Server Locks up during recordings

[Sector7g]

I am having some problems with sagetv and was hoping to get some advice on how to fix it.

The program locks up and displays it is recording one of my favorites I have.

I didnt always have this problem, It seem to have started about the time I went from 6.5.9 to to 6.6.1 but I cannot be sure.

It might have also happened when I added a couple more favorites to record.

I have tried upgrading to 6..6.2 and upgrading the stv. I use comskip and thats the only thing ive added.

I stop the service which then mentions it timed out.

Start the service (which takes forever)

wait for a bit then I can start using normally


I dont halt on every recording just once a day at least ( I have 3 shows that record every day, 2 other set as 1st runs so they are currently not being recorded, and 2 set as a limit that is currently reached, there are no conflicts with time)

I have 200+ gigs of space available

These are the error messages I receive, I dont get the diskspace all the time, just occasionally.


Error - Capture Device Failure while Starting Recording

The capture device input TOSHIBA USB2 TV Tuner MPEG TV Tuner had a failure while trying to start the recording of "Departures" on OLCC on physical channel 46 at Fri 8/14 10:00

Warning - Halt Detected in Recording

The device input "TOSHIBA USB2 TV Tuner MPEG Encoder TV Tuner" stopped producing data while recording "Departures" on OLCC on physical channel 46. SageTV will try to reset the device. This may be caused by a channel that is no longer available. (10:01)

Warning - Diskspace Insufficient for Recording

Your system may be running low on diskspace. SageTV will continue to record. If this message repeats you should check to make sure you are not completely out of diskspace. (10:23)

The diskspace one seems odd as it says it is recording at 10:23 but the other errors mention it halted @ 10:01

The recording does not appear in my recordings folder.

Suggestions??

[Sector7g]

Some additional info.

As I finished doing the restart of the service, I had a favorite scheduled to record which then proceeded to do so without error. the next favorite was due to record right after the 1st one, did not record, froze SageTV and did not produce any error messages.

Upon trying to watch live TV I received the spinning arrow of unending death.

Task Manager to end program, and the icon was listed as Java for SageTV when the dialog box appeared to inform me the program was not responding.

[robogeek]

Sounds like SageTV is having a problem with your Toshiba USB2 TV tuner. Are the chipset and USB drivers for your motherboard and the driver for the Toshiba USB2 TV tuner up-to-date? Is there a BIOS update for your motherboard that addresses any chipset or USB issues? You should also enable debug logging for SageTV in the Setup->Detailed Setup->Advanced menu. This might help determine whether it's a SageTV bug or a misconfiguration problem.

[Sector7g]

Still having this issue.

It seems to have something to do with the service or usb.

I can be using an extender and get the warning that there was a problem starting the recording because of the tuner not starting up correctly, but it will record after a bit of time for the tuner to kick in.

I have no narrowed down when it happens, but it will eventually lock up, not just sage but ALL usb on the server. Mouse and keyboard still work but the tuner and printer will stop working, and any new usb device you plug in will not be recognized.

A restart of the sage service will clear the usb issue and reset the server and all is well until it happens again.

Just get an internal tuner ????

Help please

Edit: bios and all driver are up to date.

[Fuzzy]

Sounds like a USB problem... best optoin for troubleshooting further might be to go pick up a $15 USB card and try that.

[Sector7g]

I have a few usb controllers in my device manger so I decided to move the usb tuner to the one next to my usb keyboard/mouse. (front panel on my cm stacker 830) It seems to have helped with the lockups, but I still get a delay upon starting a recording. roughly 30sec - 1min, that resultsin a system message stating a failure.

Is there a setting you can adjust for compensating for this?

[Savage1701]

I'll take a couple stabs at this.

First, if you are running an Intel chipset, you have to force updates to the chipset drivers after your first install of XP. I can't speak to Vista or Win7. I forced updates to my USB controllers and ICH10R's that way. Auto updater will just start and stop and not do anything to the basic drivers. I don't know why Intel does that, unless it's to placate MB makers.

My MB has far too many USB ports on it. It's got 10 on the back plus headers inside. I can drive it nuts with too many USB tuners and other high bitrate things like external hard drives. I'm guessing those were put there for ipods and zunes and printers and intermittent, low bitrate stuff like that.

I bought a $30 PCI Express x1 USB 2.0 card. I advocate that over a PCI-based USB card since a single x1 lane could theoretically handle about 80 OTA ATSC shows. a PCI slot is 32-bit and 66MHz and usually is shared with all other PCI slots. In theory you could saturate that bus far more easily, especially if one or more of the GbE integrated NIC controllers, common on anything new, is on that bus. I've seen dual integrated NIC boards that have one on a PCI bus and one on an x1 lane as well. But I don't know your board specs - If you've got dual SLI cards you could be burdening your PSU as bad as I was. Just some thoughts.

A lot of MB's do funky things with tying those USB onboard controllers into the system as a whole, and don't do a good job of letting you know how. The sole exception I've found, though there may be others, is Supermicro. They disclose which bridge chips distribute what to what, and how many electrical lanes are allocated to the onboard stuff.

Bottom line - try to get a x1 PCI Express USB 2.0 controller card. I'm using one based on the NEC chipset. I have a 950Q and HD-PVR on it to take a load off the onboard stuff on my Asus board.

Finally, I traced a spinning wheel of death and similar recording problems you are having to inadequate power supply to my hard drives when several spun up to record at once, but if you are only going to one hard drive I doubt that's it. USB, unlike FireWire, places a burden on the CPU. Intel liked that because added to reasons to force an upgrade cycle.

