SageTV incompatible with anti-virus

[cte]

Checking last night, the CPU usage does spike at times, but never rails. The memory usage is less than 50% at all times. No other programs are running on the computer, other than an occasional use of FireFox.

I will check on excluding ports.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by cte

1) 6) AMD Athlon 1.47 GHz, WinXP, Service Pack 3, 750 MB RAM ... don't think these are the problem

My old SageTV system CPU was similar to these specs and I had 1 gig RAM. The computer was very marginal running SageTV a couple of years ago. Another possible problem is the computer does not have enough resources to run both SageTV and Gdata, since the system is very low on CPU processing ability and also very marginal on memory.

My current SageTV normally consumes about 800 megs of RAM. I have two gigs of RAM. My old Athlon system with a similar CPU, first had 500 megs of RAM. The performance was very bad, since the computer was caching memory to disk 24 x 7. I increased the memory to 1 gig, which eliminated the memory to disk caching problem, which drastically increased performance. However, the performance for that vintage computer was still marginal for SageTV, especially when attempting to playback compressed into into MVPs, which required the computer system to transcode the files into mpegs on the fly.

So, as others have suggested, try uninstalling Gdata. If the problem goes away either Gdata is your problem, or your computer may be too weak to run both SageTV and Gdata at the same time.

Dave

[cte]

Well it appears the problem has been solved. After telling GData which ports SageTV uses, everything appeared to be working fine last night.

I am quite impressed with GData. After I installed it, it identified a Trojan my previous anti-virus missed. The fact that SageTV was not running smoothly after I switched to GData indicates to me that GData does a better job of detecting viruses, etc.

To summarize the solution, tell GData to exclude the programs SageTV uses (SageTV.exe, SageTVServiceControl.exe, SageTVService.exe, SageTVPlayer.exe, and SageTVTranscoder.exe) and tell GData which ports SageTV uses (found on pages 234-235 in the SageTV Users Manual).

[davephan]

Originally Posted by cte

Well it appears the problem has been solved. After telling GData which ports SageTV uses, everything appeared to be working fine last night.

I am quite impressed with GData. After I installed it, it identified a Trojan my previous anti-virus missed. The fact that SageTV was not running smoothly after I switched to GData indicates to me that GData does a better job of detecting viruses, etc.

To summarize the solution, tell GData to exclude the programs SageTV uses (SageTV.exe, SageTVServiceControl.exe, SageTVService.exe, SageTVPlayer.exe, and SageTVTranscoder.exe) and tell GData which ports SageTV uses (found on pages 234-235 in the SageTV Users Manual).

That's good news that the GData program will work with SageTV. What Trojan was it? I assume the computer must have been infected from the Internet, not the sneekernet.

I would like to restrict my SageTV headless computer from most of the Internet, except for the program guide updates and the web server interface. But I am not sure what web site and ports are used to update the program guide.

Dave

[gplasky]

The FAQ is your friend.

Q: What ports do I need to open in my firewall for SageTV?

A: Short answer: 7760 (EPG), 7818, and 42024 (both for client/server connection). Also, Linux uses port 8000 for license activation.

Longer answer... SageTV may need up to three different ports opened in your firewall:
7760 - This port must be opened for SageTV to be able to download EPG data so that you can see show listings on the LiveTV Guide menu.

42024 - If you plan to use SageTV Client with SageTV, then this port needs to be opened so that the client & server can talk to each other.


7818 - When SageTV (server) streams media to SageTV Client, this is the port that is used. i.e.: This port has to be open in order to watch recordings on the client.


8000 - This port is only used on a Linux installation of SageTV in order to contact SageTV for license activation.


Q: What ports do I need to open in my firewall for using a Media Extender?

A: Several...

The following ports are used by any Media Extender:

UDP:
31100 (for discovering the SageTV server after booting)
TCP:
31099 (for SageTV usage after the extender is fully booted and SageTV is loaded)

In addition, the following ports are also used by the Hauppauge MVP as a Media Extender:

UDP:
16867 (for booting the MVP)
16869 (for booting the MVP)
16881


Q: What port do I need to open in my firewall for using the SageTV Placeshifter?

A: TCP port 31099...

SageTV server: In addition to allowing access through the software firewall on this port, in order to access your SageTV Server through the Internet with the Placeshifter you will need to open TCP port 31099 on your router and forward it to the computer that is running the SageTV server. If you want the server to register its Locator ID, then port 8018 needs to be opened to allow that connection.

SageTV Placeshifter: The Placeshifter client uses port 31100 to auto-discover local SageTV servers, and uses port 31099 to connect to the server unless a different port is specified as part of the server's address. In addition, it will contact the main SageTV Locator server via port 8018 if you are trying to use a Locator ID to find your server. If you specify an IP address instead of a Locator ID, the Placeshifter client will not need to contact the Locator server.

