6.4a Disaster

[bigjess]

6.4a Major Diaster

Hello all. Can someone help me out here please, beginning to loose my mind. I have two SD-DVr40's with Directv that were previously on 6.2a, zippered, tivowebplus'd, hackman'd, bufferhack'd, vserver'd, and mfs_ftp'd and all that was working flawlessly. My network is wired with a FA120 and a static IP assigned on the tivo, no DHCP. Then good ole Directv screwed up that party, and like others I lost my locals. So I was forced to upgrade to 6.4a. And this is where the party has ended. Since upgrading and reapplying the hacks, everything is unstable, the box (I only upgraded one so far) is constantly locking up, and I'm about ready to waive the white flag, not really sure what is wrong or what to do. Here's what I've done, below is what I've noticed. Please HELP. Thanks in advance!

(FYI Everything has been new fresh downloads)
Got instacake 6.4a from here: <dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/product1.cfm?SID=1&Product_ID=783&Category_ID=5&page=prod&ty pe=Model&ModelID=30>
Got the LBA48 Boot cd from here: <dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/lba48_bootcd.cfm>
Got zipper from here: <mastersav.com/tivo_zipper.html> and followed the instructions like last time to create the zipper cd (downloaded superpatch_6.4a_crashHD.tcl from here: <deal data base .com/forum/showthread.php?59161-6-4a-has-arrived&p=296769#post296769> and then extracted the 000001 from the instancake image and put the LBA48 Boot CD in the directory and made the iso and burned it to CD.)
Pulled the drive from the tivo, stuck it in the computer, and ran the CD, making sure the image extracted ok, it did, no errors.
Put the drive back in the tivo, let it boot up and reboot twice, and then ran the rbautch enhancement script. I didn't install tivowebplus in the enhancement script as it's not the latest version, more on that below. Enhancement script completeled successfully, and I rebooted.
Downloaded and ftp'd over the latest version of tivowebplus (tivowebplus-v2.1.b3-110622.tgz) from here: <sites.google.com/site/thomsontivo/tivowebplus4> (according to this post: <deal data base .com/forum/showthread.php?57373-TivoWebPlus-2-1-Testing-and-Development&p=314100#post314100>).
Downloaded and ftp'd over the latest version of hackman (hackman-V7.1.1.tgz) to the tivo from here: <tivohackman.com>
Installed both without error.
Followed this post: <deal data base .com/forum/showthread.php?42812-bufferhack-4-x-Support-Thread&p=298275#post298275>, patching bufferhack41.tcl with the bufferhack.diff.txt file which created bufferhack9x.tcl and ran it, successfully changing the buffer.
Installed mfs_ftp (so I can use Movieloader: <deal data base .com/forum/showthread.php?51987-MovieLoader-HME-meets-MFS_FTP> to replace the lost MRV functionality) by following these instructions: <dvrpedia.com/Mfs_ftp#Installation_-_Series_2> absolutely step by step, successfully. (Yes, it's in /enhancements and yes I did the links for the cache and port.3105.log files to be in /var/hack)
Installed setpri from here: <deal data base .com/forum/showthread.php?28312-Didn-t-I-see-a-MIPS-setpri&p=122238#post122238> since I was going to have Mfs_ftp running all the time [this step is new from when I had all this on 6.2a as I didn't keep mfs_ftp running all the time].
Edited rc.sysinit.author to start setpri, then vserver, then tivowebplus, then mfs_ftp.

At this point I have/HAD a somewhat stable box. I could watch live tv, and I could load files through Mfs_ftp and they would be playable. However, when I added all my season passes back (and I did it through the tivo's onscreen interface NOT tivowebplus as I know there has been a long outstanding bug there) it just totally spazzed. It would freeze and not record after a few hours and got progressively worse to the point where it would just lock up right after rebooting.

One big thing I noticed in Hackman was that the tivo was mounted writable. I thought this very odd, and rechecked rc.sysinit.author and it's not putting it writable anywhere that I saw and then not making it read only again. As the only difference between this new setup and old was the 6.4a software and the newer versions of tivowebplus and hackman. I do want to stop and note that I still have the other box on 6.2a, and other than missing the locals it works fine. The versions of tivowebplus and hackman on it are (tivowebplus-v2.1.b3-091208.tgz / hackman-V7.1.0.tgz). Only other change was mfs_ftp, but I followed the instructions on DVRPedia last time too, so I don't think much has changed there, it all still links to the old posts.

