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Series 1 not downloading data

149K views 778 replies 167 participants last post by  rose33090 
#1 ·
I came home after being out of town and it seems that the last time my TiVo downloaded program data was on Oct 31st. The error shown was Failed - Call Interrupted. I checked the usual suspects - phone line good, no call waiting, tried manual call, tried calling with different phone number, etc. No go.

Then I did a few other things. Unplugged TiVo and phone line. Tried above again. No go.

Then I did what I regret most - tried going through Guided Setup. Have been stuck on the second call of Guided setup ever since.

Called TiVo support. Tech said that TiVo is attempting to download software updates. Apparently my Series 1 is still at software version 3, should be at 9. Why would it be so far behind? If it's been making daily calls shouldn't it have been updating this whole time?

Tech suggested I keep trying the second setup call because download will start where it left off. I'm on my seventh or eighth download attempt.

Has anyone encountered this before? Are there any other Series 1 owners out there that fell this far behind on software versions?

Thanks,
Alicia
 
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#253 ·
First, I re-read my post and I don't think I stated it the way I should have. I was responding to the post above me that said we should get discounts on new machines and of course keep our service. I was trying to say that I am am not asking for a discount on a new machine but we should be offered the ability to transfer our service if we BUY a new machine.

Second, I tried a couple of times last night, before I posted, to update the Tivo w/ no success, as stated previously. However, I woke up this moring telling me that I had 1% more left to finish processing. I came home from work and see that I now have program data for 2 more weeks. I guess if you say class action you get results :D. I'll check it tomorrow and see if all is still good.
 
#254 ·
in desperation, i tried the prefix dial trick and after a few tries i found one number that worked and got my way through most of guided setup. in the middle of it, i switched to turbonet, connected once and started downloading only to get interrupted and wouldn't connect after that. i switched back to dial up and that was still working and that's how i got through guided setup. it's now downloading program data. there's something definitely wrong with the web connections. it was so solid for so long and for it to deteriorate this bad is unconscionable on tivo's part.
 
#256 ·
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, my daily calls are now succeeding after I deleted the log files from my TiVo. To do so, you need to have Telnet access. Navigate to /var/log and delete all of the files in that directory.
 
#257 ·
For anyone with a turbonet card in an S1, engineering wants help getting a network fingerprint.

Using a Linux router or sniffer, wireshark (windows,linux) or tcpdump (linux), capture whole throughput to test failed calls and send me a PM so I can give you an email address to send the files to.
Annoying. I wanted to see if I could help test this, so I re-enabled dialout through TurboNet. Right off the bat I had a run of several back-to-back test calls failing to "connect", so I set up tcpdump to try to capture this "in progress". I was able to get in far enough while viewing (but not yet recording all activity) to see that I was actually receiving a "HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error" from 204.176.49.2 port 80 -- in other words, I was definitely connecting to *something*, but it was going bye-bye while in process.

So, I thought, I should be able to capture the raw datastream for TiVo's use to prove the point. Except, as soon as I set up tcpdump to write output to a file, I didn't get another 500 error in over a dozen tries. :mad:

So -- I can report that I was actually connecting to the TiVo service during my test call, and that I was receiving a server error from the HTTP server hanging off of the listed IP address. However, I can prove none of it, as I wasn't writing packets to a file at the time. Sorry. :(

Thought I'd report it here anyway, in case it's of any help.

I'll continue to TRY to use a TurboNet connection for the time being. Maybe I can catch the silly thing in the act again at some point.

BittMann
 
#258 ·
Answers to various people below...

dlee0708,

we need to find people near other people who can do the test if they can't. I am in Tacoma, Washington but no one besides us is saying where they are.

mec1991,

Thanks for the info!

dcstager,

At the link that mec1991 provided, all these numbers are exactly the same as what is already on my Tivo. I don't understand why you thought they would be different numbers. Maybe you thought I had not called Tivo in a long time so there would be new numbers. I had called in recently before I did the Guided Setup. (Yes, I had intermittent problems but no way as severe as others have described.) Also.. I was getting through the download of the numbers anyway. The Setup Call has almost always worked. What messes up is the Program Call.

Bittmann,

WTG!!!

Did you send this info to TivoJerry? I know you said you could not prove it, but they might not require you to be able to prove it before they do anything. We can't assume that Tivo is reading through this thread when most of it is not going to provide info that helps them.

In the interest of time, I PMed TivoJerry about your response on this thread.

Brenda
 
#259 ·
my modem call failed in the program call part - just as expected. i tried turbonet again just for the heck of it and it got through to the program call download then failed. it refused to connect after that. this is consistent with the report about an http 500 server error. the web-app server typically needs a reset after that and won't take any more connections. unless they have a restart scripted if the condition is detected, someone will have to reset the web-app server. it sounds like there's a new version of web-app code that is cr@pping out all over the place.
 
