Unhappy Tivo

[Newmattie]

Hi all,

I've scoured the forum and found many a similar topic, but not all have the same symptoms. I'll start at the beginning...

I have a Tivo (series 1) and last week I successfully installed a Cachecard, managed to make the daily call from it (in fact, I disconnected the modem cable!), set up TivoWebPlus and it was all great...

As of yesterday, my Tivo will no longer make its daily call using the Cachecard. However, I checked and I could still run TivoWebPlus, I could FTP and Telnet, it's just that the Tivo doesn't even want to attempt to make the call using the card. I also noticed that the Tivo was not responding as quickly as it used to to the remote control commands.

This evening, I tried and plugged the modem cable back in, I did a full reset (which I don't think made any difference), went through guided setup and when it came to make the call, (at this point the modem cable was still in), I let it start with the modem cable, then part way through, pulled it out, and I could see from the router that there was network activity.

In a fit of frustration (and don't ask me how I did it!) I managed to wipe TivoWebPlus (except for a couple of directories that won't shift) and now it doesn't appear to want to reinstall (but I'll come to this later).

I also noticed that the "Backdoors enabled" and extra info on the System info screen has now gone (not sure if this is connected to TivoWebPlus or not...)

My main concern is that I may have goosed my Tivo (or semi-goosed it!) i can still watch, record, playback and everything you'd expect, but the UI is now sometimes slow to respond, plus it appears that the cachecard install is now only partly functional (I can access it internally, but it doesn't want to play ball outside).

Firstly, I thought that there may be a default 40Gb image I could revert to (I attempted a backup, but it didn't go all to plan, so I have no backup) - can anyone confirm if such a thing exists and if so, how do I go about getting a re-image (and how much is this)

Then, I thought I'd spend a good couple of hours trawling the forums. There are many similar cases, but none exactly the same.

As you can see, I'm new to Tivo, have limited Unix experience, but at this stage I'm willing to try anything to get my Tivo to its former glory.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

System info:

Manufacturer: Thomson
SW ver: 2.5.5-01-1-023
Tivo svc no: 023-0000-xxxx-xyy
Ac Status: 5: Lifetime
Rec cap: 1 hrs, 55 min (best)
40 hrs, 34 min (basic)
Prog source1: Digital Cable/DTT
Source input1: Scart, L/R Audio
Prog Source 2: Aerial Only
Source in 2: Aerial Only

Cachecard Info:

IP: 192.168.1.200
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
Daily call by: Network

Thanks for reading. Hope you can help.

Cheers,
Matt

[ColinYounger]

Matt - lots of info there - great stuff. :up:

I don't believe you don't need a new image - that's a last resort for really stuffed Tivos. Yours is not that.

First, why can't you re-install TivowebPlus? Messages, etc, please.

When you reboot, does the cachecard screen come up and the caching start? Or don't you have any memory in the cachecard?

When you've got TivowebPlus back, we can look at the tvlog and Otvlog files to see what's happening during the daily call.

[verses]

Rec cap: 1 hrs, 55 min (best)
40 hrs, 34 min (basic)


Can you confirm that the best capacity is a typo, please?

Cheers,

Ian

[ColinYounger]

Nice spot, Ian!

[katman]

Tivo svc no: 023-0000-xxxx-xyy

I think thats the problem.....

should be Tivo svc no: 023-0000-xxxx-yyy :) :)

[Newmattie]

Hi,

Thanks for your responses. As you can see from the initial post, it was quite late last night when I wrote it, so that probably explains the errors :)

The service number:
023-0000-6023-xxyy

Recording quality:
11 hrs 55 mins (best quality) (an easy typo to make at 3 in the morning!)
40 hrs 34 mins (basic quality)

I've got Tivowebplus back installed - I think part of the reason why I couldn't get it installed again before was pure user error. I installed 1.3, then used the upgrade option to go to 2.0 and it's working fine.

The cachecard screen does come up on reboot, it goes through its motions (writing, caching, verifying) and takes a couple of minutes to do that. (There's 512Mb RAM on the card).

The network card seems to take an extra couple of minutes once the system is all up and running to become active. I can tell as soon as it becomes active, because (1) I try to ping it and (2) the light on my router comes on to show that it has a link. The link light on the cachecard is on practically straight away. This behaviour is new, as previously I was able to ping 192.168.1.200 and get a reply while it was still caching.

Here's my tvlog and otvlog - I've put them as attachments, as they're quite large.

I've just tried a test call using the network, and also a daily call, and they both failed :(

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,
Matt

[blindlemon]

Could you list the contents of your /etc/rc.d/rc.net file please?

Can you ping the TiVo server at 204.176.49.32 from the TiVo bash prompt?

The logs that would be of most use are tclient and Otclient.

[Newmattie]

Hi all,

Well, I was having another look round before I saw your last post and looked at my rc.sysinit.author file and there was an if statement, that basically said if rc.sysinit.author exists then run it... (I think this got put in from the TivoWebPlus modification to make TivoWebPlus automatically start up...which didn't work, and now I see why!)

So, I removed it, so my rc.sysinit.author just looks like this:
#!/bin/bash

Rebooted and all was fine - network started working just after the cachecard had done its stuff.

So, I added the line to make TivoWebPlus start up automatically...and after some more reading, I gathered that this was the best way to do it:

#!/bin/bash
/var/hacks/TivoWebPlus/tivoweb start >/dev/null 2>&1 &

All working fine now - panic over :)

Now I just have one more question. Now I've got it exactly as I like it, I'd like to create a default backup image. On my home PC I use PowerQuest Drive Image Pro, which supports booting from a floppy and can support backing up of partitions or whole drives. I also use Norton Ghost 9 (on my laptop) which supports booting from a CD and creating images directly on to my USB drive. Can I use any of these to back up the hard drives so that I can keep an image on DVD in case anything ever happens in the future?

Cheers for all your help again.

Matt

[cwaring]

Now I just have one more question. Now I've got it exactly as I like it, I'd like to create a default backup image. On my home PC I use PowerQuest Drive Image Pro, which supports booting from a floppy and can support backing up of partitions or whole drives. I also use Norton Ghost 9 (on my laptop) which supports booting from a CD and creating images directly on to my USB drive. Can I use any of these to back up the hard drives so that I can keep an image on DVD in case anything ever happens in the future?
In a word... no.

The only way to make a backup image of a Tivo is to use the Hinsdale Guide (http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/index9.html).

[Newmattie]

In a word... no.

The only way to make a backup image of a Tivo is to use the Hinsdale Guide (http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/index9.html).

Ah, that's a shame - would make life a lot easier :)

I've followed the instructions and done a backup. As I'd recently reset the Tivo, there was nothing on it, so it's done a tivo.bak of about 310Mb.

Is there anything on Windows that could open the .bak files? I'm curious to see how it's all laid out (I do have it backed up onto CD!)

Cheers for your help again.

Matt

[cwaring]

No, I don't think so. Linux might though as that's the OS Tivo is based on.

[Newmattie]

Not a big deal, just curious, really. At least it's backed up.

Cheers,
Matt