Suspend and resume with SageTV

[Gaurav]

S3 works now - thanks Jim.

My goal was to get my system to hibernate after 15mins of inactivity (and wake up in time for scheduled recordings).

While Sagewake is doing it's job witout a glitch, for some reason my pc won't sleep with the timout set to 10mins or more.

The workaround is to set it to standby at 5mins and then hibernate at 15mins. I can live with that. I'm not going to research further unless necessary.

mwhitlock - a small annoyance is that when sagewake kills sage on system standby, it leaves behind the sage tray icon. Every time the system comes out of sleep, a new tray icon gets created and after a few times there is a long line of sage icons in the tray. These icons disappear when i hover the mouse over them but is there something you can do to fix it ?

[mwhitlock]

Gaurav, the problem with the tray icons is in SageTV itself. SageWake sends a WM_QUIT message to the "SageApp" window to instruct SageTV to shut itself down cleanly. Unfortunately, SageTV appears to be programmed to remove the tray icon during processing of the "Exit SageTV" command rather than during shutdown cleanup. Since I have no way to programmatically invoke the "Exit SageTV" command from SageWake, there is nothing that can be done for this small annoyance. If someone from Frey Technologies would inform me of a better way to notify SageTV to shut itself down, I would implement it in SageWake.

[Gaurav]

i was scared you'd say something like that!
Well, i guess we'll have to wait for Frey to take note.
Thanks again for you help.

Are you maintaing a user db ? I'd love to be on your mailing list for updates.
Else i'll just keep watching the forums.

12 years ago i quit my first job coz c++ didn't interest me and got into database applications. I don't regret moving away from systems programming but I am impressed by what you're able to do with it. I am especially impressed by your abilities at this young age (saw your profile). Keep it up!

[mwhitlock]

• Added noresuspend option

If you specify --noresuspend, SageWake will not put your system back to sleep when recording is finished and you have not "returned" to the computer by moving the mouse or pressing a key.

EDIT: See latest version below.

[Gaurav]

mwhitlock -

I want to programmatically power on my Sat recvr before a scheduled recording and switch it off after the recording.

The power ON part will be straight forward by using the execute option to invoke a batch file that sends an event to Girder.

The power OFF part is tricky.
how tough will it be to add an option to invoke a batch file BEFORE the system goes to sleep ? I'm guessing a problem could be that the invoked command might interfere with the suspend and the system may never sleep.

Your expert opinion ?

[garyc]

Gaurav,

If you're still using hibernation mode, you can do what you want with Active Exit. This utility lets you specify a command (or batch file) to run before the system does a restart, hibernation, shutdown, etc. (your choice). So you could set it to turn off your box before hibernation.

IIRC I have a utility at home (unfortunately I won't be there for a month) that lets you run a program before entering sleep mode, but I forget the name and couldn't find it with a quick Google. This would also work, and has the advantage that you wouldn't have to use hibernation. It has a command line option to force sleep mode after the program terminates, so that overcomes the "running this program starts the sleep timer over" issue. If I remember the name -- or when I get home in August - I'll post the name of the utility.

The reason I think it's an advantage to not have to use hibernation is that in my experience S3 is much more reliable than hibernation for most systems. You once posted you preferred hibernation because the UPS software couldn't turn the computer off if it was in S3. Remember that in S3 you're only using 5 - 10 watts! I once had a 5+ hours power failure while my system was in S3. When power was restored, Powerchute indicated only 1 or 2 minutes less standby time than normal. I suspect that in S3 your UPS could keep your system just fine for DAYS!

[Gaurav]

Thanks garyc, i'll check out Active Exit.

I am using Hibernation and plan to continue using it (unless it misbehaves).
I don't disagree with you views on S3 but I just sleep better if my system is completely powered down when not in use (lets call it lack of trust in Microsoft).

Another advantage of Hibernation (for me) is it gets rid of the flashing blue light on the pc (which gets pretty irritating sometimes).

[jptaz]

garyc,

I must have one of those rare systems that is the opposite of what you suggest. S3 works horribly on my system. Most times it does not even wake up correctly where as Hibernate has never failed. I went months between actual shutdowns. I also agree with Gaurav that the blinking blue light is very annoying and there was no way to disable this feature on my system. Of course I have another PC in the Kitchen that I only use S3 on that has been perfectly stable for the same period of months and does not have the blinking blue light.

I say do what works best for your setup as I have had two different systems behave completely opposite of each other.

[jptaz]

mwhitlock,

I have never had suspend after recording work on my system. How do you determine if no user interaction has occurred? Is network activity considered user activty?

On my system I use Rs Sonifero to put the system to sleep after 30 minutes of CPU activity under 25% as normal sleep timeouts fail because of communication via the network with the network encoders. I wonder if the same thing is happening with the suspend after recording feature in SageWake.

NOTE: I am not asking you to try and fix something it is more out of academic curiosity.

Thanks John

[garyc]

jptaz,

I have seen systems that work both ways -- and I certainly agree that the best thing to use is whichever works best on your system. My comment to Gaurav was just that with a UPS-protected system whether or not the UPS software could turn off the computer wasn't really much of a concern. Getting rid of the blinking blue light is a much better reason

[mwhitlock]

Originally posted by jptaz
I have never had suspend after recording work on my system. How do you determine if no user interaction has occurred? Is network activity considered user activty?