[Sector7g]

ty for all your replies.

It could be a power related problem come to think of it.

system specs are:

CoolerMaster Stacker 830 & Enermax Liberty 500w
Opty 165@1800w/Artic Cooling freezer 64Pro
Asus A8N32-SLI + OCZ 5001024EBPE 2x1gig
EVGA 7900 GT 512 5x300G Maxtor Sata2 16meg 1x250 esata

usb kb/mouse (g15 g3)

usb print/scan/fax {brother mfc7220}

usb serial to ups

usb power to esata

usb toshiba tv tuner

WHS

I do plan on making another sage server moving 4 of those 300 gig sata to it and replacing them with 2 1 tb drives + replacing that usb tuner with a haupage 2250 and using that usb tuner on the new box. maybe that might help.

[Fuzzy]

There is no advantage to PCIe over PCI for just a USB controller... USB 2.0 is only 480Mbps (60Mbps) theoretical max. This is only a fraction of the 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus, with it's 1056Mbps (133MBps). There is not real reason to get one or the other, aside from what slots you have free on your MB. The brand of chipset makes more of a difference, as some DO have consistent reports of problems. (NEC seems to be the best quality USB chipset, regardless of bus type).

[Savage1701]

I think you stand a good chance of having your PSU be underpowered especially if you are spinning up multiple drives to grab multiple shows and letting SageTV use its distribution algorithm to make those decisions for you. If your video card is power hungry it's going to make it even worse. I run an ATI 3650 on my server and it's fine. No extra power connector. Even then I was in trouble due to my high hard drive count.

Try to get a single-rail +12V PSU. Corsair makes such an animal, as an example, as does PC Power & Cooling. Newegg advanced search is your friend here. Many multi-rail 12V systems are hokey, fake, arbitrarily divide power, and virtually never give you control where to send or allocate a rail. I can point you to whole threads arguing this. It's almost impossible to tell if you have a useful multi-rail system or a marketing gimmick one. If your video needs auxiliary power connectors I think you really stand a chance of being underpowered.

I stand by my recommendation of x1 as a choice for a secondary USB adapter, unless you are 100% certain your onboard NIC is using a PCI express lane and not part of your PCI bus. An x1 card ought to be able to go into an x1, x4, x8 or even x16 spare slot. Mine is in an x8 slot I will never use. I have older dual integrated NIC boards that have one on each of the PCI bus and the PCI express bus. a GbE integrated NIC on a PCI bus can chew up 50-70MB/s of that 133MB/s available bandwidth if you move large files, unless, like server boards, you have multiple PCI bridge busses. Start tossing in some PCI-based ATSC cards and you could hit headroom. I am concerned if you are saying you have a USB to ESATA drive adapter and are running an external drive. That's going to chew USB bandwidth up as well. 480Mb/s is the claim of USB 2.0. 240Mb/s is more the reality. That tends to jibe with a lot of external USB 2.0 hard drive enclosures not doing a whole lot better than 20-40MB/s. You CAN'T hit headroom on an x1-based USB card. We are talking a $15 premium over a PCI-based USB card.

I think Fuzzy is 100% dead-on accurate though - not all USB 2.0 controller chipsets are equal by a long shot. That's why I went with NEC-based chipset card by Belkin. Ditto for MB chipsets. I don't do AMD so I don't know about those. But I'll tell you this - my new Asus board is a joke with 10 USB ports on the back plus headers inside. I can foul it up real fast with a Sage setup. And I have.

Do you have a spare test-bed PSU? If so, here is how I moved four of my drives off my main system: plug in the spare psu, turn the main power switch on the back off, and jumper the green female to any black female on the atx connector. Make sure your sage system is off and unplugged. Make sure you follow ESD procedures if there is any danger of static. Use some molex or SATA extenders if necessary to get power to your hard drives but don't have the test bed PSU on until after you plug the drives in. You must almost always present a load to most PSU's or they get weird or shut off. You should also try to use a smaller PSU since you want to be loading it to around 70% capacity for max efficiency. Not that important since it's not going to be permanent. Now, you can power on your test bed/auxiliary PSU. This will spin up the hard drives. You must leave it on, and always remember to turn it on at the same time or slightly before as the main system and off at the same time or slightly after you power down the main system. Just use a power strip or Y-splitter for that. I'm assuming you don't sleep your system. This will probably screw the sleep function up if you do that while we are testing. Now you can boot your Sage server. It should see much less demand on its PSU. If your random issues disappear after a week or so, I'd recommend getting a larger PSU with a single rail.

I've done this plenty with video arrays powering dozens of hard drives and controlled by PDU's that even allow me to spin up my auxiliary-powered drives a second or so before the server comes on and power them down a second or so later. I've never run into a situation where the hard drives or main system could care less that some of the drives get their power from a different source.

Hard drives usually pull 3 Amps on a cold spinup. Most will pull 1-1.5 amps running and maybe if you get sleepers/greens they can go down to .5 amps when successful at sleeping. Just remember - you are paying a price for that, since sleeping them makes them unload their heads and spin down their platters. You can burn up a green hard drive's lifetime rated load/unload rating really fast. Perhaps one of the reasons consumer warranties continue to fall on hard drives, and most SageTV systems don't need to be sleepers anyway.

PM me if I was unclear on anything. If you don't want to waste your time with a test bed PSU you could just take a chance and step up to something in the 800 watt range and get that USB card. I can fiddle like that since my stuff is racked and easy to access and mess with, and we watch our sage on an HD200 extender upstairs. I also need to be sure as I am using a 2U server power supply and they are way more expensive per watt than consumer PSU's.