Things I tried to do to fix it was put a "mount -o remount,ro/" command at the end of rc.sysinit.author to make it read only. That would work as I would see in hackman it was readable at the end, but it didn't change stability. I #'d out starting setpri and mfs_ftp in rc.sysinit.author, it worked they didn't start automatically, but again didn't change stability.

I reloaded the d**n thing, twice now actually, being extra careful, all commands / patches / etc are fine, yet I can't figure out what is wrong. I can't figure out why it mounts writable from the reboot and why it's locking up so bad after the seasonpasses. I see lots to do in the to do list but ofcourse it freezes up and can't record anything. There could be other problems that I don't even know exists, but these are the issues I've noticed. I've tried to look at logs, but not sure where they are or even what I'd be looking for.

I have gotten to wonder if it's not something to do with the new tivowebplus and hackman versions. This post: <deal data base .com/forum/showthread.php?57373-TivoWebPlus-2-1-Testing-and-Development&p=314100#post314100> I refer to says the version I installed is the latest version that includes a bunch of bug and patch fixes that accumulated over the years. Other than major issues with 6.4a itself, this is the only addon's I can think of that would be causing the problems. While I'd rather have the latest versions, if I have to go back to the old ones to make it stable, so be it, but I need everything I have installed to work (tivowebplus/hackman/vserver/mfs_ftp/bufferhack).

I think that's everything. Can someone point me in the right direction? Much appreciated, thanks!!

[djl25]

It sounds like the upgrade from 6.2a to 6.4 is a major disaster for many people. Sorry to hear it. I just wanted to let you know that the differences between tivowebplus-v2.1.b3-091208 and tivowebplus-v2.1.b3-110622 aren't significant enough to explain the problems you're having. Also, it seems like later software versions (at least on my Tivo HD) seem to leave root mounted r/w after booting. Not sure why.

[Hichhiker]

Originally Posted by djl25

It sounds like the upgrade from 6.2a to 6.4 is a major disaster for many people. Sorry to hear it. I just wanted to let you know that the differences between tivowebplus-v2.1.b3-091208 and tivowebplus-v2.1.b3-110622 aren't significant enough to explain the problems you're having. Also, it seems like later software versions (at least on my Tivo HD) seem to leave root mounted r/w after booting. Not sure why.

Yeah, i gave up and downgraded back to 6.2. ALL THE PROBLEMS WENT AWAY and even locals are back and recording fine (not sure for how long though) In fact my 6.2's now work better than when I started - go figure.

I did do 6.4 update with and without various hacks - all resulted in highly unstable setups - so I doubt it has anything to do with any hacks you add to 6.4a.

I suspect the 6.4a is having issued with certain MFS setups, because the one box that was stable was the unused 6.2a box with clean setup. Looking at the log errors I found a number of people complaining about a similar issue with an update on standalone tivos that was linked to upgrading software on machines imaged using PTV/instantcake but I never saw resolution for the issue.

If it is MFS issue, here is something to try - do full "erase everything" from the menus before doing anything else, followed by MFS checkdisk (force the green screen) - see if this cures this. I could not do that as I was working hard to preserve the season passes and recordings.

Lastly, a tip if you are stuck with a box that becomes unresponsive or reboots as soon as you boot it - and you want to be able to run slicer, or poke around in the OS under TiVo hardware - go into the /etc/rc.d/StageF and comment out TvLauncher line in step 200. Note, that for whatever reason it never brings up networking in that case, so you will want to have serial console. This is how I managed to keep it stable enough to downgrade to 6.2.

HTH

-HH

[Ilovetorecord2]

Glad I read this post as I was going to do this with my tivo as I had completed downloading all the necessary files and directions.

How did you get 6.2 back (keeping recordings already on the tivo) or did you?

I replaced one of my tivos with the HR24 but with the extra $10 charge (I don't have HD tv) I decided it is not worth it so I am going to have the HR24 traded for the SD HR22. I replaced this tivo because I had problems with pixelation and was unable to fix it.

