Upgrade what am i doing wrong

[splice9680]

First off absolutely brilliant forum, a minefield of advise and useful information, just a shame i don't understand it all,as hard as i try.I have had a uk tivo now for around 4 years. i upgraded to a 120 gig after 2 years due to the 40 gig drive starting to get a little noisy. i used mfs tools 1.0. after the initial struggle with the learning curve i managed to get it up and running. all was fine right up till a few weeks ago when this drive started to get noisy. so as i saw on offer samsung 250gig hard drives i thought i would buy 2 and give my tivo a proper upgrade. well that was the plan anyway... after racking my brain to remember how i did it before and armed with mfs tools 2 with large disc support. i finally got it up and running, but 2 days later i noticed that when playing back the recordings, some would just jump forward randomly, for example i was watching a program and it gets to 16 mins then instantly go's to 36mins, strange thing is you could rewind it back through the missing part it ,also at the point of the jump it would slightly pixelate or change to a different program that's in the recording buffer from the previous half hour of the channel tivo was tuned to. sometimes it would just show this breakthrough of the buffer for a couple of secs and play the remaining part of the program perfectly. The third and final stage is FREEZE!!!! picture freezes and you are forced to disconnect mains. then on rebooting STUCK on welcome screen, never gets to almost there.
My first step was to reinstall 1 of the drives and install that to see if the problem was caused by some sort of overload on the power supply. again all was well for a couple of days and the same events occurred again. i then reinstalled the other 250gb hard drive. and i found that every couple of days giving it a restart seemed to prevent the problem re-appearing, well till this evening that is, after a week it has frozen again, and is now stuck on welcome screen again. HELP please someone tell me what the heck am i doing wrong. i don't want to go through this all again. the only thing i can think of is my problem is connected with v2 of mfstools, i have looked at the thread about the mfs tools bugs but i'm still no wiser as to where the problem lies. my only guess is that it's something to do with swap size but after following all the instructions i am no further forward. I keep losing all my recordings each time this happens and its very frustrating. can someone link me to the exact version of mfstools v2 that i need and also if anyone can help with an image 2.5 for uk tivo as the only one i have is the one on the 40gb original drive, and i am starting to wonder if this could be part of the problem. please can one of you tivo experts advise me in simple terms how to get myself out of this very annoying situation. thanks guys.........or gals of course. :)

all the best. splice :up:

[chrisd]

Ever hear of using paragraphs? :D

Anywhoo. You say you need an image file as the only one you have is on your original drive, so how did you get your two new drives up and running? :confused: :confused:

If you do need an image, post in the below thread and someone may PM you.
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=113155&page=31&pp=30

[splice9680]

ha ha :rolleyes: Fair Point regarding the Paragraphs, but it was late when i posted.
To describe the problems i have been having are difficult to convey into a post.especially my first ever post :D .

The Image on my 40gb was the one i used to set up the samsung, but i am beginning to wonder if there is a problem with this image that may be causing all the problems, i really am just guessing on this.

If Someone is able to maybe point out to me where i am going wrong then i will give it another go with the original image once again.
Oh and be gentle with me......relative newbie

splice............ :)

[Rob Nespor Bellis]

My guess would be that you are not installing the new LBA48 aware kernel, mfstools does not do this.

If you do not install the kernel ( and also using >127MB swap ) then your TiVo will not be able to use any disk above 137GB and the swap will not be initialised.

What backup/restore commands did you use. Exactly which boot cd's did you use?

Rgds,

R.

[Nebulous]

It may be worth running a diagnostic on your drives, it could be one or both of them are faulty. Hunt around on the Samsung web site for "hutil". Run the full surface scan ( takes 2 - 3 hours ) and see if it comes up with any errors.

[blindlemon]

Use the PTVUpgrae LBA48 boot CD, version 1.0 (http://www.tivoheaven.com/download/ptv-mfstools2-large-disk.iso) and your existing image with the following command:-

mfsrestore -s 300 -r4 -xzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdX /dev/hdY

then run copykern from the CD and choose kernel option 1.

