Suspend and resume with SageTV

[aberson]

Just decided to check out sagewake - it looks pretty cool. Thanks for all the time and effort!

I realize this thread is pretty dead and there have been no recent updates to SageWake, but maybe somebody is listening. Here are a few pretty useful features I'd vote to see:


Stay awake at preset time - This solves part of the problem where you can't wake your PC using the remote only, for those of us who run a "headless" setup. The idea is this - let's say I normally get home at 7pm and I go to sleep around 2am. So that I won't have to go into the closet to manually wake the machine, I'd just program sagewake to never allow sleep between 6p and 3a (if it had this suggested feature). I might want different times for weekday/weekends, or maybe each day of the week individually.


Scheduled Reboot - right now I have a daily reboot set to run at 5:20am, since that appears to be the best time for it based on my upcoming recordings. However, it would be great if sagewake, as part of analyzing the schedule.txt, could be set to run a reboot instead of a sleep. For example, I could tell it that if there hasn't been a reboot within the past 24 hours, the next time it decides it should sleep it should instead reboot (and then sleep/hibernate?). This ensures that rebooting happens at a time when there are no recordings going on.


Is there anything that keeps sagewake from allowing a suspend during playback? I'm assuming there isn't. Is that sort of data written to a file anywhere that could be monitored? I know sageweb has access to that, but it is java and all. Anyway, assuming that nothing prevents a suspend during playback [assume I'm autoskipping commercials on a movie and not touching the remote], here's another feature suggestion.

Additional "warn" - I have my sage PC in a closet and I watch through the tvout on a PVR350. So the "about to sleep" warn dialog box probably wouldn't do much for me. What I would like to see is the ablility to execute a command at warn time. In my particular case, I'd probably set up the command to be a batch file which uses sendmessage to pause Sage and then plays a sound. Both of these things should get my attention, plus it requires me to hit "play" to unpause the show, which should reset the sleep timer (?)

Though, that brings up a good question - if I am using system messages to control sage, are those considered "Activity" enough to not suspend? If so, then my little batch script would reset the timer and never allow me to never suspend, wouldn't it...


Sorry if these features are redundant with something already existing, I wrote all these comments just based on sorting through the thread here and looking at SageWake.txt - maybe I missed something.

Thanks!
Adam

[henk99]

Hi Adam

I don't know if you know this, but are you aware that sagetv can wake up and shut down your system?
I was very active in this thread for a while, because i wasn't aware that sagetv could do a lot of these things. I was very busy trying to get sagewake to work like i wanted it to, when someone told me sagetv can handle the suspend and wake part. This lead me to remove the sagewake part and now everything runs smoothly. My computer goes to standby after 10 minutes of inactivity and wakes up about 3-4 times in 24 hours. Last week it did so without any intervention and recorded over 20 shows without a hick-up.
I don't know if sagetv can do all the other things you look for. However the being awake at certain hours can be set by a task in windows or even by bios settings. My bios allows me to wake the computer at certain hours of the day.

Perhaps my answer to your question was very redundant and perhaps you already knew all of this. If not, you can use it

Henk99

[aberson]

I dug around a little bit inside sage, kinda thinking that it could handle this stuff for me, almost as if I'd seen it before, but I didn't find it. Maybe I'm not using a recent enough version? What version do I need and where do I look to configure it?

Thanks!
Adam

[henk99]

Originally Posted by aberson

I dug around a little bit inside sage, kinda thinking that it could handle this stuff for me, almost as if I'd seen it before, but I didn't find it. Maybe I'm not using a recent enough version? What version do I need and where do I look to configure it?

Thanks!
Adam

Don't quote me on this, but as far as i know it is not configurable in Sagetv. At least, i didn't configure anything. I think it was first introduced in the 2.2 version. I had 2.1 before that. Now i have 2.2.7 and it works fine. The only thing you have to set are the windows power options. All of those are at 'never' except the stanby one. I have that at 10 minutes. Also you have to set in your computers bios that you want to go to S3. And i have also set to allow wake up from a USB device. So i wake it with a mouse-click.

[thomaszoo]

I have been using SageWake since day 1. I know that I could probably stop using it now with the current version of Sage, but I am following the old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" (actually I am too lazy to test it). One caveat, I am pretty sure for Sage to wake up the PC it has to be running as a service.

I like your idea of "Stay awake at preset time". I think SageWake has the opposite (don't wake me between preset times for manual, favorite and/or intelligent recordings). My problem is that if I pause Sage for too long the PC goes into suspend. I wish that it didn't see the PC as inactive just because Sage is paused.

I like your other idea of a "Scheduled Reboot". I currently do this via Task Manager and some other apps. But unfortunately, they do not look to see if there is a recording scheduled for that time.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

I am pretty sure for Sage to wake up the PC it has to be running as a service.

No -- While SageTV would have to be running, it shouldn't have to be used in service mode.

- Andy

[jptaz]

I have never had any success with SageTV built in power management. After it wakes it does not properly tune with my Actisys IR Blaster and I do not like the fact that it passively prevents sleep. SageWake will actually deny a sleep request if it recording on the off chance some one were to hit the power button or try to sleep. SageTV simply resets the sleep timers.