#260 ·
Answers to various people below...

dlee0708,

we need to find people near other people who can do the test if they can't. I am in Tacoma, Washington but no one besides us is saying where they are.
I'm in Bainbridge Island, WA. Our Sony Series I uses a modem. We've noticed some failing calls lately, but when I checked last night the last scheduled call was sucessful.

Since we don't check the settings screen everyday, I don't know if the recent failed calls are random or related to the issues in this thread. I can tell you that this unit has never ran out of program data, so it never failed to complete a call for longer than a few days.
 
#261 ·
Broke down and pulled the drive.

Renamed one of the log files because I thought that was what one report had said to do. Did not work with 1 call.

Pulled drive again. Renamed log directory. I think the first time I got the Call interrupted error. Tried again and went to bed while it was working. Woke up and it said Service unavailable. Tried again.. and it completed way too fast. It just immediately marked the items as Done. (Well I dont remember if it did the Connecting, setting the clock thing.. but only took a few minutes and not 20-30.) Now it is saying it needs to process the data for 4-8 hours.

I still cannot telnet. Is this because it is processing the data, or is it going to be that something else is wrong? I do not have a light anymore for the Tivo on the router. I had it throughout trying to fix this problem until now.
 
#262 ·
I'm in Bainbridge Island, WA. Our Sony Series I uses a modem. We've noticed some failing calls lately, but when I checked last night the last scheduled call was sucessful.

Since we don't check the settings screen everyday, I don't know if the recent failed calls are random or related to the issues in this thread. I can tell you that this unit has never ran out of program data, so it never failed to complete a call for longer than a few days.
Dancar, the only reason I knew I had a problem was because I was checking the screens. I did not find the problem because of getting an out of program data message. I just noticed that some shows would have no description.. so I went in and would see the Call Interrupted message. Just figured the modem was getting flaky until I tried to do a Guided Setup. Then I could not get out of it until I renamed the log directory.

I would say keep checking your screen every day and see if you are getting a lot of the messages. If so, don't do a Guided Setup. I would say force it if it if you got the message because no telling when you might get hit hard.

I am not sure where Bainbridge Island is.. but do you have the equipment they mention such as a router or sniffer that can do a traceroute? (I am in Tacoma)
 
#263 ·
a sniffer is just a computer that can inspect network packets and their contents. the tcpdump described somewhere on the thread can provide some of that information. a traceroute (tracert on some computers) is a command on most OS's showing hops from router to router from an originating computer to a destination host or ip address (example tracert www.tivo.com) . traceroute can show latency or where the connection's route is failing or timing out.
 
#264 ·
Is there not anyone in the Dallas Area (with a couple of hours) that I can hook up my network sniffer too?:confused:
Just an update. I just sent my hub to my mom, so hopefully in a couple of days I can get her to put the hub in place and I think I already loaded wireshark on her computer and will be able to capture the traffic and send to Tivo Engineering as TivoJerry has asked.

One thing, I am not sure my moms problem is exactly the same as everyone elses. She cannot complete a test call or daily call at all. It never gets past the connecting stage. It does have some network connectivity because I had her log into the router she could see the IP address and then I had my her ping the Tivo IP address and it responded. So I am assuming its able to get a connection outside the router, but I can't be for sure. There is only one other person on here I believe that had the same similar symptoms. Everyone else seems to be able to get past the connecting stage.
 
#265 ·
...
I am not sure where Bainbridge Island is.. but do you have the equipment they mention such as a router or sniffer that can do a traceroute? (I am in Tacoma)
You can get a the wireshark sniffer free at http://www.wireshark.org/download.html . You can load this onto your computer and see all the network traffic coming to and from your computer.

The trick is to see the network traffic to/from the Tivo. It used to be all you had to do is get a hub, connect the hub to your router, then connect the Tivo and your computer to the hub and you are set.

The problem is all the multi-connection devices now are Ethernet Switches which reduce network traffic by only sending data to your computer that are addressed to your computer instead of all the traffic. Therefore your computer (and therefore wireshark) can't see any data sent/received to the Tivo that goes to Tivo Inc. I went to Frys and I couldn't even find a hub. But I ended digging thru all my old junk and finally found an old one.

So unless you can get a hold of an old dumb hub (or if you have a real expensive Ethernet switch with management capabilites to turn on a port to receive all data) then the sniffer isn't going to help.
 
#266 ·
Just an update. I just sent my hub to my mom, so hopefully in a couple of days I can get her to put the hub in place and I think I already loaded wireshark on her computer and will be able to capture the traffic and send to Tivo Engineering as TivoJerry has asked.

