Sage just died on me.

[lovingHDTV]

I came home from being out of town to an unhappy family. SageTV quit working, thats the first thing I hear coming into the door.

I did the normal debug and ended up with a reboot, upon reboot.

Sage Service never completes. It cannot be killed in the task manager, and never closed wiz.bin, causing a check disk upon reboot.

I can't run the service control panel to turn off the service.

I rebooted in safe mode, and swapped out wiz.bin with a back up. Not go, sage service still never completes. It also does not consume and cpu. Its just sitting there.

I compared the debug output log file to a previous one. It looks like it completed initialization of the capture devices, and then hangs. In the good log file it states that sage it looking at the recording directoris. Here are snippits.

Broken:
Wed 12/10 20:00:44.983 Processing new system dev:Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture
Wed 12/10 20:00:44.983 Device already has been processed
Wed 12/10 20:00:44.983 devices detected=[AVerMedia BDA Analog Capture, Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture, Hauppauge WinTV 418 TS Capture, Hauppauge WinTV 418 Video Capture]
Wed 12/10 20:00:44.984 EncoderMap={AVerMedia BDA Analog Capture=AVerMedia BDA Analog Capture, Hauppauge WinTV 418 Video Capture=Hauppauge WinTV 418 Video Capture, Hauppauge WinTV 418 TS Capture=Hauppauge WinTV 418 TS Capture, Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture=Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture}


Working:
Tue 12/9 7:58:05.866 EncoderMap={AVerMedia BDA Analog Capture=AVerMedia BDA Analog Capture, Hauppauge WinTV 418 Video Capture=Hauppauge WinTV 418 Video Capture, Hauppauge WinTV 418 TS Capture=Hauppauge WinTV 418 TS Capture, Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture=Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture}
Tue 12/9 7:58:07.019 Checking video directories for new files
Tue 12/9 7:58:07.305 DShowFilters=[.RAM file Parser, 9x8Resize, AC3 Parser Filter, AC3Filter, ACELP.net Sipro Lab Audio Decoder, ACM Wrapper, Allocator Fix, ASF ACM Handler, ASF DIB Handler, ASF DJPEG Handler, ASF embedded stuff Handler, ASF ICM Handler, ASF JPEG Handler, ASF URL Handler, ASX file Parser, ASX v.2 file Parser, AVI Decompressor, AVI Draw, AVI Mux, AVI Splitter, AVI/WAV File Source, BDA MPEG2 Transport Information Filter, Bitmap Generate, Color Space Converter, Deinterlace Filter, DV Muxer, DV Splitter, DV Video Decoder, DVD Navigator, File Source (Async.), File Source (Netshow URL), File Source (URL), File stream renderer, File writer, Frame Eater, Full Screen Renderer, G.711 Codec, Hauppauge WinTV 418 Color Format Converter, Hauppauge WinTV Color Format Converter, Indeo® audio software, Indeo® video 4.4 Compression Filter, Indeo® video 4.4 Decompression Filter, Indeo® video 5.10 Compression Filter, Indeo® video 5.10 Decompression Filter, Infinite Pin Tee Filter, Internal Script Command Renderer, Line 21 Decoder, Line 21 Decoder 2, Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Decompressor, Microsoft Screen Video Decompressor, MIDI Parser, MJPEG Decompressor, MPEG Audio Decoder, MPEG Layer-3 Decoder, MPEG Video Decoder, MPEG-2 Demultiplexer, MPEG-2 Sections and Tables, MPEG-2 Splitter, MPEG-2 Video Stream Analyzer, MPEG-I Stream Splitter, MPEG2Dump, Mpeg4 Decoder DMO, Mpeg43 Decoder DMO, Mpeg4s Decoder DMO, Multi-file Parser, NSC file Parser, Null Renderer, NVIDIA ATSC File, NVIDIA Audio Decoder, NVIDIA Cd Audio Reader, NVIDIA MultiSource Filter, NVIDIA Navigator, NVIDIA Transport Demux, NVIDIA TS Info Parser, NVIDIA Video Decoder, NVIDIA Video Post Processor, Overlay Mixer, Overlay Mixer2, QT Decompressor, QuickTime Movie Parser, Record Queue, SageTV Layer II Audio Decoder, SageTV Layer II Audio Encoder, SageTV MPEG Audio Decoder, SageTV MPEG Demultiplexer, SageTV MPEG Layer II Audio Encoder, SageTV MPEG Multiplexer, SageTV MPEG Multiplexer-Plus, SageTV MPEG Video Decoder, SageTV MPEG-2 Video Decoder, SageTV MPEG-2 Video Encoder, SageTV MpegDeMux, SageTV MpegMux, SageTV Music Visualization, SageTV Stream Parser, SageTV TS Splitter 1.0, SAMI (CC) Parser, SampleGrabber, Shared File Source (Async.), Smart Tee, StreamBufferSink, StreamBufferSource, Stretch Video, Uncompressed Domain Shot Detection Filter, VBI Surface Allocator, VGA 16 Color Ditherer, Video Mixing Renderer 9, Video Port Manager, Video Renderer, Video Renderer, Wave Parser, WIA Stream Snapshot Filter, Windows Media Audio Decoder, Windows Media Multiplexer, Windows Media source filter, Windows Media Update Filter, Windows Media Video Decoder, Windows Media Video Decoder, WM ASF Reader, WM ASF Writer, WMAudio Decoder DMO, WMSpeech Decoder DMO, WMT AudioAnalyzer, WMT Black Frame Generator, WMT DirectX Transform Wrapper, WMT DV Extract, WMT Format Conversion, WMT Import Filter, WMT Interlacer, WMT Log Filter, WMT MuxDeMux Filter, WMT Sample Information Filter, WMT Screen Capture filter, WMT Switch Filter, WMT VIH2 Fix, WMT Virtual Renderer, WMT Virtual Source, WMT Volume, WMV Screen decoder DMO, WMVideo Decoder DMO, WST Decoder, XML Playlist]
Tue 12/9 7:58:07.478 CARNY Processing 2458 Agents & 12952 Airs
Tue 12/9 7:58:23.269 CARNY Negative Energy Size: 6574
Tue 12/9 7:58:23.275 CARNY Traitors:[]
Tue 12/9 7:58:23.280 Carny waiting for awhile...


