HDR FOX T2 Locking Up after CF 3.03 upgrade

[Frederick Carver]

I have had three ... yes count them, three times my HDR FOX T2 has locked up solid after upgrading to CF 3.03
The HDR FOX T2 would not respond to any remote commands, I had to power off and restart.
I downgraded back to CF 3.00 and so far everything working fine again.

I checked the diagnostics but there was zero bytes in the crash log each time.

On some occasions while I was recording one programme and watching another I was not able to rewind live TV and pressing the OK button would not bring up the channel list, this has not happened since I downgraded back to CF 3.00

 

[Black Hole]

I am not familiar with the details, but there were kernel updates regarding drive interfacing because of compatibility with some types of hard drive. You might need to downgrade your kernel (to continue with the updated CF).

af123: is that right?

 

[Andy Hurley]

I have been having lock ups this weekend too. I am still on 3.02 and have made no changes recently other than a new hard drive a couple of months ago. On Saturday morning I noticed that the box seemed to lock up when trying to play a recording, I power cycled and eventually got it to play (three power cycles later). Later in the day I noticed that it was not completely locking, just taking ages to respond to the remote sometimes, this included changing channels on live TV where it sometimes (but not always) took 30 seconds plus to respond. Also when it was responding I noticed that menus started to grey out before vanishing which they had not done before.

I have been thinking that my box may be dying but I hope not. I need to do some more analysis to see what errors may be being reported.

 

[Andy Hurley]

Hmm, well last night my WebIF was reporting disk problems so I decided to take the plunge and run fix-disk in maintenance mode. Started at 8pm last night and it was still running this morning when I left for work - just an endless stream of bad inodes and the like that are being fixed. IF it finishes I doubt I will have much data left. Looks like I was sold a bad drive

 

[prpr]

Hmm, well last night my WebIF was reporting disk problems so I decided to take the plunge and run fix-disk in maintenance mode. Started at 8pm last night and it was still running this morning when I left for work - just an endless stream of bad inodes and the like that are being fixed. IF it finishes I doubt I will have much data left. Looks like I was sold a bad drive

How do you know? Have you got any bad or pending sectors? It could just be filesystem corruption and nothing wrong with the hardware. Don't make rash assumptions.

 

[Andy Hurley]

Lots of bad sectors I'm afraid. I have a suspicion that the fan may not have been running properly, I had arranged a return of the drive and when I went to take it out the housing was literally too hot to touch. Sadly I did not have sysmon installed although I have done so now, I also installed fan and set it to stay on constantly before putting the old drive back in.

The old drive has been working ok for a day or so now and the box seems to be behaving so I have disabled the fan package to see if it comes on by itself and will report back when I have enough data from sysmon. So far the disk temperature has risen from 33-49C and it seems to be stable there but this is below where the disk should come on so I need to leave it longer to see if gets hotter - I am playing back an HD film to see if that raises it further.

 

[Andy Hurley]

Ok, the temperature has now risen to 53 degrees and sysmon is not reporting the fan coming on at all.
Should I consider that there is a fault in a sensor and just revert to using 'fan' to force it on? (The humax is in a cupboard so noise is not an issue.)

See sysmon log attached. Note, 11am is when I disabled fan so the steady rise from then is expected.

EDIT: When it hit 55 the fan did kick in so I guess I was premature with that - I just need to check the temperature comes down now.

EDIT: Ok, the fan seems to be kicking in at 55 each time and winding down as the temp falls I just expected it to come on slow and get faster (my misunderstanding and this actually makes more sense I suppose). So I am left with the fact the fan works fine and something caused the 1Tb drive to get really hot (78 was the max temp on the smart stats) and fail badly within 2 months of fitting. It has gone back to Amazon in any case so I just need to decide what to try next (the old drive is ok at the moment but I did have to reformat it a few months back which is why I decided to replace it).

 

[johnb]

Just a thought - assuming that the fan is operating correctly (which might or might not be the case), is there a possibility that the fan grill (at the rear) or the ventilation holes underneath the box might have been obstructed at some time. I would guess that both need to be clear for the fan assisted air-flow to work, so if the Humax was on a carpet or something similar (unlikely, I know) that would obstruct the air-flow and cause the fan to be ineffective.

 

[Black Hole]

Sysmon does not report the fan coming on, it just assumes the fan is on at various speeds as the temperature plot passes through various observed set points. The plot falling is a reasonable clue that the fan really has come on, but I prefer a tell-tale slip of paper balanced over the vent.

As you have observed, the actual behaviour is that the fan is delayed (for minimum noise) until it starts full blast, and then throttles back as the temperature falls. Use the fan package to override the default behaviour and set a minimum base fan speed.

 

[Andy Hurley]

Thanks all for your suggestions and input. I can safely say the fan is working as it should now with the temperature rising and falling as expected. There is very little chance that the fan was obstructed before but I suppose there is a remote chance that the connector was not properly pushed home fully when I put the replacement drive in which would explain the very short life of the drive and the extreme temperature of the chassis when I removed it. Fortunately Amazon have refunded so it looks like I am free to order another drive safe in the knowledge that it should work this time.