Client cannot connect?!

[Jesse]

Hello,

After having my system working fairly well for a good while I have run into a problem. First a little background info....

A week ago today we had a lightning strike in the backyard. It killed my DSL modem, all but one port on my wireless router, one port on my switch, the NIC and bios in my client pc and my kitchen tv.

We hooked up the spare dsl modem and started troubleshooting. We replaced the router with a new Linksys 54G and the network is working fine. I reset the bios in the client machine (which was connected to a very nice panamax surge protector) and replaced the nic. It is now working great. Dodged a bullet here.

When I fired up sage on the client machine the weirdness began. I have around 500 gig of recordings. It would only see about a dozen of them. The DVD's all showed up fine though. I tried switching from sagemce16x9 to the standard .stv. Bam, there are all the recordings. I figured that my mce16x9 install somehow (??) got hosed. I backed up the entire sagetv folder and reinstalled the client. Now the client will not find the server at all. I tried the name of the server (how I have always done it) and the IP. I made sure all the appropriate ports were open. I killed the firewall on both machines. I verified that the server was set to connect to clients as well as restarting the sage server pc a few times. No go. I moved my backup folder in. It will sometimes come up but show no guide, no recordings, no dvd's, no nothing.... Other times it will just say that the connection to the server has been lost and that it is trying to re-connect.

I have reinstalled sage client and the supplied version of java numerous times with no change in results. On uninstall I deleted the sagetv folder and everything I could find in the registry, but it still never asks for a license on reinstall. Obviously the uninstaller is not getting it all. I tried an uninstall program I have seen recommended here and it did find some more registry entries than I did, but it still did not ask for a license when I reinstalled.

Any chance it has something to do with the new router and/or the client hanging onto the old licensing?

BTW, server and client are both on the most current version of sage.

Help!

TIA

Jesse

[emok]

I'm not familiar with client licensing, but I don't believe it should cause problems like the ones you're having.

From the inconsistent results you're getting, it sounds to me like something is screwy with your network.

How are you validating your network when you say the network is fine?

Are both client/server hooked to the router wired?

Can you get consistent pings between client/server?

E

[Jesse]

Hi E,

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, both client and server are hardwired to the switch. Both can access the internet. From the client I can see all the shared files on the server. I have not tried pinging.

I am by no means a network whiz. What would you suggest?

Thanks again,

Jesse

[emok]

Hi Jesse,

I'm not exactly a whiz, either, but I play around with the stuff a lot.

I'd start with the lowest level possible to try to start removing variables.

It sounds like you've done some of it already (browsing and trying to access files), but I don't think that's enough to determine the stability of your network.

A simple thing I would try is just to see if I get consistent ping times with no dropped packets. From the client command line ("ping <server> -t"). Just let that go for a minute or so. The response times should be ~1ms on a wired network and you shouldn't have any "Request timed out." messages. If you get past that, then the network is probably ok and then you move on to figuring out any software level issues that may be causing these problems.

If the ping test fails, then there's something wrong from the os layer down. (drivers/physical network card, cables, router/switch).

[Jesse]

Hi E,

Roger. I will ping it tonight and report back.

Thanks again.

Jesse

[mike1961]

Start by checking to see if you are able to view the files "outside" of Sage in the windows environment. Also, check your Sage Client properties file for the:

autoconnect_server_hostname=192.168.1.xxx

It's possible that you may not have set the IP address on the server so it may be dynamic and not static.

Mike

[Jesse]

Hi,

Pining worked fine, no problems.

I have a couple of other weird issues cropping up as well. So enough fooling around, I am gonna just nuke and pave. In about two hours things should be back to normal.

Thanks guys.

Jesse

[Jesse]

Update:

I went for a fresh windows install and was able to get it all working. In the process I discovered that while my Intel gig NIC card worked, it did not work well. Any apps I downloaded (EG SageClientV5), or even transferred from another machine on the network, ended up corrupted and unable to run or install. I switched back to the 100 mbs onboard NIC and it was all good again. Looks like it could have been the NIC all along.

Lesson I learned: Just because it works does not mean it is working properly.

Thanks again for the help.

Jesse

[mayamaniac]

glad you figured it out that it was the NIC.

I'm curious about the lightning thing, did the surge protector protected the devices plugged into it? Could be another lesson to learn and make sure everything is plugged into some sort of surge protector. I know lightning doesn't strike the same place twice, but its better to be safe.

[Jesse]

Hi Mayamaniac,

Yes, the surge protectors worked great (several throughout the house). The problem was that I failed to protect the modem, and therefore the network, with a surge protector on the phone line. I have already corrected that situation.

So you are right on: Surge protectors for everything. It just is'nt worth the brain damage.

Jesse