Anyone have ideas on what is hanging up the service? Also how do I turn it off, when I can't run the control pannel, net <stop> does not work because the service never completes.

Help!

dave

[flavius]

How about the control panel / services interface. You could try to set the Sage service to manual and reboot.

[GKusnick]

Boot into safe mode, run a full chkdsk with bad block recovery, and check your system log for disk controller errors.

If the hardware checks out, and the service control applet still won't launch, then the next thing I'd look at is whether Java somehow got uninstalled or corrupted.

[davephan]

Sorry to hear you are having problems...

Do you have an image of your C drive? If so, you could try recovering the C drive with the image. if the hardware is OK and the video files are not causing the problem, the system will probably be working in less than 30 minutes. Whatever caused the problem, will be fixed.

If you don't have an image, then it sounds like you may have to manually rebuild everything. Make sure to create an image of your C drive when you get the system running again. There are some free disk imaging packages if you can't afford one. It's very annoying when SageTV breaks, so you have to have a recovery plan, hopefully without the painful process of manually installing everything.

Dave

[toricred]

I've run into this a couple of times in the past. My fix was to boot to safe mode, set the service to disabled, reboot normally and manually start the service. Then I reset the service to automatic and I was good to go.

[davephan]

You might try imaging the C drive just in case that does not fix the problem in the future. It's much better to have more than one way to recover.

Athough sometimes imaging does not work very well if your mainboard fails and you have to recover the image to a different board. I've successfully recovered to a different board with the same chipset. I had a lot of problems trying to re-install the USB-UIRT driver fast enough during the boot process before the computer froze. Maybe a boot into safe mode would have made that process easier.

If you don't have a pay imaging program, you could use PING, Partition image is not ghost, http://ping.windowsdream.com/.

Dave

[Polypro]

Drive Image XML works too. I lucked out last year and found a link to a free TrueImage 8 from a UK magazine. They may do it again.

P

[lovingHDTV]

I swapped the wiz.bin in safe mode. Did not think about running the service control app there. Then after my reboot the same thing happened.

If I looked at the Sage service in the services window it showed that it was starting. I looked at the task manager and it was not consuming any CPU and the log file was not updating. After about 15 minutes I went to bed frustrated, but waiting till the next AM to look at it again.

