mfsrestore gives segmentation fault

[kcomeforo]

I've upgraded my Series 1 Tivo twice before without any problems: once to increase the size from the original 14 hours, and again when that first drive started to die. Now my second drive is dying so I decided to replace the drive rather than get a new unit.

I back up my Tivo's hard drive with mfsbackup, and everything seems successful. But when I try to restore with mfsrestore, it fails every time:

Starting restore
Uncompresses backup size: 816 megabytes
Restoring 816 of 816 megabytes (100.00%) (79.72% compression)
Cleaning up restore. Please wait a moment.
Segmentation fault

I've tried putting the restored HD back in my Tivo despite the error but it doesn't work. It comes on, shows the powering up screen, then the "few more seconds" screen, and then reboots. It just does that over and over.

I have tried this using the Hinsdale instructions as well as the Interactive Tivo instructions. I've used all three versions of the boot CD referenced from both those pages, including the no-joliet version. All produce identical results.

I tried searching for people who have had similar problems but I didn't find much. A couple of threads suggested that changing computers worked for them, however, that's a very difficult option for me to try so I was hoping there would be something else I could do. Also, I used this computer the last time I upgraded so I would expect it to still work for the upgrade. I'm not having any other issues with the PC.

Please help!!

Thanks,
Ken

[kcomeforo]

This morning I bit the bullet and tried this on a different computer. I got the same exact problem with the Segmentation Fault.

The only thing at all that was different was that when I did the mfsbackup, during the inital scanning phase (before it starts counting the megabytes backed up) I received several read errors. The program continued on so I assumed it retried successfully, but I'm not positive of that.

[HomeUser]

Originally Posted by kcomeforo

The only thing at all that was different was that when I did the mfsbackup, during the inital scanning phase (before it starts counting the megabytes backed up) I received several read errors. The program continued on so I assumed it retried successfully, but I'm not positive of that.

Segmentation fault is an attempt to access memory that is not allocated to the program.

common causes
Bad memory chip (check the memory with memtest386)
Bad data (the error in your backup image)
Error in the program or OS (sometimes caused by data starvation when writing the CD).
The memory management in the CPU (running a program optimized for Intel on an AMD processor or lower level CPU)

[kcomeforo]

Thank you for your reply.

Bad memory chip (check the memory with memtest386)

Since I used two separate PCs, I don't think this is the problem.

Bad data (the error in your backup image)

It very well could be this, since my Tivo HD has one foot in the grave. I would have expected to see some errors on mfsbackup if it couldn't read the drive, though (other than that one time where I did get some errors). Is there a command I can run to verify the integrity of my backup file?

On a side note, if I run mfsinfo on my Tivo drive (the one that's dying) it reports what I expect to see with regard to partitions and recording capacity. When I run mfsinfo on the drive I'm trying to mfsrestore to, it reports that the primary and secondary tables are corrupt.

Error in the program or OS (sometimes caused by data starvation when writing the CD).

Since I used 3 different boot discs and 2 different computers across at least 10 different backup/restore attempts, it seems that data starvation or corruption of the executable is not the issue. It could be an actual bug in mfsbackup or mfsrestore but I'm not doing anything fancy, so I would have thought someone else would have already run into this.

The memory management in the CPU (running a program optimized for Intel on an AMD processor or lower level CPU)

Both of my PCs have AMDs. Are the MFSTools optimized for Intel in such a way that I will have problems running them on AMD?

[HomeUser]

Originally Posted by kcomeforo

Thank you for your reply.
Both of my PCs have AMDs. Are the MFSTools optimized for Intel in such a way that I will have problems running them on AMD?

I don't think it is, all I have is Intel CPU's so I would not know.

I am fairly sure it is your backup image other then testing a restored drive in the TiVo I do not know of any way to test the image.

There was a problem with the compression routing in mfsbackup when running on some CPU's you might try making the backup again without any compression.

Have you tried using the new version of MFSTools MFSLive?

[kcomeforo]

The two sets of instructions I used specified different compression levels (at least -6so and -1so) so I tried them.

Coincidentally I was just reading the mfslive.org site and planned to give that a shot over lunch. I'll post my results in the afternoon.

Thanks again,
Ken

[kcomeforo]

MFSLive wasn't any more successful at letting me create a working Tivo HD, but it was a lot more verbose than the other versions I used. It became pretty clear there there were a few sectors that simply couldn't be read off my dying HD.

So, it seems the Segmentation Error messages I was getting were due to the backup file being bad. I would have expected it to exit gracefully with an error message, but I guess they can't think of everything.

I finally managed to locate the backup I made a few years back when I last upgraded my Tivo, so I was able to restore that to my new HD. That worked without any problems.

Thanks,
Ken

[HomeUser]

Back to a working TiVo, Cool

If your drive is larger then 137G don't forget about copykern I think that is still needed for the Series1 to work with large hard drives.

[rhk0327]

I've also run in to a similar problem

I get "segmentation fault" when doing my mfs backup for my two drive tivo series 1 (originally a single drive) The hard drives seem like they're dying (skips during playback of tivo shows). How can I new a brand new fresh drive and use it without a backup image. Can I just hook a drive in there and the tivo software will format / update it?

I've been using this Hindsale guide. ( I can't link)

Much appreciated, I want my Tivo back online asap.