Suspend and resume with SageTV

[falchulk]

Hmm, thats very strange. On 2 of my systems I had a problem early on with the APC usb connection. It would not let it sleep when the power management settings timed out. There were actually events logged that stated "device did not allow system to enter suspend". It took me a few days to figure it out but eventually I began pulling my usb Nic, wireless gamepad , keyboard/mouse and apc. The APC UPS was causing the problem. I could force the system to sleep but it would not return there on its own.

[jptaz]

I may have jumped the gun...

It seems to let the system sleep sometimes, but not all the time...

For sure SageTV 1.4.10 will not let the system sleep when it is in the System Tray.

But at this point APC stuff is intermittent...it seems like if I set the hibernate time low enough it will hibernate...but of course it is annoying having it hibernate so quickly.

Falchulk where did you see these events listed? in the system event log or the application event log or the APC software log?

I think the worst part for me is that I have not seen any events or messages that tell me why the system is not hibernating. Before when I did not have SageTV ignore my ATI 7500 All In Wonder Encoder device the system would not sleep manuanlly or on its own, but was nice enough to say that "ATI WDM Video Capture won't allow the system to sleep".

I am sure I will eventually figure it out...it would be pretty annoying if my UPS can not be plugged in as it kind of defeats the purpose of having one if the computer can't shutdown gracefully when a power failure of more than a few minutes occur, especially since I only have 10 to 15 minutes on battery.

Thanks,
John

[nielm]

I had a problem with sage not allowing the HDD to power down because it was regularly re-scanning the media library for new files, and regularly re-saving the sage.properties file on disk. This might be what is preventing your PC from suspending...

I used NT Filemon to monitor disk usage -- more in this thread -- and eventually put Sage on a Ramdisk.

I now have a new problem with the 2.0 beta, but have not yet looked into why it is occurring.

[falchulk]

Ahhh HA! Jpatz, there are known issues with the AIW and s3/hibernation. Look on ati.com in the knowledgebase. I believe it was in the system log that I found the message mentioned above.

[jptaz]

nielm,

Thanks for the info. That exlains why the only way the hard drives would sleep is if I set it to 3 minutes, but then it just woke up again right away. Looks like the scan and the properties file is at 5 minute intervals. The RAM disk fixes this problem, but I still have to keep SageTV GUI up for it to hibernate because for some reason sage is reloading the arial font once a minute. I don't know if sage is buffering some display info and changing text, but it is weird that it only does it when it is in the systray.

falchulk,

I did some looking and I don't have any the issues that the ATI AIW has. Hibernate works fine, the problem was caused by SageTV writing to the sageTV.properties file. All the issues I saw were related to BSOD or ATI TV App not closing after resume.

Thanks for the ideas...I am getting closer.

[jptaz]

What OS and Power Savings settings is everyone using that allows the System to go to Standby or Hibernate? i.e.

OS: XP SP1
Monitor Off: 5 Minutes
Hard Drives Off: 10 Minutes
Standby: 15 Minutes
Hibernate: 20 Minutes

Note: On my system the only way anything, but monitor off will happen is if I follow nielm's directions for running SageTV from a RAM Disk as at 5 Minute intervals SageTV Scans all Library and Archive directories for changes and writes a backup of sage.properties and updates sage.properties with the instance up time. Do other people see this preventing the system from going to standby or is it just some of us?

[falchulk]

b only use standyby, I have varied it between 15 and 1 minute(my current setting). The rest is set to never. Is you MB set to use S3?

[mwhitlock]

Too bad Sysinternals doesn't have a tool we could use to see what process is resetting the power management timers and how. Maybe using Girder you all could program the Power button on your remote to put Sage to sleep and put the system into hibernate in one action. Or maybe I could add a new option to SageWake where you could execute SageWake with a certain command line, and it would put your system into suspend or hibernate ONLY IF nothing was currently recording in Sage. Then you could link that into Girder.

[jptaz]

mwhitlock,

Does your system suspend / hibernate properly?

From looking at FileMon every 5 minutes SageTV is scanning directories and then writing the instance uptime to sage.properties. My question is what time out do you have set? Windows should reset the timers based on this file write.

The question is why does this not occur on some peoples systems?

