Help - WAF crashing!

[pjpjpjpj]

EDIT: FIXED. SEE LAST POST.

After a power outage, my extenders are not working. Well, they are working, but they won't play video and the menus are very slow. It's definitely a network issue of communication between the server and the extenders, because Sage on the server is fine, and recordings from HDHRs are fine when played on the server. But I don't know what to do to track down the problem.

I posted a thread with more details about it here but it's not getting much notice (http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61548) so I thought I'd try here, since I think it's a non-Sage, network-related issue anyway.

[trk2]

Can you describe your network configuration? Are the server and extenders connected directly to your router, or are there switches in between? Are the extenders connected wirelessly?

[MattHelm]

At my dad's house, after a storm, he lost one of his Ethernet switches, but it wasn't obvious (it was working, showing everything fine, but lots of errors on data moving thru the switch). Had to replace the switch to see the fix!

[pjpjpjpj]

I have a wireless router, into which my internet connection comes, and plugged into the hardwire ports on the router are two cables; a cable to a 24-port unmanaged switch, and the wire to my server. Everything else - including all my extenders and my two HDHRs - are on the 24-port switch.

Internet is working fine (both the wifi and the hardwired connection to my server). I can access the internet fine on my server, and did an internet speed test on my server and it was normal. As above (and in the other thread), my HDHRs are working properly, and Sage is recording through them and the recordings are perfect when viewed in Sage (or VLC) on the server PC. That means a data stream from HDHR to switch to router to server has no problems.

I can access Sage and Sage recordings through both the Sage webserver and through the PlayOn app (using the "local files" plugin) and watch streaming video from my server just fine, so that means the video is able to stream out of my server, through the router, and out through my modem into the internet, without glitch.

The problems I've seen are in using the extenders (server to router to switch to extender), and in streaming video files from the server to another PC on the network. Note that the other PC is on wifi, so that signal didn't go through the switch, but rather from the server to the router and out via wifi.

So the curious part is that videos stream out of the server to the internet fine, but not to a local extender or PC.

I tried plugging an extender directly into the router so that it and the server were both plugged in there (eliminating the switch from the equation), but that gave the same result.

I also tried reversing this and plugging the server into the switch, rather than the router, eliminating the router and putting both server and extender on the switch; this gave the same result as well (granted it disabled my Sage webserver access so I wasn't going to leave it this way).

I should also note that all of this equipment and configuration was exactly the same and working stably for months before the power outage.

Any ideas how to track this down?

[routerunner]

Try to run an iperf on the server and extender as it should highlight network issue as well. Please follow the instruction here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...02&postcount=8

EDIT: To perform this test, ideally you should configure both the server and the extender with static IP and connect the two together via a cross-link network cable.

Eddy

[nyplayer]

I believe crossover cables are not needed if your server has a GIGABIT Nic.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I believe crossover cables are not needed if your server has a GIGABIT Nic.

it might be possible that the PHY on the server side NIC is MDI-X type, definitevely not the HD300 which is a pretty standard Ethernet NIC, so it might not worth the risk. He's looking for a solution, so you need to keep things simple and pretty straightforward.

Eddy

[pjpjpjpj]

I should also point out that, as I said in that other post I linked, you guys need to treat me (terminology-wise) like you'd treat your mom. "For Dummies".

I am fairly positive that my server NIC is gigabit. My router and switch are gigabit as well. There's no reason, bandwidth-wise, for this to happen (and the whole system has worked fine for years up until now).

The iperf thing is worth trying I suppose, but it appears to be a chase-down of an issue in a switch or bad cable. In my case, I've tried having the server and extender plugged into a switch together (actually, two different switches, I have an extra one I tried too), into a router together, and through both router and switch. They all gave the same result, but yet the switch and router are working fine in other applications (streaming from HDHR, streaming to/from internet). I've tried moving the cables to various ports on each device. And I've tried multiple HD200s, HD300s, and even an old HD100, all on different cables and ports, so it's not a bad port or cable. The extenders are all acting the same way: slow and stuttering UI, and unplayable video. All extenders were unplugged during the power outage and they are all acting the same exact way, so it's not that they were damaged by the outage.

I just keep thinking it has to be something with direct communication between the Sage extenders and the server NIC, because the Sage works fine in other ways and the server NIC works fins in other ways. What could a power outage damage in this way?

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I should also point out that, as I said in that other post I linked, you guys need to treat me (terminology-wise) like you'd treat your mom. "For Dummies".

can't, my mom is an Engineer too

I am fairly positive that my server NIC is gigabit. My router and switch are gigabit as well. There's no reason, bandwidth-wise, for this to happen (and the whole system has worked fine for years up until now).

The iperf thing is worth trying I suppose, but it appears to be a chase-down of an issue in a switch or bad cable. In my case, I've tried having the server and extender plugged into a switch together (actually, two different switches, I have an omextra one I tried too), into a router together, and through both router and switch. They all gave the same result, but yet the switch and router are working fine in other applications (streaming from HDHR, streaming to/from internet). I've tried moving the cables to various ports on each device. And I've tried multiple HD200s, HD300s, and even an old HD100, all on different cables and ports, so it's not a bad port or cable. The extenders are all acting the same way: slow and stuttering UI, and unplayable video. All extenders were unplugged during the power outage and they are all acting the same exact way, so it's not that they were damaged by the outage.