In the AM it was all up and running!! I guess it had to sit there and think a while. It is now working again. I guess after nearly 4 years of running without issue, it was my time.

Thanks all for the input. I downloaded Drive Image XML and will image the drive now. At least I could get back to here. I had True Image at one point, but never bothered to use it. I do backup my sageTV directory every week so I can get it from there if needed.

thanks again!

dave

[wvpolekat]

I am going to chime in from the "anti-image" crowd.

I do a nightly on-site and off-site backup of the SageTV directory. I think it comes in around 50 MB, so it's not huge. I keep a weeks worth in both locations, so I can roll back to any single day in the last week. Even if there is something like a fire or flood, my Sage data is safe!

If I have a catastrophic failure, I reinstall XP with all the relevant updates, reinstall Sage, then copy the backup copy of the SageTV directory over the new one.

This has worked absolutely flawlessly for me. Time to complete is about 2 hours. I have used it to recover from a failure as well as migrate to new hardware.

The only thing you have to keep on top of is your versions. I have a folder with installers of the versions of SageTV, Java, SageMC and any other plugins I am running. This lets me get it very close to the state it was in before.

Here is my logic:

1) A drive image is static. Unless you are doing them regularly, you are not going to have a "current" backup.

2) You may well be backing up a time bomb. Unless you know the root cause of the failure, you may be backing up and restoring whatever caused it.

3) Much more difficult to use for new hardware. If your Sage box rolls over and your backup is an image, that image may not boot on your new machine. If it does, it will likely be "messy" with orphaned devices and such.

4) Drive images are HUGE compared to my method. Yeah, drive space is cheap, but it's still 50MB vs 10GB.

But, that's just my 2 shillings and what works for me.

[stevech]

I've changed from "imaging" the boot drives in my PCs to "cloning" them. Faster to do. The destination drive is one as large or larger. Does not have to be same (e.g., I clone SATA to IDE).

When something goes amok, just change the BIOS to boot the clone. Disks are so cheap and my time is more valuable! I'd rather go to the dentist than install XP and all the junk that goes with doing so.

I do image data drives and partitions.

Acronis user.

[davephan]

Disk imaging can save you a lot of hassle and time restoring computer systems. A system can be easily restored in 30 minutes. After starting the image restoration process, you can walk away, and come back to a working system in a half hour. Periodic disk images can be taken, including differential images. When you recover the computer to a known working point-in-time, whatever was causing the problem, is fixed, unless something external to the boot drive, such as video files, are causing the problem. In the 'old' days, before imaging it would take hours, days, or weeks to try to figure out what actually caused the problem. With disk imaging, it does not matter what caused the problem, the problem is simply eliminated.

I would be surprised if the system could be manually rebuilt in two hours with all the patches. The operating system has to be installed. Then the patches. You have to keep rebooting and keep applying more patches, sometimes about six patching sessions are required to download and install more than 100 critical Windows XP patches. Any custom configurations, usually not documented, are lost. As the missing customizations are discovered, each customization has to be done. I don't think there is any downside to disk imaging, except a small storage space cost. The benefit is an additional recovery path, other than the painful 'default' recovery path of manually rebuilding everything and re-doing all the customizations!

We periodically image hundreds of servers at work as one of a several backup/recovery methods. Dozens of systems have been quickly and successfully recovered using the images.

The imaging can also be done in the system building process. Images are taken periodically during the build process. If something goes wrong with the build, you never have to start the build over from scratch. Demo programs can be tried and 'completed' removed by recovering to a previous image taken before the trialware.

Disk images can be recovered to different system boards if the chipset is the same. Some imaging products claim to be able to recover to dissimilar chip types.

SageTV drastically improves television. If your SageTV system quits working and SageTV is important to you, then you should have a plan to quickly recover the system. Disk imaging is a very cheap and effective method to quickly recover with a minimum of pain and annoyance.

Dave

[sandor]

I have to chime in here and say this has been one of the huge benefits of switching to the Mac version of the server - TimeMachine.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html

i have used it several times already to go "back in time" to other days or hours prior to software updates. works like a charm. now, i have used other incremental backup systems as well (namely retrospect) but the ease with which TimeMachine performs is simply excellent.