I updated my only directivo which has the 6.4 which I used the slicer to update. Then I saw how to get movie loader on it but I was unable to do that since I upgraded and I am trying to go back to 6.2 without losing my recordings on it.

I had only recently lost my local channels with 6.2 and since most of what I record is on local channels I had to get my tivos up and running, hence the HR24 for one tivo and 6.4 for the other.

Thanks.

Patrick

[Hichhiker]

Originally Posted by Ilovetorecord2

How did you get 6.2 back (keeping recordings already on the tivo) or did you?

Essentially, I used the 6.2 slices already in my tivo and used my own version of slicer (I wrote one a while back called "sliceUp", when we were all going 6.2 to 6.2a, it is somewhere in the forums - though I needed to tweak it a bit for going to 6.4a) - Since you already have slicer, it is probably the better and more tested choice.

Just run the slicer with the right version of slices (6.2a), and voila- all the recordings and season passes are back and tivos works again.

Check what you have in the MFS, the command is all over the forums - something like "echo mls /SwSystem | tivosh" - or you can also use TivoWeb MFS browser and go to /SwSystem.

One catch though - not sure why, but while I did not have an issue with going from 6.2 to 6.4 - both times going from 6.4 to 6.2 I somehow lost the hacked kernel and triggered the self-purging - which cleaned my partition of all the hacks. I ended up having to run the slicer, then pull the drive and re-do the zipper setup and verify the right partition was booting. Not sure if this is a weirdness of the 6.2 downgrade or a bug in my script - but it happened on both tivos. Either way - if you have custom non-zipper standard hacks and config - you may want to back them up before running downgrade.

HTH

-HH

[bigjess]

Originally Posted by djl25

It sounds like the upgrade from 6.2a to 6.4 is a major disaster for many people. Sorry to hear it. I just wanted to let you know that the differences between tivowebplus-v2.1.b3-091208 and tivowebplus-v2.1.b3-110622 aren't significant enough to explain the problems you're having. Also, it seems like later software versions (at least on my Tivo HD) seem to leave root mounted r/w after booting. Not sure why.

Yes, it's truly been a disaster. And I still haven't figured it out, but I'll tell ya, I have been so close to smashing the thing. I think the ultimate mistake was not moving to 6.4a when the hacking community was actively hacking as the folks who made these hacks have long moved on. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why mine doesn't work, but others have successfully upgraded and even others can't (like me). I don't have the bucks to drop to upgrade so I kinda have to make this work, but I sure haven't, and am beginning to fear I won't.

I appreciate your input on the tivowebplus versions and the r/w after booting. I've tried both tivowebplus versions, but the same problem still eventually happens, after a few days it just becomes totally unstable and randomly freezes requiring a reboot, and then reload. And the r/w thing is also maddening. Sometimes when I reload it is stays r/o after I'm all done, sometimes r/w. Yet I do absolutely NOTHING different in running the zipper, hacks, load tivowebplus, msftp, etc.

I wondered if the zipper disc I made was bad. Remade it, nope. Downloaded the hacks fresh again, nope. I've even tried not loading all the hacks (bufferhack/msftp/tivowebplus) and it still goes to pot after the same few days. That tells me it's the core software (I think). Yet again, why can some make it work, some can't?

I've looked through the logs, and can't find anything, yet I may not know what I'm looking for. Nothing jumps out.

Anyone got an idea? I'll try anything at this point.

[bigjess]

Originally Posted by Hichhiker

Yeah, i gave up and downgraded back to 6.2. ALL THE PROBLEMS WENT AWAY and even locals are back and recording fine (not sure for how long though) In fact my 6.2's now work better than when I started - go figure.
-HH

Well I said i'd try anything, this sounds like a good idea. Before I go this route though, Hichhiker are your locals still working? I have to get the locals working which is why I keep trying (unfortunately the same things) to get 6.4a working. If the locals are going to vanish again after instacaking 6.2a back on then I'm just as worse off as having 6.4a not working.

Many thanks in advance.