Even writing to the RAM Disk every 5 minutes should stop the system from suspending or hibermating.

According to MSDN "As long as the system determines that there is application activity, it will not put the system or any devices into the sleeping state. The system can detect certain activities, such as user input or network communications."

Aside from SageTV being corrected so that it can be set to write the instance up time at a specified time that is more realistic like 30 minutes. It would be nice if SageTV actually used file changed events instead of polling the library directories in the brute force method it uses.

Oh well at least for now thanks to nielms batch files and SageWake I can have the hard drive spin down and also manually Hibernate or Suspend and know it will wake up for recordings. Much quieter and should at least save me some money during the day and at night.

Thanks for all your help
John

[mwhitlock]

Actually, hard drive activity does not reset the suspend/hibernation timers. From the MSDN documentation of the SetThreadExecutionState function:

Activities that are automatically detected include local keyboard or mouse input, server activity, and changing window focus. Activities that are not automatically detected include disk or CPU activity and video display.

Bottom line is that disk/file activity does not prevent the system from hibernating. Network file sharing does, as do certain applications.

I have my power settings as follows:
Monitor off: 5 minutes
Hard drives off: 10 minutes
Standby: 2 hours
Hibernate: never

My system is fickle about suspending. Sometimes I'll come home to find it sleeping, and sometimes it refuses to go to sleep. I can't make heads or tails of it. At least I know that if it does decide to sleep, SageWake will make sure I don't miss any recordings.

[jptaz]

Hmmm...I didn't read that article.

From what I can tell the only thing that can reset the idle timers is the SetThreadExecutionState function, other than network or user input. It seems odd that an application or service would set this, but then not Catch the WM_POWERBROADCAST and deny the request to sleep or hibernate.

Oh well Like you said as long as when the system does decide to standby or hibernate it is nice to know things will get recorded. I am just happy that with the RAM disk my drives can shut off which should save some money and be quieter. Seven 7200RPM Hard drives make a lot of noise and eat a lot of power...sounds like a jet taking off all seven start powering up.

[falchulk]

It depends on your system. My m10000 has settings in cmos for monitoring HD , serial and VGA activity. If these are turned on, IT WILL reset the PM timer.

[Alex0230]

Running Sage from a RamDisk definitely worked in getting my system to standby/hibernate when sage is in sleep mode. SageWake kicked butt in getting it back up in order to record the shows I would otherwise miss. It took a bit of figuring out to finally get it to work right, nielm has a some documentation on it here. I had to change some paths in my sage.properties file to get it to work right....

I'd like to write a program that does this:

On system startup: Copy local sagetv program to ramdisk and run (convert paths to ramdisk in sage.properties file first if needed) Also run sagewake... --restart ramdisk\sagetv.exe

While Sage is NOT sleeping: make periodic backups of the ramdisk to the local hard drive. This is so I can write to the hard drive while sage is writing to the hard drive.

But if what you're saying is that hard disk activity doesn't affect standby/hibernate, then why would running from a ram disk allows my system to standby/hibernate? Could is just be coincidence that because my standby and hibernate times are so low 3/5 minutes...that I'm catch periods of time where Sage isn't doing anything to keep the system up? I'll adjust the times and see what happens....

[jptaz]

Ok I think I figured out why SageTV won't let my system sleep.

I don't know if file activity on my system resets the PM timer as Falchulk's motherboard does ( no setting in the BIOS ). But I did figure out why I concluded that the file activity was causing the idle timers to reset.

Every 5 Minutes when SageTV is checking the library and updating the instance up time, when remote encoders are in use it also verifies that they are still connected and ready to record.

Since I am using all remote encoders ( 4 total, one actually on another PC ), Sage Causes network activity which according to the MSDN documentation will reset the timers.

I did a test and if I set the Hibernate to 3 Minutes then it will always hibernate without a problem and restore properly. I have done this numerous times now without problem. That being said a Hibernate or Standby time of 3 Minutes is way too low so at this point it looks like my choices are to live with just having the hard drives or try to get the 4th Network encoder in the main system. Which means I need to get a USB to Serial adapter for my last IR Blaster.

Oh well. At least I know the cause of my problems.