I just keep thinking it has to be something with direct communication between the Sage extenders and the server NIC, because the Sage works fine in other ways and the server NIC works fins in other ways. What could a power outage damage in this way?

It sound's the sagetv server the culprit, not strictly related to the NIC (iperf should confirm that), but could be a JVM issue? Please bear in mind that on Sagetv client (or running the UI o the server) the UI is generated via directx, whilst on the extender the UI is generated by the server and rendered on the extender, so the slugginesh could be generated by the server and not by the extender, just a thought, however only the iperf test could discriminate.



Eddy

[KryptoNyte]

I can confirm that when all cores of my server CPU are pinged at 100% that extender menu operation can be sluggish.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by routerunner

It sound's the sagetv server the culprit, not strictly related to the NIC (iperf should confirm that), but could be a JVM issue? Please bear in mind that on Sagetv client (or running the UI o the server) the UI is generated via directx, whilst on the extender the UI is generated by the server and rendered on the extender, so the slugginesh could be generated by the server and not by the extender, just a thought, however only the iperf test could discriminate.

Eddy

I've rebooted many, many times so I wouldn't think the JVM or processor would be causing it. I have my java heap set at max (1024). After reboots, my sageservice.exe is usually running somewhere around 400k, I believe. The only other third party processes I have running (that I've installed) are PlayOn and YAC, both of which are fairly minimal. There aren't any renegade instances of uPnP running. For the most part, my four cores are cruising along below 10% (if not basically at 0).

Nonetheless I will check out the iperf thing Friday afternoon. Please explain the telnet thing - is that just meaning to use a command prompt? Because I thought I saw that win8 no longer had telnet. How do I do that in win8? Also, do I need the HD300 to be on, or just sleeping?

[OneOfMany]

I have seen a mainboards bios being reset on numerous occasions on customers systems over the years after a power outage.

One issue that can cause disk stuttering is how the bios identifies the drive. On newer mobos there is often an option for the data controllers to be either the newer AHCI or the older legacy IDE option. We have to set some to ahci on new builds as the IDE option is enabled by default. If your system was built by someone else who made this change at time of installing the is, it may have reverted.

Also remember that in normal network communications, any damaged packets are picked up on the receiving end, and are requested to be resent if they fail a checksum. In streaming, because you don't have the luxury of time to wait for a resend, packets are not checked for errors, so it can still be cable/switch related even if internet activities appear ok.

Grant

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Please explain the telnet thing - is that just meaning to use a command prompt? Because I thought I saw that win8 no longer had telnet. How do I do that in win8? Also, do I need the HD300 to be on, or just sleeping?

Telnet is a protocol and the name of a popular telnet client. If Win8 has no longer the telnet client you can download a free one like PuTTY.

The HD300 need to be switched on and in stand by to avoid the SageTV miniclient application using the bandwidth.

Hope this helps
Eddy

[pjpjpjpj]

Okay, I posted this in the original "iperf" thread as well, but I tried the instructions and the "jperf.bat" file fails with an error. It says "Windows cannot find 'javaw'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and try again."

I am on java 7r60. I suspect something changed in java... ideas?

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Okay, I posted this in the original "iperf" thread as well, but I tried the instructions and the "jperf.bat" file fails with an error. It says "Windows cannot find 'javaw'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and try again."

I am on java 7r60. I suspect something changed in java... ideas?

here's the explanation

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...-and-javaw-exe

either way, please download an iperf version for windows.

Eddy

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by routerunner

either way, please download an iperf version for windows.

Eddy

I don't know what you mean by that. I followed the instructions that you linked to in the old thread for the iperf. Those were written by a Sage mod, "_demo_". I certainly don't know how or where to download other versions of the iperf thing.

[pjpjpjpj]

I did the first part of his instructions (the telnet part) using PuTTy. It appeared to work fine and the telnet window was open and awaiting whatever that .bat file was supposed to do. But the .bat file failed, looking for the "javaw".

Could I open the .bat file in notepad and change the "javaw" reference(s) to "java"?

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I don't know what you mean by that. I followed the instructions that you linked to in the old thread for the iperf. Those were written by a Sage mod, "_demo_". I certainly don't know how or where to download other versions of the iperf thing.

you need two iperf version, one running as client and one as server. the one on the extender must be compiled for the same cpu as the extender (mips) and for that you must use the one suggested by _demo_, instead for the client (windows) you can use one that run on windows that you can download from the internet, there are plenty. the client version pointed by _demo_ is for instance a version of iperf implemented in java, but there are compiled as windows console application, it doesn't really matter which one you choose to run on windows.


hope is more clear
Eddy

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Could I open the .bat file in notepad and change the "javaw" reference(s) to "java"?

Yes, according to the link in stackoverflow I think you can.


Eddy

[pjpjpjpj]

Does it matter what version? I'm on Win8 and I'm seeing that the latest version of iperf for Windows is v3, but I'm not finding any clear versions where I can tell what to install. There are multitudes of files associated with it, what do I need to download? I'm seeing lots of "tar.gz" files and such.