New client too fast for Gemstone?

[Boolah]

I recently replaced the client I have in my kitchen with an i5-3570k, 8 GB of DDR3-1600 memory and a Crucial M4 SSD running Win 7 x64. This machine is very snappy - in fact, it appears as though it's too snappy. I have the machine automatically log me in when booted and automatically start SageTV full screen (through a shortcut in the Startup menu).

Since the upgrade, SageTV is up and running before the machine has had a chance to initialize the NIC (Intel PRO/1000CT). Note this is not before the machine has obtained an IP through DHCP (I did test with a static IP with the same results). It really is before the NIC is recognized by the operating system. So I get the screen saying that SageTV has lost connection to the SageTV server and will try to reconnect:



After 20-30 seconds or so the client will reconnect to the server, but I won't have any menus. Moreover, the recording widgets and disk space bar at the bottom of the screen populate with accurate data, but not the weather widget:



Sage will stay in this state until I restart the client, then everything goes back to normal:



If I don't have SageTV start automatically on boot, and manually start SageTV after the NIC has initialized, the client works fine the first time it's loaded.

Is this a problem with Gemstone, SageTV, a config setting on my computer or should I just quit my bitching that my new computer is too fast?

[bcjenkins]

http://superuser.com/questions/32873...l-be-available

[Boolah]

Thanks for the suggestion, but the client isn't part of a domain, so that setting has no effect and the machine boots, logs in and starts the SageTV client just as fast.

[RedR]

Kind of a hack fix but why not batch file SageTV client with a delay before kicking off the client?

[bcjenkins]

bummer, in that case just use a batch, powershell, autoit script to sleep 30,60,90,whatever then launch SageTV.

I took a look at task scheduler, but it didn't have a delay component.

post back on what you end up with.

eg:

@echo off
timeout 60
start "C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV\SageTV\SageTV.exe"

[Boolah]

I could do that, but it seems like something else is going on.

The client does connect to the server successfully after the network initializes (evidenced by the fact the recording widgets populate). Since the network does come up and the client does connect to the server, why should the weather widget not populate? Moreover, why are the menus not coming up at all? I would think the menus are stored in the local properties file and should come up whether there's a network connection or not, but I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by Boolah

I could do that, but it seems like something else is going on.

The client does connect to the server successfully after the network initializes (evidenced by the fact the recording widgets populate). Since the network does come up and the client does connect to the server, why should the weather widget not populate? Moreover, why are the menus not coming up at all? I would think the menus are stored in the local properties file and should come up whether there's a network connection or not, but I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

I have found this to be a problem with both Gemstone and ADM. It seems that the client needs something from the server in order to properly load ADM or the ADM part of GEMSTONE. It is very annoying.

[jusjoken]

Try first narrowing the issue to Gemstone or Sage. Just disable the Gemstone plugin and then load the default SageTV7 STV and reboot and see if the issue is still there.

As for the menus... they come from the STV\Gemstone\Menus (from memory so might be slightly different) folder and not from the sage properties. but there are other Gemstone settings in the properties that need to be loaded. As well, all of the Phoenix core functions need to be loaded and the Phoenix core does some internet calls I believe to see if some xml files are current (again from memory). So it could be that.

k

[Boolah]

Reverting to the default STV works without issue on boot. I still get the "not connected to server" message, but the client automatically connects once the NIC initializes. The menus show up and all content plays fine.

The strange thing is if I switch back to Gemstone at this point, the menus come up and the recordings widgets populate, but the weather widget still doesn't populate:



Closing the client and starting it back up brings everything back to normal. I presume that something needs to get loaded from the server at the time Gemstone first starts up in order for everything to work right.

[Boolah]

In case anyone else runs into this issue, I've worked around it by creating a task in Task Scheduler which loads SageTV at logon.

You'll need to select to only run the task if "any" (or select a specific connection if necessary) network connection is available (on the Conditions tab). This will cause the task to fail on boot (since the network won't be available at the time), so you'll need to set "if the task fails, restart every" on the Settings tab to 1 minute. This means that when you boot the machine, Sage will automatically start 1 minute after the machine has booted.

I rarely boot the machine in the kitchen and I don't even have a keyboard/mouse hooked up to it (which is why I wanted to automate the startup process).