How do you keep SageTV stable?

[Ryokurin]

Back when I ran XP I rebooted the computer weekly as I always would eventually get slow performance or the system would get to a point where it wouldn't play back video anymore (I would get a generic can't connect to filter error or a swapfile error.) Hasn't happened at all when I went to Vista. In retrospect, I believe that my XP problem was caused by a slowly dieing mainboard.

The machine is dedicated. The only thing it does is sage, file server, torrents and a occasional encoding of HD, as for the moment its the fastest PC I have. zero issues. Basically the only time its rebooted is patch tuesday, or when new drivers are available. Its all common sense items. Don't use the machine for pleasure surfing, make sure its cool, leave windows as stock as possible (don't do the things in tweak guides. It hurts reliability in the long run) and its good.

[Polypro]

I've been with Sage since 2004. In Jan of 20007 I followed best practices and chose the hardware in my sig. My box is the "server in the living room" model...I surf and game on it as well. I use WHS for all import directories except TV (TV is local). I love the stock STV and use about 6 STVi plug-ins/imports/add-ons. The thing just runs...and runs...

P

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by freedml

YMMV (your mileage may vary) is ok for things like storage and extra horsepower in the cpu, but the 'player' portion of SageTV should work smoothly as long as the minimum system requirements are met, and I think there is plenty of evidence that it doesn't.

Never had a problem with my Sage playing back videos....

First box I ever used was a Celeron 766mhz with an FX5200 PCI vid card and an 80GB hard drive w/ 384mb of Ram. I had two tuners and never had a problem. Probably restated it every few weeks. This was back in the Sage 2.0 Days.

After that took a crap, I went sever only. First with a couple of MVP's and 2 full clients (for HD) and then all MVP's with a beefier server and now today to what I have: 1 HD200, 2 HD100's, and 3 MVP's. No studder ever. Everything just works. I rarely if ever have to restart my extenders (unless I do a firmware update or if I take my Sage server down). I have a solid GB ethernet backbone to my network (meaning my server and my desktops are on GB ports) and all of my clients are on 100mb ports since they only run that fast anyway. No issues whatsoever.

Unfortunately the true "minimum" requirements really is a falsehood in a lot of ways, because everyone's minimum requirements can be drastically different.

Personally I think your problem is your network at this point. If you are still having problems after upgrading to 6.5 and moving to the most recent Beta of the HD200's. Mine are rock solid even for Blu-Ray playback which is a very taxing process for both the network and the HD200.

[bmac.to]

I have a reasonably stable system and I have read through this thread and there is a biggie that has been ignored - power save modes. Anytime I run into any issues, the first thing I do is turn off all power save modes and then see if it still occurs.

I believe I am in the minority in this forum as I turn on as many power saving things I can (Vista has quite a few options). As well, the computer goes into sleep mode after 2 minutes of idle time (from 140W to 7W during sleep). I believe almost all of my instability is due to the sleeping/waking cycles - upon wakeup, things are generally okay or sometimes not. I have it down to a reasonable level of stability where the computer needs to be restarted every 4-5 days which I can live with (burning 140W even when not watching TV I cannot live with).
________
Range rover

[wayner]

Originally Posted by bmac.to

I have it down to a reasonable level of stability where the computer needs to be restarted every 4-5 days which I can live with (burning 140W even when not watching TV I cannot live with).

Let's assume that your computer would be sleeping for 20 hours a day - for many of us it would be a lot less. 20*133/1000 = 2.66kWh. In a month that is 79.8 kWh. According to this page (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri...able5_6_a.html) the average cost of electricity in the US was $0.1147 / kWh in Nov08. Therefore the cost of leaving your PC on all of the time is about $9.15/month or less if your system is active for more than 4 hours per day. Is less system stability worth $9.15/month? I have well over $2000 in hardware on my server and pay close to $80/month in cable fees.

[johnnytyler]

This is how I reboot my server from the extender (Note I use XP SP3 from my server OS and with SageMC not the default STV)

Step 1: Create a RESTART.BAT file on the desktop
--Open Notepad
--type in "shutdown -r -f -t 5" (without quotes)
-r means reboot
-f means force in all aspects
-t time (I have set mine to 5 sec, you can set it to whatever
you like)
--save file as RESTART.BAT

Step 2 Test the Restart.Bat file on your desktop, when you click on the bat
file your computer should close in 5 seconds and restart, make sure that it works, if not redo step 1

Step 3 Go into SageMC Settings
--Go To External Programs
--Go To Exit Commands and browse until you get to RESTART.BAT
and click on that.
Mine is set as C:\Documents and Settings\Media
Center\Desktop\Restart

Step 4 Now when you see the X on the main screen of SageMC you should
see another option of Custom Exit.
This will allow you to exit Sage, close Sage, and then 5 sec later
reboot your server.

