OpenDCT issue with new v9 install

[crarbo1]

I just installed a clean install of OpenDCT (latest beta) as well as a clean instal of SageTV v9. Disclaimer: This is the first time I have used OpenDCT, I used SageDCT with SageTV v7.

I have two Ceton InfiniTV 4 PCIe cards installed on my server and all was well with my v7 install with SageDCT. However, when I installed v9 with OpenDCT, only the 4 tuners on one card is working, the other is seen by SageTV and I configured the sources for the 2nd card but it is not able to tune and I don't know why.
For the example below, I have all 4 tuners setup on the card that is tuning right and just the first tuner setup on the card that is not tuning at all. Below is what it say in the sources menu:
Nothing on DCT-Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-32-8f) Tuner 1 on 127.0.0.1:9000
Nothing on DCT-Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-32-8f) Tuner 2 on 127.0.0.1:9000
Nothing on DCT-Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-32-8f) Tuner 3 on 127.0.0.1:9000
Nothing on DCT-Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-32-8f) Tuner 4 on 127.0.0.1:9000
Nothing on DCT-Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-2f-9c) Tuner 1 on 127.0.0.1:9000
Does that look right? You can see the on the last source "Tuner 1" on the 2nd card, has the same IP address as "Tuner 1" on the 1st card. Is that the problem?
Also, I checked the Ceton Diagnostics Tool on my server and it tunes all 4 tuners on both cards, so I know it is working right. I'm sure it is something simple, but I need to get this figured out soon.

Thanks,
Chuck

[jusjoken]

Just a guess but do you just need to scroll down on the screen to see the others?

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by jusjoken

Just a guess but do you just need to scroll down on the screen to see the others?

jusjoken,
I can see all 8 tuners (4 on each card) when I have them added. That is not the issue. What I showed in the first post was me adding all 4 tuners on the one card that is recording/tuning correctly and only 1 added tuner on the other card that is not recording/tuning correctly. What is shown is the added 5 tuners that I setup the same way in SageTV v9. They are all using the same guide data. If I try to preview the same channel on each of the 5 added tuners, doesn't matter what channel, the 4 tuners on the one card is showing the video fine on my HD300 and the 5 tuner on the other card is not showing the video at all. If I set up to record 5 channels that are airing at the same time to test to see if all 5 tuners are recording correctly, the 4 tuners on the same card are recording correctly but the 5th tuner on the second card is not and throwing a Halt detected in recording error.
This never happened when using SageDCT but I want to convert over to the support OpenDCT now.

I hope that help explain things better.

Thanks for replying,
Chuck

[EnterNoEscape]

Are they both on the last beta firmware?

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Are they both on the last beta firmware?

Yes they are. Thanks for checking in on this issue.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by crarbo1

Yes they are. Thanks for checking in on this issue.

Try tuning the one that doesn't tune for you and post the log. opendct.log will be under C:\ProgramData\OpenDCT\logs.

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Try tuning the one that doesn't tune for you and post the log. opendct.log will be under C:\ProgramData\OpenDCT\logs.

Should I delete the log first so it is clean? Also, I am currently recording something, can I do this while it is recording or would that mess things up?

Thanks,
Chuck

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by crarbo1

Should I delete the log first so it is clean? Also, I am currently recording something, can I do this while it is recording or would that mess things up?

Thanks,
Chuck

You won't be able to delete the log file while OpenDCT is running. If you restart OpenDCT, it will automatically start a new log file (and pretty much give you the desired effect), but your in progress recording will restart with a warning in SageTV. You will also be missing somewhere around a minute of the show.

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

You won't be able to delete the log file while OpenDCT is running. If you restart OpenDCT, it will automatically start a new log file (and pretty much give you the desired effect), but your in progress recording will restart with a warning in SageTV. You will also be missing somewhere around a minute of the show.

Thanks.

Attached is the log file.
I had two recordings already in progress on the first/good card.
I then started two more recordings on the first/good card.
I then setup tuner 1 on the second/questionable card via SageTV using the same channel lineup as the first card.
I then started a 5th recording and it appeared to work but after a few minutes it gives me the Halt detected error.
I did this about 6:07PM EST (18:07 in the logs)
Let me know if you need anything else from me.

