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Box crashing every week - how often is yours crashing?

How often does your HDR Fox T2 crash or freeze?

  • Total voters
    18
I

Ian Manning

Member
Since I migrated from my old Foxsat HDR to an HDR Fox 2 I've been experiencing crashes on a weekly basis, even though I now have the box on a mains timer switch, which power cycles it at 4am each day. I was curious to know how often others are experiencing system freezes./crashes?
 
Random crashes appear to be connected with network comms errors. My boxes crashed several times a week until I improved the reliability of my home network, now they are rare.
 
I've only had a look at a couple of the suggestions there so far:
- I've checked the fan and it's working fine - the HDD temperature doesn't get much higher than 42 degrees
- None of the capacitors look bulged.

I haven't tried leaving the HDD disconnected (there never seems to be a good time to do this!), and I haven't tried disconnecting the ethernet for a while (I might try that next).

I've had the crashdiag package installed for a while, but have no idea how to make use of it. Is there a tool for analysing its output anywhere?
 
Ian Manning said:
I've had the crashdiag package installed for a while, but have no idea how to make use of it. Is there a tool for analysing its output anywhere?
Click to expand...
If you run the crashdiag diagnostic from the web interface diagnostics screen, telnet menu or command line, it will show some information about the crashes. Deciphering the output needs someone to load up the Humax binary in an analysis tool so you're usually best to post the output here.
 
I don't see crashdiag as an option in the dropdown list for "Run Diagnostic", only these options:
- general
- vfdtest
- epgrange
- 4kalign
- rtslogs
- resetnew
- fix-flash-packages.

???
 
You can type it into the box below the drop-down list that defaults to containing 'generic'
Edit: but I'll update the crashdiag package to add itself to that list if installed.
 
Hmmm...."No crash dumps found". Looks like the system is just freezing rather than crashing. Any views as to whether that's likely to be network, power supply or HDD?
 
The survey only allows you to vote once and I've got access to five Foxes (and a couple of FoxSat HDRs).
Of the 2 HDRs which are left on, they generally crash (on average) less than once every couple of months, although my spare HDR does go through a fit of crashing sometimes up to twice a day for a few days (no, I don't know what causes it - it just sits there minding its own business and doing not much apart from the odd back-up recording).
The HDR which sleeps overnight crashes about as often as the others.

The HDs never crash (but they don't do much apart from outputting telly). I only rebooted one a couple of weeks ago to install the latest CF - prior to that it had been running for 11 months, since I installed the previous CF!
Ian Manning said:
I don't see crashdiag as an option in the dropdown list for "Run Diagnostic"
Click to expand...
That's only a very minimal list of the generally useful ones.
 
I have 2 boxes
Both have a tendency to lock up at least once a month. I have to do a mains switch off to get up and running again
I have tried to get into the habit of doing a forced reboot via the web interface diagnostics once a week to try and stop the crash
Not sure if thats working yet because I keep forgetting to do the forced reboot !
I had a quick look to see if I could set up a regular reboot but could not obviously see a way to this
 
erne said:
I had a quick look to see if I could set up a regular reboot but could not obviously see a way to this
Click to expand...
You could set up a Cron job to do it, but I doubt it would improve the likelihood of it not crashing.
 
Is there any data about keeping chase play on vs off? Could it be the 2 hour buffer getting thrashed? I assume it is the same bit of drive that gets recorded over time and time again.

Also, prpr tends to imply that it is the HDD causing crashes rather than anything else.
 
Mike0001 said:
Could it be the 2 hour buffer getting thrashed? I assume it is the same bit of drive that gets recorded over time and time again.
Click to expand...
Why would it matter? If there are any problems with the sectors then the hard drive firmware should map in spare sectors.
 
He made the false deduction that if the HD-FOX crashes less it must be due to its lack of an HDD. However, the HD-FOX is not an HDR-FOX minus a disk. I have had an HD-FOX crash, but it is a very rare event.
 
One of our boxes which has a fairly full disc does tend to crash if you try to interact with it immediately after waking it up. The other one hardly ever does this, though both do still bomb sometimes without provocation. My hypothesis is that the fuller box is busy trying to sort out the tables of recordings and the fragile Humax code is a bit vulnerable to treading on it's own shoe-laces at this point. In that case having an HDD is the problem, but isn't actually the problem.
 
Black Hole said:
He made the false deduction
Click to expand...
Not a deduction but a reasonable hypothesis that it could be HDD failure rather than crap software. It could be both.

Can the T2 run without its HDD? It's a long time since I had one, I took an axe to mine, it was so unreliable.
 
MikeSh said:
One of our boxes which has a fairly full disc does tend to crash if you try to interact with it immediately after waking it up. The other one hardly ever does this, though both do still bomb sometimes without provocation. My hypothesis is that the fuller box is busy trying to sort out the tables of recordings and the fragile Humax code is a bit vulnerable to treading on it's own shoe-laces at this point. In that case having an HDD is the problem, but isn't actually the problem.
Click to expand...
Mine was never more than 50% full and crashed and froze regularly, even navigating the epg would often provoke a freeze.

I don't have an agendum here, mine is long gone. I am merely making suggestions as an outsider.

BH's suggestion that network connectivity might be a culprit is an interesting curve ball. Mine was connected directly to my router and crashed and froze, but I never tried disconnecting the LAN cable to see if that made any difference.

So
  • Can the T2 run with no HDD?
  • Can chase play be disabled?
  • Can someone with a constantly crashing T2 pull the LAN cable to test that?
  • Does replacing the HDD make any difference?
 
Mike0001 said:
  • Can the T2 run with no HDD?
  • Can chase play be disabled?
  • Can someone with a constantly crashing T2 pull the LAN cable to test that?
  • Does replacing the HDD make any difference?
Click to expand...
Yes; Yes; Somebody could*; I've never needed to.

* The answer to this is to get stats from non-Internet users. My supported user does not report crashes (but the unit is turned on and off a lot).
 
Any crashes on mine are always either:
  • Starting "TV Portal" will cause a crash about 1 in 4 times - seemingly no pattern to it but I'd say it's getting worse as months go by.
  • Very occasionally when putting it under unusual workload: prolonged decrypt + web epg usage + recording + playing etc, all simultaneously.
The latter is just me being overly ambitious, so I wouldn't say that's a fault.

Rest of the time: rock solid.
 
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