Step 5 Now in SageMC
--Go To Settings
--Go To Detailed Settings
--Go To Advanced
--Go to Load At Windows Startup
--Click on Load to System Tray (there are other options)

The Above will reboot your server and then you can re-start the extender by the power button on the remote control.

This is OPTIONAL (for me this starts dvbdream and reboots the extenders)


Step 6 Create another bat file (I called this restart dvbdream.bat) using
notepad.

Add the following...

PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 6000 >NUL
call "C:\Program Files\dvbdream\dreamstart.exe" /renderless=on /minimized
PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 1000 >NUL
"C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\sageextctrl.exe" 192.168.1.123 reboot
PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 1000 >NUL
"C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\sageextctrl.exe" 192.168.1.122 reboot


The first line is a pause in the script approx 6 sec, this allows my computer to fully boot up before executing the script

The second line starts dvbdream minimized and renerless

The third and 5th line are pause scripts of approx one second to allow the computer to execute the commands

The 4th and 6th line executes the program to reboot my extenders.
I got Sageextcrl from Sage Download, then placed that in my SageTV folder and set up my extenders to a static IP adddres and pointed the program to each extender as above.

Step 7: Go to your Start Menu
Go to your startup folder
Create a shortcut to your restart DVBdream.bat file (by dragging the
file to the startup folder)


Voila, I now have the capability of rebooting my server, closing sage, and restarting sage, Dvbdream, and my extenders by one remote control click. This resolves 100% of my problems when I need it to. Keep in mind, I use this command, approx once every two weeks with moderate Sage use (2-3 hrs daily). If you are using this more often than you have something wrong with your setup and need to explore the problem. One final note, my server finishes rebooting, rebooting the extenders and loading all the software in approx 3 min. I thus dont touch the extender for that amount of time. If after 3 minutes my extender has not turned on I simply turn it on with the remote control. You may have to time how long it takes for your setup to do all the specified tasks.

[TorontoSage]

Thank you very much for going to the trouble of posting all of that detail. Much appreciated.

[alphonsus]

I have a Shuttle SN68G2, Server 2003 SP2, Sage 5.something and a Hauppauge 350-PVR

I used to have many problems until I discovered Microsoft's Virtual Server product. Now the server itself runs Exchange and SageTV and Active Directory. Nothing else. Websites, sharepoint and everything else run on virtual machines inside it. Far fewer crashes than I used to have.

Moral here is that if you do many things with your machine, use virtual ones. Keeps everything clean.


By the way,

Every now and again I get a lockup of the PVR. It happens if I try playing back a recording, changing my mind, swapping to another recording or jumping through a recording too many times in quick succession. HW output goes orange and a power-cycle (cold reboot) is often needed to bring everything back. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

[mayamaniac]

If you use the the PVR-350 for TV output, you have the lockups. It is a mystery to why it locks up since hauppauge never acknowledges it, but most likely due to bad hardware design. Best solution is to get the MVP Extender, or better yet the HD200.

[Taddeusz]

My only problem has been with my HD-PVR and the newer drivers that added AC3 support. Previously, I'd run my HD-PVR for a couple months on the 1.0b drivers without issue, without ever needing to power cycle it. The newer drivers only ever gave me problems. I've now gone back to the old 1.0b drivers in hopes that it will run continuously without issue again.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

My only problem has been with my HD-PVR and the newer drivers that added AC3 support. Previously, I'd run my HD-PVR for a couple months on the 1.0b drivers without issue, without ever needing to power cycle it. The newer drivers only ever gave me problems. I've now gone back to the old 1.0b drivers in hopes that it will run continuously without issue again.

Just my $0.02 - I am running newer HD-PVR drivers I think it is 1.05 (or whatever was available on the Hauppauge web site at Jan 1, 2009) on 2 HD-PVRs and I have no stability issues. Note that I am only using analog audio right now. Perhaps it is not the driver when using analog but the driver in conjunction with the actual use of the spdif audio connection.

I plan to switch one of my HD-PVRs to spdif in the near future to see how things go.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by wayner

Just my $0.02 - I am running newer HD-PVR drivers I think it is 1.05 (or whatever was available on the Hauppauge web site at Jan 1, 2009) on 2 HD-PVRs and I have no stability issues. Note that I am only using analog audio right now. Perhaps it is not the driver when using analog but the driver in conjunction with the actual use of the spdif audio connection.