[stevech]

How does MAC OS Time Machine differ from Windows' Restore Point?
Is it that Time Machine somehow dupes entire files and directories (and doesn't fill up the disk?) whereas Restore Point is, I think, only registry settings and the key Windows config files.

I remember fondly my years using DEC's VMS. All file names had a semicolon and a version number. Each time a file is modified, the name bumped the version number. YOU had to manually purge the oldest N versions of the file. Saved my butt many times. Wish today's OSes had that, for most files. In lieu of that, I use Second Copy (low cost), to do the same thing VMS does, essentially, but the old versions are in different directories. VMS used to just hide the old versions unless you asked to see them.

[reboot_this]

Is there a simple answer to...

what is the difference between "imaging" a drive vs "cloning" that same drive?

currently, whenever I have system issues that warrants a complete rebuild, well that's exactly what I do... from the ground up (3-4 hours depending on cpu/ram/etc)... windows restore points only work for so long, that is as long as those restore points are NOT restoring the ever-ticking time bomb mentioned above

Personally I am in the same predicament:

• WHS or backups, (also gaining on the amount of computers around here)
• if WHS, run a separate SageTV server or not

I have been reading lots of stuff and feel it best to build a separate WHS server to back up computers and leave my Sagebox alone...

[davephan]

I have been using disk imaging for many years with hundreds of servers. I have recovered many servers to images that were taken at a point-in-time where the system was functioning normally. The end result is the computer system functions normally. Whatever was screwing up the system is eliminated. I cannot recall a recovery where the system failed again, in the ticking time bomb situation that you mentioned.

Even if you don't trust the restored image to be a long term solution, it could be used as a short term solution to move the scratch system rebuild process to a time frame when you have the hours available to rebuild the system from scratch.

I have seen many systems that were either unbootable or had severe problems that ran for many years after being recovered from an image. The systems run long enough that they are eventually retired from service before they break again.

In the early days of disk images, there would be situations where the recovery would simply fail due to problems with image files. However, recovering from images has been very reliable for many years. We also build servers using imaging throughout the process to avoid wasting time rebuilding from scratch. We deploy about 30 - 40 duplicate servers at a time with the same 'base' image, decloning the servers after.

So, disk imaging is a very effective tool to quickly recovery tool. The disk image shouldn't be your only recovery method. Redundant recovery methods increases the odds that you'll be able to recover successfully.

Dave

[sandor]

Originally Posted by stevech

How does MAC OS Time Machine differ from Windows' Restore Point?
Is it that Time Machine somehow dupes entire files and directories (and doesn't fill up the disk?) whereas Restore Point is, I think, only registry settings and the key Windows config files.

Time Machine is a good (hopefully soon to be great) incremental backup software built into OS 10.5

pros:
1) built in, so it is "there" and promotes backup of data
2) fancy, easy to use interface to "enter" your "time machine" to recover files
3) if your hard drive dies, you can do a full system restore on a new drive from any date available on the drive time machine data was stored on
4) incremental backup means only changed files are archived, so after the first "full" backup, the incrementals are small(er)
5) full system or individual files can be recovered at will. including deleted/changed files
6) requires a second hard drive for backup (this keeps data much more secure)
7) intelligently removes old backups as disk space fills (typically keeps hourlys for a day, dailys for a week, weeklys for a month, and monthlys until the drive is full)
8) you can choose folders and files to exclude (downloads, music, etc)
9) self-configuring schedule based on backup drive availability, idle availability of computer and file modifications on the boot drive

cons:
1) requires a second hard drive (internal, external or network volume)
2) incremental backups, so figure you should have *at least* a drive approximately 2x the size of your boot volume's used space
3) built in to the OS, so you need 10.5
4) Apple dumbs things down so "normal" people will be able to use it, thus it lacks a good deal of customization


So, my set up is sage and a NAS on a wired connection, with my wife and i both having laptops on wifi (802.11/n) - all three macs backup via time machine to the NAS. Three times i have had to restore from Time Machine due to failed hard drives or new laptops - each time worked like a charm, though i made sure to plug the laptops into the wired network (1000bT) to ensure a faster transfer of data - the original backup of my 300 GB drive in my laptop (200-ish GB used) took overnight via 802.11/n, incremental daily backups happen randomly, typically about 100-200 MB, depending on use, and take a minute or two - happens seamlessly in the background.