Voila :)

[splice9680]

thanks for the help, i have just set my Tivo up once again with the original image using the above command, Thanks blindlemon for the info.also rob it seems your spot on regarding the not installing of the kernel, hey ho you live and learn.

Not doing the copykern bit of the operation was probably the reason for all the problems. But would the problems from not doing this only appear after several days of normal use, or would it normally show up straightaway.

i am a little confused about the -s 300 as i thought that if you set a figure of above 127 then you get no swap file. Also what's the -r4 as i have not seen that before either.

Anyway i am currently doing my daily call so all is good so far. the test will be in 3 or 4 days time, which is where it has been playing up each time. I will post the outcome either way.
Thanks again for the speedy help. it's mucho appreciated. :up:

All the best.....Splice ;)

[blindlemon]

Problems with the lack of a LBA48 kernel won't show up until you have a recording with a block that's supposed to live past the 137gb boundary.

-s 300 sets the swapsize to 300mb - enough for 2x300gb drives and copykern initialises the swap header correctly to compensate for the bug in Mfstools you alluded to.

-r4 sets the blocksize to a larger value than the default and with large drives (> 300gb) it prevents problems with the 274gb partition size limit by reducing the depth of the MFS node map. With a 250gb drive it's not strictly required, but should have no adverse and some people believe this gives faster/smoother operation.

[splice9680]

I have just checked tivo status and. the daily call did not work. it connects fine but says "failed when loading series". I have forced another call, but the same error has occured. If i make a test call it reports sucess..
I've had a quick look on the forums and some say lack of swap file could be the problem. Please can someone tell me a way of getting this sorted without taking the tivo apart again.

All the best.....Splice :confused:

[splice9680]

Thanks for the info blindlemon, my tivo has uploaded some data but still it's coming up with this failed to load series error. This is the first time i have ever had this issue, do you think theres a possibility that the problem is down to using the above command with just a single 250gb hard drive installed.

all the best.......Splice

[splice9680]

Update... I am still getting the incomplete updates with the error message "failed to load series" yesterday i did the install again using the instructions from steve conrad at http://www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo/upgrade3.html again using the ptv upgrade lba48 boot disc. i put the tivo drive in typed from the prompt...

mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos

then to do the backup i used...

mfsbackup -l 32 -6so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc
backup was successful

then i put the samsung 250gb hard drive into the pc and typed...

mkdir /mnt/dos
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos

restore -x -s 300 -zpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdc

restore was successful

i then typed copykern and used the no 1 option to initialise swap

Job done.

Then installed hard drive into tivo and started off the daily call, yet again.
I got up this morning and checked tivo........

"failed to load series" :mad:

so now i have tried both of these methods does anyone have any idea as to why i am still getting this issue...
i am trying to use just the one 250gb hard drive so should i be setting the swap as -s 127 maybe

any help appreciated..

thanks.

all the best.... Splice. :up:

[Ian_m]

Been there done that, got that error message. In may case no swap file. Actually swap file not initialised.

I think I may have used the wrong version of the LBA48 CD (should use version 1?).

I recovered mine by initialising the swap file by hand (found out how to do it in Underground/Upgrade forum), but didn't really matter in my case as this was a temporary fiddle whilst I waited for delivery of my pre-configured drive.

[splice9680]

Thanks for the reply. Yesterday i tried again and this time i used the usual mfsrestore command but used -s 127. put the drive inthe Tivo, and yet again Failed while loading series.

Then last night after spending a couple of hours trawling the forums i decided to clear data as some people were claiming that this issue was due to corrupt data.

When all Data was cleared. i forced the daily call and when to bed. this morning "Success" :D :D

Its a bit of pain setting up the wishlists and season passes again but if it cures the problem then it's worth it.

I will leave it alone for a couple of days now and see if it re-occurs..

Fingers and toes crossed.. :D

all the best.... splice.. :)

[splice9680]

update..... So far so good, my Tivo did its daily call this morning and it's still showing "success", so it does seem that there was corruption in the guide data somewhere. I think the corruption must be on my original 40gb drive, therefore each time i was doing the backup/restore i was obviously never able to get a successful upgrade. I will give it a couple of days then i will make a backup of the working image and save it to dvd for safekeeping.....

All the best...........Splice