Humax box keeps crashing with blank screen

[phd]

Hi,
My Humax HDR-FOX T2 keeps randomly crashing, it seems to be getting worse, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day.
I recently gave it a good clean inside, including the fan. I suspected the fan may be the problem, so I bought a new one,
as close as I could find, although have not fitted it yet. I am running the custom firmware, and have the fan package installed.
The system monitor show the fan kicking in about every 30 mins dropping the temp down, so it looks to be working, within reason.
Occasionally I do get an entry in the crash log, but more often than not I don't get anything.
The power seems to be on, I can hear the hard disk spinning, but I get a blank (black) screen, and cannot access via the WebIF.
I've tried deleting to free up space, and am currently trying to copy the contents off, before it dies completely.
What can I do to narrow down the cause, whether it's software or hardware, and if so which bit?
I haven't run a fix-disk lately, but I thought I'd extract the files before trying that.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Black Hole]

What can I do to narrow down the cause, whether it's software or hardware, and if so which bit?

Everything you need to know is here: Steps for Resolving HDR-FOX Crash/Reboot Issues (click)

I haven't run a fix-disk lately, but I thought I'd extract the files before trying that.

Why? Fixdisk doesn't have a track record of trashing anything that isn't already trashed.

 

[Luke]

have the fan package installed.
The system monitor show the fan kicking in about every 30 mins dropping the temp down, so it looks to be working, within reason.

Are you sure? Last I heard was that sysmon does not know whether the fan is on or off but only what the Humax would attempt to do with it.
Your observation indicates that you either don't have the fan package installed, or you haven't re-enabled it after a crash.

 

[phd]

after a crash sometimes it knows, and the webif says "some packages have been disabled" does anyone know which ones? Normally I just reboot and all seems to be reenabled, unless I'm mistaken? More often than not, at the moment it doesn't even realise it's crashed, or at least to a point it can't update the crash log.
The fan package is installed, not sure if it gets disabled or not, I can feel the fan blowing our warm air, but not all the time, as indicated by the system monitor, if that can be trusted!

 

[Black Hole]

You have a number of misconceptions.

Sysmon is only looking at the temperature reported by the HDD. It infers what the "standard" (non-CF) fan behaviour would be based purely on temperature thresholds. Sysmon does not report what the fan is actually doing.

The fan package only applies a continuous minimum fan speed "pedestal" value, so that if the standard firmware sets a fan speed less than the fan package setting, you get that minimum airflow rather than (say) zero.

The intention of the fan package is to stabilise the system temperature, avoiding the sudden triggering of the fan at full blast (noisy) and avoiding temperature cycling stress on the hardware. If the fan package is running and correctly set, you should not see much change in system temperature over time (once it has warmed up from cold).

I'm sure I've written almost exactly the same before.

after a crash sometimes it knows, and the webif says "some packages have been disabled" does anyone know which ones?

This happens if two crashes happen in quick succession, and is a safety feature in case it is a CF bug causing the crash (so as to break the cycle). The packages affected are all the ones which integrate tightly with the standard firmware (ie anything to do with hardware or the firmware operations), rather than the packages which act in isolation (just on files, within the OS), and are listed if you watch the reports during fix-flash-packages.

Normally I just reboot and all seems to be reenabled, unless I'm mistaken?

Rebooting does not necessarily restore full functionality, there are subtleties which might need to be restored properly. The way you do that is by running the fix-flash-packages diagnostic, which reinstalls the relevant packages so as to overwrite any accumulated defects.

You can disable the crash behaviour, because in practice only alpha testers ever see CF bugs.

For anyone who wishes to disable this automatic plugin-disable safety net, you can... run the plugin_autodisable/off diagnostic.

The result is packages not being disabled in the event of multiple crashes, but they still might need fixing (although not necessarily) and they might need fixing regardless of whether the system crashed. The fan package is a case in point: it can just stop working.

More often than not, at the moment it doesn't even realise it's crashed, or at least to a point it can't update the crash log.

If the processing thread which would analyse the crash and write to the crash log has crashed, it can't.

My long-term experience with HDR-FOXes is that they become more prone to crashing as they get older. My guess is that as the components age, the data valid delay for a read cycle goes out-of-spec and sometimes produces rubbish which then results in misoperation further down the line, or similarly a write cycle stored invalid data in the first place. There is nothing which can be done about that.

 

[phd]

Thanks for the info.
Should I see a fan process running or will it just set the value at startup and let the normal fn controller take over?

Here is a snapshot of the system monitor for the disk temp from power up this morning, would this suggest the fan package is running or not?
I did try reinstalling it about 30 mins ago. I currently set the fan settings to 98% to see if that helped, but it doesn't seem to be on all the time, so maybe not setting that minimum speed correctly?

I bought a second hand unit from eBay as a precaution (yet to arrive) to use as spares if nothing else.

 

[Black Hole]

would this suggest the fan package is running

No.

I did try reinstalling it

If all you did was uninstall and then re-install from the WebIF Packages screen, that won't be enough. Run the fix-flash-packages diagnostic from WebIF >> Diagnostics. I wish people would do what they're told and not make up their own procedures!

 

[phd]

Normal apps if you uninstall and reinstall sets thing up as defaults, I didn't know these packages would be any different!
Looking at the fix-packages log, it looks like that's all it did anyway!

 

[prpr]

You need to reboot after running the fix-flash-packages diagnostic.

Should I see a fan process running

No. It's a library which hooks in to the main humaxtv process, which only gets started when you boot, so...