Thanks again for your help,
Chuck

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by crarbo1

Thanks.

Attached is the log file.
I had two recordings already in progress on the first/good card.
I then started two more recordings on the first/good card.
I then setup tuner 1 on the second/questionable card via SageTV using the same channel lineup as the first card.
I then started a 5th recording and it appeared to work but after a few minutes it gives me the Halt detected error.
I did this about 6:07PM EST (18:07 in the logs)
Let me know if you need anything else from me.

Thanks again for your help,
Chuck

Are these issues right after booting up? It looks like only two network adapters are found, then a few seconds later a third one suddenly shows up, but it has an APIPA address so the broadcast fails for that adapter. There is handling of this situation, but only if the network adapter existed at the time this condition was being checked for. I would presume that you would only need to restart the service for things to be working and I would need to build in more of a delay at startup to account for missing adapters.

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Are these issues right after booting up? It looks like only two network adapters are found, then a few seconds later a third one suddenly shows up, but it has an APIPA address so the broadcast fails for that adapter. There is handling of this situation, but only if the network adapter existed at the time this condition was being checked for. I would presume that you would only need to restart the service for things to be working and I would need to build in more of a delay at startup to account for missing adapters.

No, the test I just ran was after the system was set up and left up and running most of the day. I'm sure you are aware of this, but the Ceton InfiniTV 4 PCIe cards have 4 tuners each and I have 2 cards for a total of 8 tuners. One card is working for me for all 4 tuners but the other card doesn't work for any. This did work when I had SageTV v7 and SageDCT. Could the setup of OpenDCT I did have issues and that is what is causing the problems? I don't know if I let it run long enough before I hit the used Ctrl C to exit it. However, I do see all 8 tuners available to add as video sources in SageTV v9.

I will reboot the server now and let you know if that helped or not.

Thanks,
Chuck

[crarbo1]

I have rebooted my server and what happened was interesting. Keep in mind, I only had the 4 tuners that worked, the 00-80-32-8f card, configured in SageTV when I rebooted because I didn't want SageTV to record using the 00-80-2f-9c card which didn't work.

I rebooted the server and checked the Ceton Diagnostics tool to make sure all both cards worked and tuned correctly. They did as always.

I checked to make sure that the SageTV OpenDCT & SageTV services were running, they were.

I then turned on my HD300 and went to add the 1st tuner from the card that doesn't work right (00-80-2f-9c). I added it and then checked a channel via the preview feature and to my surprise, it tuned and I could see and hear the channel. So, I added the remaining 3 tuners on the 00-80-2f-9c card and they all tuned a channel in the preview feature and they all worked.

I then set up 8 recordings to see if they would all work at the same time and they did, no errors and they recorded the video perfectly on all 8 tuners.

So, I wanted to be certain that it would be fine after another reboot after they were set up. So, I rebooted the server once again.

I waited about the same amount of time after the reboot before doing anything and checked the Ceton Diagnostics tool again to make sure the cards were tuning fine there and they were.

I checked the services again and everything was running the same as before.

I then started up the HD300 again and went to the guide and selected 8 shows to record.

Unfortunately, the issue is now back where the same card, 00-80-2f-9c, is not working for all 4 tuners but the other card, which has always worked fine, is still working fine.

I have attached another log file for you to review and I hope all of this information may help you in solving my issue.

One thing I wanted to ask about how the SageTV OpenDCT service should be. Each service has a "Log On As" column and most say "Local Service". The SageTV service however says ".\sagetvserver", which is the username of my SageTV server. I think I read where that is correct for the SageTV service. On the other hand, the SageTV OpenDCT service is using the "Local System" like most other services. Is that correct or should it be using the same log on as the SageTV service?