SageWake calls the Win32 API function IsSystemResumeAutomatic to determine if there has been user activity since it woke the system. It would make sense that if Windows File and Printer Sharing activity resets the idle timers, it would also cause this function to indicate that the user is active.

[Gaurav]

hey mwhitlock -

SageWake seems to be doing a perfect job but it seems something is going wrong after 5 or 6 cycles. The following has happened at least twice.

Background Info -
I have confugured Sage to startup in the tray and I use the --startup switch with SageWake.

Situation -
After i schedule all my recordings, i put Sage to sleep in the system tray and let the system go into standby. To make sure everythin's working, I wait for the pc to wake up for the first scheduled recording, record and go back to sleep.
Then i leave the pc to do its job and come back after two days to wake it manually.
I see 5 or 6 Sage icons in the tray (which indicates the number of sleep cycles).
The problem is that I also see a Sage window - black and frozen. I have to right click on the last Sage tray icon and choose to exit. I am positive that i did not leave the Sage window up as i did not see it on the first cycle. Even if i did, SageWake should have killed it. So where did this window come from ?

Please let me know how i can troubleshoot.

[jbuszkie]

I think someone else had this issue earlier in the tread. My computer won't automatically go into standy (S3) if I have Sage "sleeping". If Sage is awake and on the screen, then it will go to sleep after the inactivity period. HAs anyone been able to explain this behavior? It's not that big of a deal. I just won't sleep sage. But it would be nice to know why!

Jim

[mwhitlock]

How are you launching SageTV from SageWake? If you just launch the SageTV executable, it will not start up in the tray. As for the numerous Sage icons, see this post. Also, unless you're using external IR hardware, there is likely no need to shut down SageTV and restart it with every power cycle.

[Gaurav]

Originally posted by mwhitlock How are you launching SageTV from SageWake? If you just launch the SageTV executable, it will not start up in the tray

I use the --execute argument to invoke a batch file which calls "...\SageTV.exe -startup"

As for the numerous Sage icons, see this post

I wasn't complaining about the icons. Just mentioning that the number of icons indicates the number of cycles.

Also, unless you're using external IR hardware, there is likely no need to shut down SageTV and restart it with every power cycle

If i don't use the --terminate argument, Sage freezes up on resume. Besides i am using UIRT.

My question was -
since i am using the --terminate argument and i am also using "SageTV.exe -startup" to start sage in the tray mode, why does the Sage window appear after the pc has gone thru 5 or 6 sleep cycles ?

[mwhitlock]

Originally posted by Gaurav
My question was -
since i am using the --terminate argument and i am also using "SageTV.exe -startup" to start sage in the tray mode, why does the Sage window appear after the pc has gone thru 5 or 6 sleep cycles ?

That's a wonderful question. I didn't write SageTV, only SageWake.

[garyc]

I suspect a lot of the interaction issues are caused by or at least influenced by the following characteristic of Hauppage's capture cards (this was their response to a question I sent them regarding which of their capture cards worked best with S3 sleep mode):

None of our models are compliant with the S3 sleep state.
Thank you
Sales dept.

[mwhitlock]

Just recently (perhaps it's because I switched motherboards), my Hauppauge card has been acting strangely after resuming from S3. It never used to be a problem on my Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard, but now with my Gigabyte GA-7N400-L, I am experiencing problems. It seems that when the system resumes from S3, the encoder quits working entirely. SageTV will create files for shows that it is trying to record, but their file size stays at 0 and they are deleted automatically by Sage when the next show begins to record. I've had to add the terminate and execute arguments to my SageWake command line even though I don't use any external IR hardware. Oh well, it works fine except for that little annoyance with the multiple tray icons.

[garyc]

Based on the reply I got from Hauppage, I think I'll use hibernation (like Gaurav) instead of S3. Since the computer is then actually powering up, the card should work fine. This is a shame, since my system works perfectly in S3, and the system I plan on building next month for Sage will use the same motherboard -- but if Hauppage says their cards are not S3 compliant, I have to assume they will have some issues (as your experience suggests they do).

Gaurav -- did you give Active Exit a try? If you have any questions PM me.

[mwhitlock]

Ugh, now I'm having the same issues even on a fresh boot. I sometimes notice that it doesn't seem like there are any new programs showing up in the Recorded Shows listing, so I go to my PVR hard drive to see what's up and there won't have been any files created in days. Then I try to open up Live TV and I get a black video window with no audio. Progress bar does not move. A file is created on the disk for the live show I am trying to watch but its size remains at zero. I have verified that the same thing occurs when Sage tries to record a scheduled recording while it is asleep. The file will be created, its size will remain at zero, and when the recording finishes, the file is automatically deleted; that is why I do not see any new files in the past several days. Restarting SageTV manually seems to be fixing it, but this past time it did this from a fresh startup without ever having gone into any low power mode. How could SageTV mess up initializing the encoder at boot?