[Hichhiker]

Originally Posted by bigjess

Well I said i'd try anything, this sounds like a good idea. Before I go this route though, Hichhiker are your locals still working? I have to get the locals working which is why I keep trying (unfortunately the same things) to get 6.4a working. If the locals are going to vanish again after instacaking 6.2a back on then I'm just as worse off as having 6.4a not working.

Many thanks in advance.

Well, I am not 100% sure they ever stopped working. It missed a number of recording on locals right before I upgraded. I just heard about this issue and assumed I was hit, but I never bothered checking if they were actually gone. They are definitely working fine now though. As they say though, your mileage may vary... But if you downgrade, you can always upgrade again.

[bigjess]

Originally Posted by Hichhiker

Well, I am not 100% sure they ever stopped working. It missed a number of recording on locals right before I upgraded. I just heard about this issue and assumed I was hit, but I never bothered checking if they were actually gone. They are definitely working fine now though. As they say though, your mileage may vary... But if you downgrade, you can always upgrade again.

Well, if you lost them, they would be out of the guide, and even if you tried to tune to them by the channel number, you'd get channel not available.

But regardless, I've still got the 6.2a zipper disc. And it's borked again. So what the hey, I've got to reload it, so I'll through 6.2a on it, but I bet with the posts that it will loose the locals.

I'm actually beginning to waive the white flag and am currently looking at what other models actually are known to work with everything. I'm trying to get a feel on the other models, specifically the HDVR2 and the HR10-250. If I get concrete information that someone has upgraded to 6.4a and has the hacks working then first stop is ebay to get another model and after it's up and running the second stop will be to smash this box in to oblivion. Unless someone can tell me why it won't work, I'm just beyond frustrated.

[Ilovetorecord2]

I upgraded to 6.4a which took me a few days to get right but without any hacks.

Have you tried it without the hacks? Since I did not apply anything before I upgraded I have to pull my drive to downgrade. I planned on using the directivo I replaced with a R24 since the hard drive had been pixelating for awhile and I was unable to fix the problem and see if that works before I use my activated directivo.

[Hichhiker]

Originally Posted by bigjess

I'm actually beginning to waive the white flag and am currently looking at what other models actually are known to work with everything. I'm trying to get a feel on the other models, specifically the HDVR2 and the HR10-250. If I get concrete information that someone has upgraded to 6.4a and has the hacks working then first stop is ebay to get another model and after it's up and running the second stop will be to smash this box in to oblivion. Unless someone can tell me why it won't work, I'm just beyond frustrated.

Yeah, I am pretty close to throwing in the towel (no pun intended) and either getting Premiere+cable or going with one of the non-tivo boxes (hopper, u-verse, dtv's whole house dvr, etc). There are a lot of choices out there these days, and they are not as bad as they used to be. Back in the day DTivo was the best box out there - recording direct digital stream without loss - but these days that is old hat. There are also tons of features we, as DTivo S2 users, are missing out on. The only thing that stopped me was that 6.2 started working again. I suspect pretty soon I will be hit with the locals thing, and it will be goodbye tivo or dtv or both.

The thing that cracks me up was that before all of this, my S2 6.2 boxes were slow and sluggish, and now they are pretty darn zippy. I have no idea why - maybe because I forced the green screen, or just reloaded the OS a few times - but it makes a huge difference, especially in the WAF.

-HH

[richardherr]

Has anyone found a fix for the 6.4a yet. I have several 6.2a boxes running fine for years, and after upgrading to 6.4a all they do is crash. I might have to break down and get cable, and dump DTV.

[hawkeye1991]

I have a zippered HDVR2 and lost my locals about 2 weeks ago.

I was trying to upgrade to 6.4a. I got the slices and bought the slicer. when I try to use the slicer, I get this error message


TIVO1-bash# ./slicer 6.4a-01-2-151
Inconsistency detected by ld.so: dynamic-link.h: 62: elf_get_dynamic_info: Assertion `! "bad dynamic tag"' failed!

Can some please help fix this?

thanks

[rvnap]

I had an inactive spare SD40, with 6.4 on it. I imaged it & restored it to my active SD40-6.2a,with all hacks & it is running fine(With Locals). Can anyone tell me if I can use the SD40-6.4 image on an HR10-250 (Both being S2 DTivos)??-Thanks