Thanks for all of your help,
Chuck

[EnterNoEscape]

What I'm basically saying is that one of the InfiniTV 4 cards is taking significantly longer than the other one to initialize and since each card is its own network interface, OpenDCT doesn't know that it needs to wait for even more adapters. I'm a little surprised that restarting the service didn't help any because that would kind of imply that the interface was still down even after what was likely minutes. I'll have to write some code to specifically handle your situation. The InfiniTV 4 cards are actually really slow and this doesn't really surprise me too much. I think you're the first person to have more than 1 using this software.

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

What I'm basically saying is that one of the InfiniTV 4 cards is taking significantly longer than the other one to initialize and since each card is its own network interface, OpenDCT doesn't know that it needs to wait for even more adapters. I'm a little surprised that restarting the service didn't help any because that would kind of imply that the interface was still down even after what was likely minutes. I'll have to write some code to specifically handle your situation. The InfiniTV 4 cards are actually really slow and this doesn't really surprise me too much. I think you're the first person to have more than 1 using this software.

Thank you for your explanation. It makes more sense to me know. I'm not rushing you by any means, but do you have any idea when you may have a potential fix? Fortunately, I think 4 tuners will be fine for me for the foreseeable future as college football is now basically over until next season. College football Saturdays were really the only reason I needed/wanted more than 4 tuners.

Thanks for your help,
Chuck

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by crarbo1

Thank you for your explanation. It makes more sense to me know. I'm not rushing you by any means, but do you have any idea when you may have a potential fix? Fortunately, I think 4 tuners will be fine for me for the foreseeable future as college football is now basically over until next season. College football Saturdays were really the only reason I needed/wanted more than 4 tuners.

Thanks for your help,
Chuck

I was planning on an RC today, but I'll want to test the changes I made for your situation to weed out unintended side-effects before I do that. Maybe I'll still get one out today, but if something strange crops up, it could be as late as Friday.

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I was planning on an RC today, but I'll want to test the changes I made for your situation to weed out unintended side-effects before I do that. Maybe I'll still get one out today, but if something strange crops up, it could be as late as Friday.

Sounds good to me. I don't have any recording issues with just 4 tuners for the next 13 days, so Friday would be fine.

Thanks again for checking into this for me,
Chuck

[KryptoNyte]

I had the same problem with an Infinitv4 and Infinitv6 (both pcie) installed in my Sage system. One of them would always take up to 5 minutes to be recognized after a reboot. 6 tuners was plenty for me, so I pulled the 4 tuner card for now.

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

I had the same problem with an Infinitv4 and Infinitv6 (both pcie) installed in my Sage system. One of them would always take up to 5 minutes to be recognized after a reboot. 6 tuners was plenty for me, so I pulled the 4 tuner card for now.

KryptoNyte,
Thanks for your input. I hope that EnterNoEscape can fix this issue.

However, to be clear, are you saying you had an Infinitv4 and Infinitv6 that would do this and you had a 2nd Infinitv6 that you use now?

Or are you saying you just took the Infinitv4 out of your computer and the Infinitv6 consistently works now? If this is the case, did the Infinitv6 not work consistently with the Infinitv4 installed or was the it the other way around?

Just trying to see what exactly is going on. Not that it would help in my case since I have two infinitv4's, but just curious.

Thanks,
Chuck

[KryptoNyte]

I had (1) Infinitv4 originally installed in the computer. I then added/installed (1) Infinitv6. With the (2) pcie cards installed in the system, I started to realize that SageTV wasn't finding all the tuners. Upon further inspection by starting the Ceton diagnostics right after the machine booted, the Ceton software would recognize the 4 right away, but would take an additional few minutes to recognize the 6. I did try to put OpenDCT and SageTV on a delayed startup in Win 7, but I still found the Ceton software was having trouble with both pcie cards installed at the same time.

I pulled the 4 out of the machine and the 6 was recognized quickly on bootup, so I left the 4 out of the system entirely for now, and I use the 6 only.

[KryptoNyte]

I am considering grabbing a couple HDHR Prime devices to use in place of the Ceton device(s) as they just seem to be more reliable, and the SiliconDust devices appear to be better supported than Ceton devices. We're not really sure if Ceton is still surviving right now after their Echo fiasco.