Crash ~20 seconds after power-up

[Ross]

I have a Humax HDR-Fox T2.

Background:

I was running an old version of the custom firmware (an awesome community effort!) happily for at least a year. I ran in to some issues in early April. Recordings were failing. Live TV failed to pause. I thought maybe it was the expiry of the old custom firmware that had broken something. So I updated to v3. This didn't go smoothly. I eventually thought I had some disk problem, so I went into Maintenance Mode and did a fix-disk. It found some errors. I rebooted back into MM. It found no errors. I thought I was good to go...

... Now whenever I power up, I get a reboot after around ~20 seconds. What I mean is that power on is normal, the last channel starts to play, then after 20 seconds, the system crashes and reboots. After the reboot, the system is stable, and will run everything perfectly for hours on end (5+ hours uptime).

Things to check (from various threads):

• 5v antenna power - set to "Off"
• Content Sharing - set to "Off"
• dlna-filter - installed

In desperation, I unplugged the LAN (I use powerline, not WiFi). The rebooting persists even without the LAN.

Any ideas? Hard to believe it is a duff box, as this didn't happen before the upgrade yesterday (before yesterday there were different problems!!!)

 

[Black Hole]

Read this: http://hummy.tv/forum/threads/steps-for-resolving-hdr-fox-crash-reboot-issues.5320/

 

[Ross]

Thanks. I have gone though all the options in Section 2, so it must be hardware. It isn't overheating (after the initial power-up crash, the unit then operates for hours on end). As such, it is likely to be the HDD, I imagine. I ordered the Humax in August 2011, and perhaps 3.5 years of heavy use is a reasonable lifespan for the disk.

 

[prpr]

As such, it is likely to be the HDD, I imagine. I ordered the Humax in August 2011, and perhaps 3.5 years of heavy use is a reasonable lifespan for the disk.

That's all just guess work. Let's see your disk stats.
Are you sure it's not doing an auto-schedule restore? It's odd that it runs OK after the first time. This is not consistent with disk problems.

 

[MontysEvilTwin]

At this point I would reinstall standard firmware (1.03.12) and see if the box starts working again. If it does, run the basic disk check using the remote: if the disk is in a really bad way this will fail. If all is OK I would then reinstall custom firmware and see if your problems come back.

Edit. As you can get it to stay on the second time, you can get the disk info from Web-If>Diagnostics, as suggested by prpr.

 

[Black Hole]

See if disconnecting the HDD cures it.

 

[Ross]

Hello. Thanks for the thoughts and advice. I think I was getting a bit desperate last night... almost hoping it was a hardware thing in order that I could just b my way out of the problem One thing I have done since my last post is to move all the data files off to a computer over the network, and leave the Humax with a clean HDD. The aim was to eliminate some kind of corrupted recording causing issues.

So, the diagnostic logs from WebIF. I have absolutely no idea what this means.

SMART data read from device /dev/sda
Disk Information
SMART Status PASSED
Model Family Seagate Pipeline HD 5900.2
Device Model ST3500312CS
Serial Number 6VV3CL73
LU WWN Device Id 5 000c50 027ee6edc
Firmware Version SC13
User Capacity 500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
Sector Size 512 bytes logical/physical
Device is In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is 8
ATA Standard is ATA-8-ACS revision 4
Local Time is Wed Apr 22 20:52:59 2015 BST
SMART support is Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is Enabled
Attributes
ID Name Flags Raw Value Value Worst Thresh Type Updated When Failed
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate POSR-- 4434838 102 099 006 Pre-fail Always -
3 Spin_Up_Time PO---- 0 097 097 000 Pre-fail Always -
4 Start_Stop_Count -O--CK 8848 092 092 020 Old_age Always -
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct PO--CK 0 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always -
7 Seek_Error_Rate POSR-- 125837924 081 060 030 Pre-fail Always -
9 Power_On_Hours -O--CK 4679 095 095 000 Old_age Always -
10 Spin_Retry_Count PO--C- 0 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always -
12 Power_Cycle_Count -O--CK 4424 096 096 020 Old_age Always -
184 End-to-End_Error -O--CK 0 100 100 099 Old_age Always -
187 Reported_Uncorrect -O--CK 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
188 Command_Timeout -O--CK 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
189 High_Fly_Writes -O-RCK 15 085 085 000 Old_age Always -
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel -O---K 35 065 043 045 Old_age Always In_the_past
194 Temperature_Celsius -O---K 35 035 057 000 Old_age Always -
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered -O-RC- 4434838 042 034 000 Old_age Always -
197 Current_Pending_Sector -O--C- 0 100 100 000 Old_age Always -
198 Offline_Uncorrectable ----C- 0 100 100 000 Old_age Offline -
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count -OSRCK 0 200 200 000 Old_age Always -
Self-test logs
No. Description Status Remaining When First Error LBA
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 4675 -
# 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 4670 -

 

[Ross]

So, as for the diagnostics (listed here):

1 - not relevant, as I have access to the box after a reboot

2a - unit crashes ~20 seconds after boot even when booting to BBC1
2b - unit crashes ~20 seconds after boot when network disconnected
2c - content sharing is turned off, but I have also reset the DLNA database, and reformatted the disk
2d - maintenance mode disk-fix has run

3a - can't be overheating as after the initial crash, it is stable for hours

...this is why I thought it must be an HDD problem last night. But all the disk checks seem to be fine.

I am going to try to go back to standard firmware and see if that fixes it.

 

[prpr]

So, the diagnostic logs from WebIF. I have absolutely no idea what this means.

It means there is nothing wrong with your disk.

What *exactly* do you mean by crash anyway? It's a very non-descriptive word and people misuse it all the time.

 

[Ross]

I suppose that technically it is a restart, not a crash. The system boots as normal. I start watching. Whether I do anything or not (i.e. if I touch the remote buttons, or don't touch them at all) after ~20 seconds, the screen goes blank, the front of the Humax says RESTARTING or REBOOTING, and the unit seems to restart, taking about 5-10 seconds. It then works fine. This is a minor annoyance to watching Live TV, but it is a major problem if recordings are happening at the same time, as they don't seem to save properly when they span one of these events.

This evening I have:

1. Formatted the HDD (from the on-screen menu(
2. Reset the Custom Firmware Environment
2. Set RMA via Telnet
3. Installed 1.02.32 - no crashes (n=2)
4. Installed 1.03.12 - no crashes (n=2)
5. Installed 1.03.12_mod_3.03 - no crashes (n=1)
6. Installing the WebIF - in progress, but helpful.

This is very much the long way around, but it looks like it might have got rid of it. I hope I am not speaking too soon.

 

[prpr]

But did you have the auto-schedule-restore package installed and did you have anything scheduled to record?

 

[Ross]

prpr - Yes and yes.

Thankfully the combination of wiping the disk, reversion to original firmware, then the custom firmware updates in sequence had the desired effect. I am now 4-5 days without a problem, running all the latest firmware, with WebIF and RS working too.

Thank you for the assistance.