My Server stays running 24x7 now, but if the UPS kicks in and hibernates I want to know 100% that when the power comes back or the next recording event occurs it will wake up and work. For over 9 months SageWake worked perfectly and still does, why rock the boat.

John

[churcj2]

I've recently made another stab at using power management on my PC.
I've set my bios to go to S3 and to poweron via ps2 keyboard/mouse - which doesn't seem to work, but I think that is because its not a true PS keyboard/mouse (logitech wireless duo - usb to some PS2 adatper).

To test the system I shutdown -> standby from windows start last night, but my earily morning (2am show) didn't wake the PC.

Reading the SageTV manual it says if Windows shutdown because of inactivity, sage would set a timer. Does this timer not get set if I tell windows to go into standby?

[jphhughes]

I'm using Windows standby with SageTV and its works ok. I say ok because its not perfect. I find if I set SagTV to start in the system tray I tend to have problems. Also make sure you put Sage to Sleep before going into standby, I find that if I don't put it to sleep it causes problems.

[churcj2]

Just to clarify something.

I'm running sagetv as a service. The sagetv application I shutdown after view.

My system went into standby over night, but when I brought it backup it failed to initialize the Infrared and the PVR 250 tuner. I have this problem when windows shutdowns down unexpectantly. Didn't expect to see this on a standby resume. Kind of odd. I'm thinking I might have to do without this feature .

[ukmgranger]

Originally Posted by jphhughes

I'm using Windows standby with SageTV and its works ok. I say ok because its not perfect. I find if I set SagTV to start in the system tray I tend to have problems. Also make sure you put Sage to Sleep before going into standby, I find that if I don't put it to sleep it causes problems.

What kind of problems do you talk about?

I am having problems with jerky playback once my system comes out of sleep. Are these the kind of issues you mean?

[jphhughes]

No, more like churcj2 refers to in his last response. When I used the service I have problems with SageTV and Standby. The most reliable mode of operation for me is to just put SageTV to sleeep go into standby and them everything seems to work fine. It comes out of Standby and records and then returns to standby when finished recording. I have not had any problems with jerky playback after coming out of standby(knock on wood). regards,

[mwhitlock]

I realize I've disappeared from here for a while. I've rewritten a substantial portion of SageWake, and I'm ready to release its source code for the eager programmers out there to dissect and debug if they dare.

I can't make any guarantees about SageWake at the moment. I may have broken some stuff in it, so thorough testing is in order.

• significant recoding
• improved command line option processing
• makes use of the CRT library security improvements in Visual C++ 2005
• upcoming shows list is now properly sorted
• source code released

IMPORTANT: The executable now requires the Visual C++ 2005 runtime libraries. Microsoft has not yet released a redistributable package of these libraries apart from the gigantic .NET Framework 2.0 package, but they included such a redistributable package with Visual C++ 2005, and I have made it available at http://www.whitsoftdev.com/files/vcredist_x86.exe.

A note for compiling the source code: it makes use of my stdext library, which can be obtained at http://www.whitsoftdev.com/stdext/. You only have to bother with this if you want to compile SageWake from the source code yourself.

[thomaszoo]

I won't get a chance to test this until this weekend, but just by coincidence I started having problems with my HTPC not going back to sleep after a recording. I'm hoping that this will do the trick.

I must say that I am suprised to see you back. I just figured that the power management now built into Sage was enough for most everybody. Thanks.

Wayne

[mwhitlock]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

I must say that I am suprised to see you back. I just figured that the power management now built into Sage was enough for most everybody. Thanks.

I don't use SageWake myself anymore, but I figured I had an obligation to at least get the code to a stable point to release it so someone else could take a hack at it if they want to.

[amac]

Does anyone know how often the server resets the PC clock?

I'm going to give Sagewake one more try while I wait for Sage to fix a power management bug (where they have to reset the IR.EXE when they reset the capture card).

I had given up on Sagewake because of a problem I was experiencing identical to the post by Henk99 http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...&postcount=320

Sagewake used to work fine for me and at some point it stopped working properly (as documented in the link above). I've now just realized I have SageTV set to synchronize my PC clock to its server clock. I'm not sure if the default setting for that property changed between 4.0 and 4.1 but I've now turned that off.

My early experience (over 2 hours) is that Sagewake seems to be working correctly again. I'm postulating that Sagewake's timer is being messed up by the PC clock being reset. Does anyone know how often the server resets the PC clock?

I'll post back in 24 hours if my results go negative.

[dbdan]

I've just tried using sagewake and I'm looking for a way to close an application that prevents windows from going into standby. Can sagewake close another application as soon as a recording is done? Thanks.

[mwhitlock]

SageWake does have an event that fires when a SageTV recording finishes, so conceivably some additional code could be inserted there to close down another application.

[dbdan]

Thanks mwhitlock. Is this something you can add to the utility? I realize you don't use the utility anymore, or get compensated for your work, but I wouldn't be able to do it myself. Thanks.

[amac]

Just wanted to tie this thread to an alternative approach I posted on another thread.
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=16522