When the Placeshifter is set to not transcode the video over a local network connection, TCP port 7818 is used to stream the media.


Note: Whether you actually have to specify which ports are to be opened may depend on which firewall is in use. You can just tell some to always let a program through, while others need specific ports opened. Check your firewall's documentation.

Nielm's webserver would be whatever port you configured it for. (Port 8080 by default.)

Gerry

[davephan]

Gerry,

Longer answer... SageTV may need up to three different ports opened in your firewall:
7760 - This port must be opened for SageTV to be able to download EPG data so that you can see show listings on the LiveTV Guide menu.

That says port 7760 is used for the EPG data, but it does not say what URL or IP the EPG data comes from. If that information is known, then the Internet could be restricted to that web site or IP.

Dave

[gplasky]

Would a debug log contain the info you need? I would think you could also capture the info from Wireshark if that's what you need. In Windows Firewall you could allow only the SageTV.exe and/or the associated service, the protocol type (tcp, udp or any) and the remote and local port (7760) You don't need an actual url to restrict it. You would only be accepting the EPG data and only thru SageTV.exe. (Because technically the url could change or it could be natted.)

Gerry

[cte]

Trojan: I don't recall the name of the Trojan. That was more than a month ago.

It's nice to see a complete description of the ports. Thanks.

I had a little trouble on Saturday. Originally, I had excluded the items listed on Task Manager where User Name listed Sage. And I had excluded the Sage and Hauppauge subdirs.

I removed those from the excluded list on Friday and everything seemed to work fine. On Saturday, I had a little trouble ... which led me to add them again.

BTW the selections by the remote control are much faster again, like they used to be before I installed GData.

[cte]

I recorded a program last night. When I play it tonight, it jumps ahead in approximately 2 minute increments when in the play mode ... at least the time shows that. It just plays the first half minute of the program and then stops when it reaches 60 minutes on the time clock.

This is quite interesting, as all other video recordings work fine. Play, skip, and fast forward / reverse, etc. all normally work fine.

I checked ... the size of the file is normal ... 2.9 Gig. But when I play it with Windows Media Player, it also shows only the first 35 secs of the hour long program, then it stops.

Any suggestions?

[src666]

Virus scanners work by performing several tasks that can bog down recordings. The worst, from a system performance standpoint, is scanning data as it is being written to and read from the drive. This is the action that is most likely causing problems for you.

SageTV is already an _intense_ user of hard drive throughput. The fact that it is doing constant reads and writes as it records and plays shows really eats up the bandwidth to the hard drive. Add in the virus scan, which _doubles_ the disk bandwidth needed, and you start seeing problems.

Also, judging from your hardware, I would guess that you are already close to I/O bound on hard drive accesses. This won't show as CPU spikes. You need to dig deeper into the performance monitor to find it, but look for drive read and write queue lengths if you want to verify it.

The _only_ solution is to exclude the recording paths from the real-time scan. This will probably be true for any anti-virus product you try.

Also, if your system is behind a router, then you really don't need an anti-virus if you don't use it for browsing the net. A router protects you from just about any attack you can think of, unless you go out and invite the little buggers in. Do your downloads from another system running a good AV product, then copy the results to the SageTV computer. Everything will be fine.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by cte

I recorded a program last night. When I play it tonight, it jumps ahead in approximately 2 minute increments when in the play mode ... at least the time shows that. It just plays the first half minute of the program and then stops when it reaches 60 minutes on the time clock.

This is quite interesting, as all other video recordings work fine. Play, skip, and fast forward / reverse, etc. all normally work fine.

I checked ... the size of the file is normal ... 2.9 Gig. But when I play it with Windows Media Player, it also shows only the first 35 secs of the hour long program, then it stops.

Any suggestions?

This sounds to me like a completely separate issue from your virus scanner problem. Timeline issues like this are typically the result of corrupted timecode information in the MPEG stream. How it got that way depends on what hardware you're using to do the recording. For older Hauppauge analog encoders, there's a registry fix that may help (sorry, I don't have the link off the top of my head; try a forum search).

For digital tuners, the timeline may already be bad in the stream as it comes from the provider; this can happen sometimes when advertisements are inserted into the program. Sage attempts to correct for such errors during recording, but there may be some kinds of timeline errors it doesn't handle well. In this case your best bet is to run the file through VideoReDo's Quickstream Fix or some similar remuxing tool.

There are, by the way, numerous existing threads on timeline issues and how to resolve them.

[cte]

Sorry for the slow response. Thanks to all for the suggestions ... especially that the problem may be with the Hauppauge card. I replaced the WinTV-PVR-150 with a WinTV-HVR-2250 ... plus I upgraded my motherboard / CPU. I've been running this configuration for a couple of weeks ... all problems have disappeared. Again, thanks to all!