MVP Connection issues

[bcjenkins]

I thought I would post here to see if anyone else is experiencing this as well. About every two days I have to restart the SageTV services in order for my MVPs to connect. When I peruse the SageTV logs, I see nothing in there about the failed connection attempts. Power cycling the MVP does not help either. I think this started happening when I switched to serial controlled DirecTV boxes, but I can't be certain.

Client PCs are able to connect just fine. Will follow this up with a post to Sage support as well.

B

Particualrs:

Win Server 2K3
Java 1.6
2.75GB RAM
2.8Ghz HT P4
2 PVR-500
1 Fusion 5 Lite
1 Fusion 5 Gold RT
4 DirecTV receivers D11-100 using PatersonTech cables
Connected to SVideo inputs on PVR-500s

[naln]

Interesting...I see the same thing...but thought it was just Sage V6 issue..

I have also noticed a spike in the Server CPU usage...this correlates well with the MVP connection issue...rather thats what prompts me to go check the server....

I assumed it was the Sage V6.....and whined about it here...I assumed it was the V6 since it has been resource intensive and frustratingly sluggish since I installed the beta versions.

I do have some problems connecting with a regular PC client too at these times...once it connects (after a long long wait...sometimes it gets through)...it shows choppy video and endless wait on the UI/menu options...

All this is for SD videos only (so no transcoding involved), no sagetv service running, only 1 client watching- with nothing being done on the server except recording and comskip. The SageTV.exe shows up as using 70%+ of the CPU....A restart of the SageTV program helps things return to normal....but then the whole thing comes back in a couple of days..

do you see a similar trend? BTW- I run a XP2100+ with 512RAM.....(just bit the bullet and bought some more RAM to help Sage in its icon spinning )

Also, I see this after I got DirectTV (and the associated plugins)...but I also went from the latest beta to the full 6.0.19 official release around the same time....so finding it difficult to point a finger at the cause of this problem....

Any help is welcome

[r4qm4n]

Hi All,

I don't know if you guys got this issue fixed, just wanted to say that I stumbled on a similar problem today with a new MVP I got from eBay....and seem to have fixed it.

When I booted the MVP it would show some noise and the bottom of the screen, then showed the SageTV logo, and then seemed to get stuck in a loop, flashing the logo on and off. The log files and a network trace didn't show any problems (to me).

At the time I was was dishing out IP addresses via Windows 2003 DHCP server. I switched that off and turned on the DHCP server on my WRT54G router (with the exact same DHCP lease details)....and it worked !!!

I can't figure out why though.

Anyway, after months of fighting a PVR350 for reliable quality output, I have to say that the MVP rocks, looks great !

Hope you get your fixed

cheers

[flavius]

IIRC ever since I moved to 6.1.9 I have been experiencing some trouble with my MVP's, sometimes with my placeshifter as well: the client would either not connect or hang after a while.

The remedy is to kill all transcoder processes on the server which typically addresses the problem. I haven't reportet that yet.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by flavius

IIRC ever since I moved to 6.1.9 I have been experiencing some trouble with my MVP's, sometimes with my placeshifter as well: the client would either not connect or hang after a while.

The remedy is to kill all transcoder processes on the server which typically addresses the problem. I haven't reportet that yet.

Killing the transcoders might mean the latency to respond to the tftp requests is reduced. From all the talk here, it sounds like the MVPs have a too-short timeout on DHCP and/or TFTP packet transfers. Just guessing. I wonder if somehow making the transcoders run at a lower process priority would help? Also, the transcoder might use a lot of memory and cause a disk swap-out of code/data related to the MVP startup, and that has to be read-in from disk, adding more latency. Adding more memory might help, or not- the transcoder might just use up that added memory.