Loss of control

[prpr]

Twice in the last couple of weeks one of my HDRs has become unresponsive to the remote.
I also tried the command line ir utility which also failed to provoke any response.
For all other purposes the box appeared to be working normally - it was just stuck doing what it was doing until I had to switch it off. This is a bit dull when it's recording and you want to change channel or volume or watch something else etc.

Has anyone else had this before and/or got any ideas what might be wrong or suggest steps to assist in fault-finding the next time it happens?

 

[MikeSh]

Has anyone else had this before and/or got any ideas what might be wrong

Yes and no respectively. One actually did it a few days ago but it is an occasional, irregular feature (maybe a couple of times a year), though sometimes clustered with the same or another irritation - in the latest case the box did two self initiated resets within a few days. Related? Maybe

 

[Black Hole]

I think this is an example of a hang (rather than a crash). The things that are continuing normally are (I guess) run by hardware subsystems that require no intervention to continue doing what they're doing, or are in a different process thread (not the hung one).

Something to reveal the process queue might be indicative, but I expect the hung process will just be inside the humaxtv blob and uninformative.

 

[MontysEvilTwin]

If Telnet is still active you could try running 'top' to see which processes are still running.

 

[prpr]

This is not a hang as eveything is running fine as far as I can tell - the humaxtv process must be running to make the video work; the network works; the WebIf works; just the damned remote control that doesn't. I'll try a humaxtv restart without reboot next time to see if that reveals anything.

(Hangs are what happen to my other box . That's been driving me mad as well. I must've power cycled it 20 times in the last 2 weeks and sometimes 4 in one day. A new failure mode tonight is that it hung with the sound still going - as though humaxtv was shut down - never done that before; usually it's either black and silent or frozen picture and silent. Anyway, that's probably worthy of another thread.)

 

[Black Hole]

Frozen picture + continuing sound is relatively normal, I think the sound is self-contained.

 

[MartinLiddle]

Frozen picture + continuing sound is relatively normal, I think the sound is self-contained.

How frequently (per box) do you see it. We see it maybe once a year.

 

[Black Hole]

Not often, but nonetheless an expected crash mode.

 

[MymsMan]

This is not a hang as eveything is running fine as far as I can tell

It may be semantics but I would call a box that isn't responding to the remote control Hung, it doesn't really matter which other processes are still active.

Any process can potentially fail or become unresponsive - some we we can live without for a while or restart but the remote is critical for using the Humax

 

[kev7378]

This is not a hang as eveything is running fine as far as I can tell - the humaxtv process must be running to make the video work; the network works; the WebIf works; just the damned remote control that doesn't. I'll try a humaxtv restart without reboot next time to see if that reveals anything.

Or the humaxtv process's thread(s) that control that side of things are running happily; but maybe the one(s) that control the remote interaction have failed in some way.

I, also, have occasionally noted that the humax no longer responds to the remote; although, for a time the WebIf and so on continue to work. However, WebIf and telnet also, I think, seems to stop working if you keep pressing buttons on the remote. IIRC they will stop if you leave it in that state.

Whilst I have found you can restart the box from the WebIf if you catch the problem early, it seems to cause another problem (at least for me): first there is a message onscreen for a short while saying “The channel is scrambled”, which is then quickly replaced by “No programs are currently being broadcast on this channel” (for any channel it was on). Pressing buttons on the remote/trying to change channel might lock it up again, completely.

I don't restart the box through WebIf anymore anyway other than to clear the problem as below: IIRC I think it nearly always results in the "no programs" problem, or, maybe, does so on it's next start-up.

If the box is not responding to the remote: I restart from the WebIf, run back to it and keep tapping the "standby/on" button on the front until it starts the proper shutdown after the restart. Then I wait for full shutdown (wait a minute), switch it off at the back count to ten and then switch it back on.​

By careful management I now very rarely see this problem now: don't leave it running all day/longer, always ensuring a clean boot will occur after using "additional facilities" (for example: if not "using it now" put it into standby (and close down WebIf if there are any sessions). I think that the only time I get problems like this now is if I fail to adhere to this "protocol".

There may be several levels of "hung". I suspect there might be a recipe to get it into this state; but I don't know what it is. The reason I think here might be a recipe is that if I have used "additional facilities" ("TV Portal", WebIf, etc.) and don't switch it off, then the impression I had was that it was more likely to end up in the "no remote" or "all interaction hung" state, but after "some time". Of course it may well be that using them is just accelerating something that it going to occur anyway. IIRC the picture and sound always continue for which ever channel it was on.