I plan to switch one of my HD-PVRs to spdif in the near future to see how things go.

I've always used SPDIF audio. My STB is set to output PCM audio. In my experience it is as stable as what I've heard about the analog audio.

[stanger89]

And my HD PVR has been great with the (next to) Latest WHQL drivers, with it being fed AC3 from my Dish STB. I do have delay_to_wait_after_tuning=4000 which eliminated any issues I had.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by stanger89

And my HD PVR has been great with the (next to) Latest WHQL drivers, with it being fed AC3 from my Dish STB. I do have delay_to_wait_after_tuning=4000 which eliminated any issues I had.

I have mine set to 7000ms as it can take up to that long for the channel to change and for the HD-PVR to lock onto the signal. I think what's happening is that the signal from my cable company either isn't clean or the audio has breaks in it during ads and this sometimes causes problems with the HD-PVR. Forcing the STB to decode the AC3 to PCM fixes the issue.

I've been messing around with the driver too much lately. I need to wait a couple weeks for solid results.

[keodark]

I'm using Sage with an HDHomeRun on a brand new self-built HTPC machine (AMD 5050e, Gigabyte mATX mb, Antec NSK2480 case, ati radeon hd 4670) running Windows XP. I'm recording OTA Broadcasts (ATSC) only.

Now, it's very possible that my stability issues are caused by the fact that I slipstreamed my copy of Windows XP with nlite and removed some windows garbage while I was at it. I've also installed (and uninstalled) a load of drivers and other PVRs (tried several before I settled on Sage).

I know for certain that leaving any of the other PVRs running will cause errors in Sage.

This is a single-seat installation - no extenders or other clients. I did not install any plugins or customizations to Sage.

However, I have noticed many freeze-ups, one crash, and several glitchy UI behaviors in Sage while I've been setting it up. Once in awhile it will give me an error that there is no Signal on a channel from the HDHR, and then the program guide will go blank (HDHR plays the channels fine in VLC at this point). Restarting Sage will clear it up... I've also had it refuse to enter menus (clicks on the button do nothing, but navigating elsewhere works). This inevitably leads to further strangeness and eventually a freeze. Sometimes if I minimize the app from fullscreen, open another program, and then restore Sage, it will come up fullscreen black and unresponsive.

Normally I'd just shrug and restart the app (this is Windows, after all), but if I'm going to be relying on this software to record shows, and if I'm going to end up needing to restart the app mid-record and lose a show, that becomes unacceptable. Plus, my wife will kill me if it loses an American Idol.

Just my experience so far. I'm going to do a clean install without nlite and see if the stability improves.

[Opus4]

keodark: you could always post a debug log in a new topic; maybe it would have a hint at what is happening if it continues.

- Andy

[bmac.to]

Originally Posted by wayner

Therefore the cost of leaving your PC on all of the time is about $9.15/month or less if your system is active for more than 4 hours per day. Is less system stability worth $9.15/month? I have well over $2000 in hardware on my server and pay close to $80/month in cable fees.

You are right - $9 a month doesnt sound like much when you are spending $80 a month on cable. I do not have cable and rely on OTA only. However, after a lot of work, I have my Sage box at the point where it requires a reboot every 4-5 days due to the sleep mode. This has hit the acceptable point amongst my family. However, this is a subjective question - energy vs hassle which has no right answer.
________
VOYEUR TEEN

[vogelap]

Originally Posted by bmac.to

However, after a lot of work, I have my Sage box at the point where it requires a reboot every 4-5 days due to the sleep mode. This has hit the acceptable point amongst my family.

Seriously? My Beyond TV box runs and runs and runs without a reboot. I generally reboot only when mandated by OS updates.

Why does SageTV require reboots with that frequency?

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by vogelap

Seriously? My Beyond TV box runs and runs and runs without a reboot. I generally reboot only when mandated by OS updates.

Why does SageTV require reboots with that frequency?

Sage doesn't. Sounds like he has a problem with his computer coming in and out of sleep. I never put my box to sleep and I haven't needed a restart since I last swapped out some hardware (month ago? maybe more?).

[vogelap]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Sage doesn't. Sounds like he has a problem with his computer coming in and out of sleep. I never put my box to sleep and I haven't needed a restart since I last swapped out some hardware (month ago? maybe more?).

That's a relief... I never "sleep" my PVR... It is awake and running all the time. I hope my experience with Sage, once I get fully going with it, mimics yours.