One thing, I am not sure my moms problem is exactly the same as everyone elses. She cannot complete a test call or daily call at all. It never gets past the connecting stage. It does have some network connectivity because I had her log into the router she could see the IP address and then I had my her ping the Tivo IP address and it responded. So I am assuming its able to get a connection outside the router, but I can't be for sure. There is only one other person on here I believe that had the same similar symptoms. Everyone else seems to be able to get past the connecting stage.
i've had problems not getting past the "connecting" stage. yesterday, it changed and i got past it (only to fail at download). once it failed, though, it will continue to fail until something changes on the other side. last night i quit after it started failing on "connecting" again using turbonet. will try again later...
 
#267 ·
It seems to me, that once it misses the daily call your in trouble. For instance if I'm 12 days behind it took 12 calls to catch up. (Providing it's able to connect and get to downloading). It hits the "call interrupted" message it seems, for the end of each day of the download.

Monty
 
#270 ·
I've been having this problem since early December too. I can do test calls and force daily calls and only about 1 out of 4 go through, and of those that do, only about 1 out of 3 test calls succeed, and only about 1 out of 4-5 daily calls succeed.

It seems to me, that once it misses the daily call your in trouble. For instance if I'm 12 days behind it took 12 calls to catch up. (Providing it's able to connect and get to downloading). It hits the "call interrupted" message it seems, for the end of each day of the download.
This isn't my experience, but I would think the more days you are behind, the more data you would have to download to catch up, which means a longer phone call and more chance you get disconnected by one of these weird errors. I ran out of guide data completely on two of my tivos which is how I discovered the problem, but I didn't have to make 12 calls, only about 6 to get a successful download. The first tivo that ran out of data I assumed was because of a fluke of having 3 tivos on the same phone line competing to download while using the same line for voice calls. When it happened to another tivo I kept an eye on it and realized most of the calls were failing.
 
#273 ·
Did you send this info to TivoJerry? I know you said you could not prove it...
No, I didn't, because I couldn't prove it (and besides, it could've been a red herring anyway). But, while flailing around mightily earlier tonight, I *may* have been able to capture a series of forced connections that had "issues", and also the final forced connection that actually completed the job. So, I PMed TivoJerry, and we'll see if he thinks that this will contribute anything usable.

What I did notice -- the connection does seem to be somewhat "progressive". My first attempt actually shoveled across quite a few packets, my second, third, and fourth transferred less than 1/10th of the number of packets as compared to the first transfer, then my 5th (and successful!) transfer barely transferred more data than the 3 previous small "unsuccessful" transfers...but nevertheless, the TiVo liked the last transfer and went into "loading data". So, seems that when you do connect, the transfers can be (for want of a better word) "cumulative".

That may explain why clearing the logfiles actually helps -- if there isn't any accumulated data to cumulatively transfer (;)), you don't have the problem of the upload stalling out, so the download can simply roll.

BittMann
 
#274 ·
Finally, PROGRESS!!!:eek:

ps. I'm not going to try and finish my guided setup until there's some kind of resolution.
Just my $0.02 here. TivoJerry has asked for network data on a failing Tivo so they can figure on which end is breaking almost a week ago and we haven't been able to get them the data, so its not like they haven't been trying.

I hope to be able to get the Network data early next week when my mom gets my hub.
 
#275 ·
Various responses below..

I know I'm opening up a can of worms for my PM inbox, but for anyone affected by this can you send me your TSN. I have been given something to try and need a few volunteers.
:-D

Hmm... I wonder what the lead is.. I PM'ed him about renaming the log directory fixing my issue and he responded by asking for my TSN. I am a dialup user. I also offered to upload him my log directory because I renamed it.. I did not delete it. But he did not respond to that part of the PM. So I asked again if he wants it. Maybe he didn't respond because it would not do them any good.
--
dlee0708 and others thanks for the info on wireshark etc

dlee0708,

Yes, we need to be thankful that Tivo is even bothering.. because many companies would have told us too bad, your stuff is too old for us to care. They have been trying to get info out of us and we have not been giving them what they need.

About the connection issue... yes I sometimes can't connect but it is almost always the downloading failed error. There are also people who get Service Unavailable who fix it by deleting the log directory.
--
I fixed the telnet by doing stuff like rebooting the Tivo and computer and fiddling with the router settings. I do not know if it was related to getting stuck in Guided Setup or not. It did coincide with it.

BrendaG4
 
#276 ·
Just my $0.02 here. TivoJerry has asked for network data on a failing Tivo so they can figure on which end is breaking almost a week ago and we haven't been able to get them the data, so its not like they haven't been trying.

I hope to be able to get the Network data early next week when my mom gets my hub.
i know people have been trying, but this is the first i hear that there is "something to try" from engineering and not trying to find out what's wrong with the hundreds of S1's failing right now, which is what the CSR's will try to do if you call...
 
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