Time Machine is a full, incremental backup system like Retrospect. Windows Restore Points are, as you stated, only for system and registry items, they do not protect user files at all.

Any incremental backup system will take **more** space than the data it is backing up, but, like RAID-5, that is the price you pay for increased data security.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by reboot_this

Is there a simple answer to...

what is the difference between "imaging" a drive vs "cloning" that same drive?

Imaging: Output is an ordinary but large single file. Input is either an entire partition such as C: or a chosen set of folders/files. The resultant image file should be on a different drive or network drive/share to protect from drive failure or file system corruption. If drive fails, it can be a hassle to get the image onto a new drive and make it bootable. However, I did this with a failed laptop drive and after restoring, it booted fine. So the boot info (MBR/partition table) is saved into the image file. The Imaging software will make a CD that can be booted stand alone to restore to a new/virgin drive.

Cloning: Every sector on the source drive is copied to the destination drive, i.e., all partitions and boot block/MBR. All sectors and all the booting info, so the destination drive is bootable and after doing so, you'll "think" you booted the original drive. Cloned drive has to boot on same PC because it's motherboard-dependent. Source and destination can be different kinds of drives, e.g., SATA to IDE.

This is based on my experiences with Acronis TruImage. I converted to it several years ago having been disappointed by (screwed by) Norton's Ghost.

[reboot_this]

Thanks stevech for the "imaging vs cloning" drives run down.

It helps me understand why you clone boot drives but then you image data drives. I have also been disappointed (screwed over) by Norton Ghost as well several years ago and since have just kept manual copies of anything I care about (data), and I also just reinstall the OS manually each time I have a snafu. It's time consuming but I know where my data is and I know I have a fresh OS after I sat there and installed it.... I don't have to worry about whether or not I have to hire a psychic to summons the (Norton) Ghost to give me back my data/boot drive.

I'm probably going to build a WHS server myself but still keep precious personal data backed up (and in my safe) just to cover my butt. It's still the smart thing to do...

"Now what is the combination to my safe?... Hey Honey, do you remember the combination... ?"

[stevech]

Yeah, I use Second Copy to auto-backup individual VIP files. http://www.centered.com/

And TruCrypt (freeware, excellent) for thumb drives and external drives.
http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php

And Acronis for cloning and imaging. For imaging, I password the image.

[davephan]

Past versions of Norton Ghost did not always recover successfully. I started using Ghost about version 3.0, before Symantec bought Ghost from Binary Research Limited. This was around the time period when using Laplink was a popular way to backup files to and recover to another system.

It's bad to discover that your image is garbage when you are trying to recover a system. The older versions of Ghost would occasionally fail to recover for various reasons, which was very annoying. Ghost did not become reliable till version 7.0. Acronis could be more reliable, I haven't tested Acronis is quite awhile. I do know that there was at least one bad previous Acronis version, where recoveries would fail.

I use version 9 and version 10 on two different systems. At work we use Backup Exec System Recovery (BESR). BESR is very similar to Ghost, except you can run pre and post scripts around the image. There is also a BESR central console. One of the features of BESR is recovering to different hardware. A co-worker successfully recovered an IBM system to a Dell to test recovering to different hardware.

With Ghost you can set the image segment sizes from the default 2 gigs to smaller sizes. I recommend using smaller segment sizes if you are putting the files on optical media. I use 100 meg slices. If you copy the image slices onto several duplicate DVDs, the same slice is unlikely to be bad one each DVD copy compared to one big slice on the whole DVD. The other benefit to using smaller slices is moving the files across a LAN or WAN is a lot easier. If the connectivity on a network segment is not good, it can be tough to move a 2 gig segment.

Although I have found long term CD and DVD storage is not a good idea. I have had failed recoveries when using CDs or DVDs that are a couple years old. The optical media was carefully stored to avoid any scratching, yet the image could not be recovered, even though there were three duplicate image sets on the different optical media. Short term recoveries from optical media are much more reliable, but should not be trusted completely. The recoveries are reliable if you use a hard drive to store the image files. The recovery is also much faster using a hard drive than optical media. I recommend copying the image file from your system hard drive to a detachable USB hard drive. Remove the USB hard drive and store it at another location for your offsite backup copy.

Dave