that any update notification in the tray will more often than not keep a machine awake.

Excellent! Thanks for this, it's good to have confirmation from someone else.

Originally Posted by planetc

See above re recording directories, if your setup allows you to play without upsetting the family (awkward on mine) it may be worth some experimentation. Do please keep us posted if you learn anything new.

Mine will standby fine now on 30 mins delay provided I have the library scan turned off. I use local recording paths though, so have a slightly different variation of the issue to you. Actually, I'm interested in why you use UNC recording paths?

I use UNC paths for my media folders as I run a Sage Client and the way I understand it is if the server can't stream the file (type), then the client tries to open it directly and therefore needs an absolute path to the file.

I tried 6.5.11, but no joy. I noticed they've just released 6.5.12, but haven't tried it yet. I've emailed Sage Support asking for an update - maybe they've added an undocumented setting we need to change, but I'm not holding much hope.

[Madz]

Had a response from Sage Support - there will hopefully be something for us in the next beta release (6.5.13)... fingers crossed!!

[r00st3r]

Here is a link to wake the PC with remote.

uses Girder, but can be used for Event Ghost.
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8483

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=801736

Or Specifically
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...71#post9712471

You can use the timer event in event ghost to standby after a certain period of inactivity, then use a button on the remote to wake.

Hopefully these will help.

[planetc]

Originally Posted by Madz

Actually, I'm interested in why you use UNC recording paths?

comskip needs access and AFAIK the only alternative is matching mapped drives across the network which will be a pain to set uo and if anything needs to be changed.

[Madz]

From the changelog for 6.5.13:

10. Changed default period for library scanning to be 2 hours; it's controlled by the property: seeker/library_scan_period

Haven't tried it yet, but sounds like they've fixed at least my flavour of this problem... +1 to the Sage guys for this!! Will try it out and post back (unless someone else confirms in the meantime).