John

[falchulk]

Why is it too low? I have my shuttle set at 1 inute and I can do everything I need to without a hitch. I have Girder send monitor wakeup commands with every remote key pushed. When yu are using the keyboard/mouse the time does not start. You can start downlods from he internet and the system will not sleep. What are you doing that the system needs to sit idle that long? S3 returns in 4 seconds. If you give examples, I may be able to help with workarounds. I have had s3 working on my system with sage since september.

[mwhitlock]

PHP Code:

<Event time="3/21/2004 10:30:05 AM">
  <NextRecording start="3/21/2004 12:30:00 PM" stop="3/21/2004 1:00:00 PM"
    manual="false" favorite="false">King of the Hill</NextRecording> 
  <SetWakeUp time="3/21/2004 12:29:00 PM" /> 
  <SetAllowSleep allow="true" /> 
</Event>
<Event time="3/21/2004 11:30:10 AM">
  <SystemSuspendEvent /> 
</Event>
<Event time="3/21/2004 12:29:01 PM">
  <SetAllowSleep allow="false" /> 
</Event>
<Event time="3/21/2004 12:29:08 PM">
  <SystemResumeEvent /> 
</Event>
<Event time="3/21/2004 1:00:05 PM">
  <NextRecording start="3/21/2004 5:30:00 PM" stop="3/21/2004 6:00:00 PM"
    manual="false" favorite="true">Seinfeld</NextRecording> 
  <SetWakeUp time="3/21/2004 5:29:00 PM" /> 
  <SetAllowSleep allow="true" /> 
</Event>
<Event time="3/21/2004 5:28:59 PM">
  <SetAllowSleep allow="false" /> 
</Event> 


Sorry for the long quote, but it's necessary to illustrate my point.
[list=1][*]At 10:30 AM, my system had just finished recording a show. SageWake saw that the next show to record was at 12:30 PM, so it set a wakeup event and enabled the system to sleep.[*]I had my auto suspend timeout set to 1 hour, so as expected, the system went to sleep at approximately 11:30 AM.[*]The system resumed at 12:29 PM in time to begin recording King of the Hill.[*]King of the Hill finished recording at 1:00 PM. SageWake saw that the next show was at 5:30 PM, so it again set a wakeup event and allowed the system to sleep.[*]Here's the problem: My system should have gone into standby at 2:00 PM, but it did not.[/list=1]It seems that the system will only do one suspend/resume cycle by itself. Some user interaction is necessary to actually reset the suspend timer to allow it to fire again. Anyone have any ideas/thoughts on this? Is anyone experiencing the same problem?

[falchulk]

Mine works correctly but I am still using jmans utility.

[jptaz]

Originally posted by falchulk
Why is it too low? I have my shuttle set at 1 inute and I can do everything I need to without a hitch. I have Girder send monitor wakeup commands with every remote key pushed. When yu are using the keyboard/mouse the time does not start. You can start downlods from he internet and the system will not sleep. What are you doing that the system needs to sit idle that long? S3 returns in 4 seconds. If you give examples, I may be able to help with workarounds. I have had s3 working on my system with sage since september.

The problem is that SageTV and 3 instances of SageRecorder need to be terminated and then restarted everytime I resume. So I don't want the System to go asleep if I walk away from the TV for a few minutes as the resume will not take 4 seconds, but more like 30 seconds plus for SageTV to really be ready to use. Also the other problem is that I am using SageTVClient. If sleep is set so low the regular checks for SageTV Server still being present will cause a repeating loop of the system suspending and then resuming when SageTVClient attempts to recconect. So for me to be sure that the SageTVClient has exited, which if Suspend/Hibernate worked would be anytime I am done watching TV for an extended period of time, my suspend time would need to at the very min 10 minutes, but more preferably 30 minutes. And the last issue is that SageTV PC is my primary system that I use for work/web surfing/etc so if it went to sleep every minute I would be constantly waking it back up after talking on the phone for a minute or looking for a document in my file cabinet.

[falchulk]

If yo use s3, no processes are terminated and restarted. What advantage do yuo get from bibernate? Durning s3 the only thing consuming powe is the ram.

[mwhitlock]

I agree. If you can use S3 (suspend-to-RAM), what's the point in using hibernation (S4, suspend-to-disk)? S4 takes a lot more time to come back up from.