Odd problem with networking and crashes

dandnsmith

Forum Supporter
I've just had an interesting time with my HDR-T2, which has HDR_FOX_T2_1.03.12_mod_3.03 loaded.
First my wifi dongle became unusable, so changed to an ethernet connection to an AP which was set as a repeater to another AP (wired to my router)
This seemed to work, but I started getting crashes in circumstances which I couldn't narrow down.
Then, over the last weekend, I became aware that the crashes mainly occurred if I tuned to More4.
Yesterday (Monday 29th Feb) I noticed that I could induce a crash and reboot within 2 minutes if I tuned to More4, and that I could on occasion get a crash and reboot from tuning to C4.
I received delivery of a new WiFi dongle, and reconfigured the system with this - actually all I needed to do was to power down, remove the ethernet cable, plug in my dongle and boot up - everything then worked as it was, with no need to re-do the networking.
Next phase of testing showed that I could now tune to More4 and leave it there with no crash and reboot (for hours).
Perhaps I should add that I'm tuned to the Crystal Palace complex (I believe), the frequency for the channel for C4 and More4 is nowhere near the 4G mobile (about which I received a warning last year), and I reloaded the firmware completely during my attempts to localise the problem (to no avail).
 
We know that some services induce attempts at Internet access, which do not normally cause a problem as long as the box knows it has no Internet or if the Internet is working and it finds out there is nothing it can do with the resulting traffic. Problems occur with error situations (like an Internet connection that is notionally present but not actually working) - these take the Humax software down routes that are not adequately tested or possibly not even considered in the code, and crashes result.

Having re-established a working Internet, the fault situation has been cleared and crashes should no longer occur.
 
Thanks for your replies - I hadn't expected such a quick response. I haven't had any more crashes yet -but it is only a day. While using my temporary connection, I could access my LAN but I don't know about the internet in general (I couldn't get the portal to work). I'll post the dongle details when I have them to hand.

later: this is what I got, after reading other replies when I asked which devices people had recent experience of.

I'm not sure, from the details I can get, but it looks as if I never fell out of touch with the rs site, as there are entries for each day. I'm not sure if this means I was reachable, or that the logs were read when I could be reached.
 
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Today I was less certain I'd got everything fixed, as I couldn't get the wifi to connect.
I re-instated my ehternet-vi-repeater-over-wifi link, and checked that
- I can ping any address on the local network (except my main router)
- nothing outside could be pinged, and there didn't seem to be a correct route
This goes with the comments about internet connections not properly there.
I referred back to an early conversation about wifi [url=http://hummy.tv/forum/threads/networking-problems-with-wifi.3315/]here in which I got some excellent advice, and got the wifi link up.[/URL]
I'm hoping that it will survive future reboots, but I'm hoping to investigate why there wasn't a proper route for internet with my 'temporary' arrangement - my attempts to add a route didn't work.
 
After some problems with the networking, caused (I think) by a conflict of network addresses (router will happily assign a 'reserved to MAC' address to a new piece of equipment on the network), I had a trouble free period.
Yesterday I had a lockup situation, and had to pull the mains, after which I couldn't get the wifi to connect.
Various probes suggested that this was because the wifi just could not see the router on channel 1 (selected by the router as default).
After a couple of unsuccessful manual channel allocations for the router, I put it to channel 7, and then the HDR-T2 could 'see' the router, and things were able to work again.
Do I remember that channel 1 caused others problems, or was that in some other context?
My next experiment has to be to check the old dongle to see if that suffered the same way, and is really usable.
Curiously, no other wifis are seen by my tablet as using channel1, but there are a number on 6 and 11.
 
IIRC it used to be suspected (or even proven) that the Humax would not support WiFi channels less than 4. I thought that had been corrected by a firmware update. It could be an interaction between the Humax and the specific dongle.
 
Thanks for that.
Because the router was set to allocate the wifi channel automatically, and I wasn't in the habit of monitoring it, I don't know when it adopted ch 1, but it has been on that whenever I looked recently, and was certainly on that when I started using the new dongle.
 
(like an Internet connection that is notionally present but not actually working) - these take the Humax software down routes that are not adequately tested or possibly not even considered in the code, and crashes result.

Having re-established a working Internet, the fault situation has been cleared and crashes should no longer occur.
I hope that's what happened to mine today.
Internet router was connected but no traffic,
phoned my ISP and they had a database fault refusing to connect their users ... a new, odd fault.
Six times my Humax crashed rebooted today,
I unplugged the network cable and it still crashed so I assumed it was coincidence.
Reading this thread makes me think maybe once it started crashing from the internet fault it may keep crashing until proper internet is back up.

Well no it's back up so my fingers are crossed.

Am I about right??
 
Reporting back : I have not observed it crashing so far, feels 'solid' again...
This one has a 1TB WD purple drive in it, I would still recommend this drive.
 
After some problems with the networking, caused (I think) by a conflict of network addresses (router will happily assign a 'reserved to MAC' address to a new piece of equipment on the network), I had a trouble free period.
Yesterday I had a lockup situation, and had to pull the mains, after which I couldn't get the wifi to connect.
Various probes suggested that this was because the wifi just could not see the router on channel 1 (selected by the router as default).
After a couple of unsuccessful manual channel allocations for the router, I put it to channel 7, and then the HDR-T2 could 'see' the router, and things were able to work again.
Do I remember that channel 1 caused others problems, or was that in some other context?
My next experiment has to be to check the old dongle to see if that suffered the same way, and is really usable.
Curiously, no other wifis are seen by my tablet as using channel1, but there are a number on 6 and 11.
I've revisited the old dongle, and neither the HDR-T2 nor other gear 'sees' it, even tho' it lights up - definitely u/s.
With the new dongle and changed wifi channel the situation seems stable
 
No crashes since the failed internet connection so that is looking to have been the sole cause.
I'm glad this particular thread existed on the first page!
We should have a clear single page of every reported FAULT with possible solutions as a sticky : unless it exists but I don't see it.
 
Too many pinned posts would push potential solutions to the next page anyway. Let me introduce you to the forum search tool:

image.jpeg

Alternatively (and sometimes more effective, especially when the search contains strings of three characters or fewer), prefix a Google search with "site:hummy.tv/forum".
 
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