Problems in recording playback

Just gone in via putty into the root shell and using top I can't see any obvious process which is the HDD process running. Its pretty fun actually having a look round this....never thought under the black shiney box I'd find a heavily customised Linux system running. Thanks to hummy.tv forum for providing the means to look around. :cool:

I've a background in Unix sys admin which means whilst I'm pretty clueless about a lot of the jargon involved with the latest media devices and the like I know and love a telnet session with bash when I see it.
 
Out of the box the Linux / Unix commands that can be used are quite limited, however as the Custom Firmware installs a better Busybox suite you have access quite a good range of commands, There is a list in the WiKi HERE
 
James S said:
Just gone in via putty into the root shell and using top I can't see any obvious process which is the HDD process running.
Click to expand...

It's part of the humaxtv process.
You can check progress via the diagnostics/hard disk screen though, or from the command line using smartctl

Code: 
humax# smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda

Assuming /dev/sda is your hard disk, which it will be unless you had a USB disk connected during boot.

James S said:
never thought under the black shiney box I'd find a heavily customised Linux system running.
Click to expand...

It's running a fairly standard embedded system ucLibc-based build, most likely built using the Buildroot tool (http://buildroot.uclibc.org/). That means that the system C library is ucLibc (micro-libc) and most of the utilities are actually busybox. Looks and feels like a standard Linux OE though, particularly once you load the busybox package from the custom firmware repository (will have been pulled in as part of the webif installation) which adds a load of missing commands.

The shell is ash which is pretty well featured. Most of my day-job shell programming is in ksh so I can adapt fairly readily. Just grateful it isn't bash!
 
Ezra Pound said:
Out of the box the Linux / Unix commands that can be used are quite limited, however as the Custom Firmware installs a better Busybox suite you have access quite a good range of commands, There is a list in the WiKi HERE
Click to expand...

Thanks for that link Ezra Pound, I had tried a few commands that I'd normally expect to be in Unix and couldn't find them, having that Wiki page showing what is installed is perfect.
 
af123 said:
It's part of the humaxtv process.
You can check progress via the diagnostics/hard disk screen though, or from the command line using smartctl

Code: 
humax# smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda

Assuming /dev/sda is your hard disk, which it will be unless you had a USB disk connected during boot.



It's running a fairly standard embedded system ucLibc-based build, most likely built using the Buildroot tool (http://buildroot.uclibc.org/). That means that the system C library is ucLibc (micro-libc) and most of the utilities are actually busybox. Looks and feels like a standard Linux OE though, particularly once you load the busybox package from the custom firmware repository (will have been pulled in as part of the webif installation) which adds a load of missing commands.

The shell is ash which is pretty well featured. Most of my day-job shell programming is in ksh so I can adapt fairly readily. Just grateful it isn't bash!
Click to expand...


Hi af123,

thanks for the more detailed explanation of what I was seeing, I assumed I was in the bash shell as the up/down/left/right arrows work like in the typical bash shell! I'm learning more and more about this operating environment by the hour at the moment.

With no usb stick inserted running the smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda shows this:

humax# smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda
smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [7405b0-smp-linux-2.6.18-7.1] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA _of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Interrupted (host reset) 40% 3658 -
# 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 3656 -
# 3 Short offline Interrupted (host reset) 00% 3652 -
# 4 Short offline Interrupted (host reset) 60% 3650 -
# 5 Short offline Interrupted (host reset) 20% 3639 -



Interestingly watching the Strictly Dancing Results tonight from a recording ( you can tell who owns the remote control in my house... ) we still suffered 'glitches' not as bad as recently but two breakups and jumps in the recording in the roughly 40 minute show.

I'm putting more effort now into moving files off the Humax box in the expectation I may end up with a HDD format or replacement disk, I've tried using Winscp which seems to suffer from losing connection whilst files are copying and I'm now installing the SAMBA package so I can get the Dads Army episodes offloaded and then reloaded back to the Humax box once its fixed.
 
It shouldn't matter if you put the files back onto the same Humax, but decrypting them as an insurance wouldn't be a bad idea. Using the WebIF download option will decrypt them in the process of transfer (StDef, and HiDef if you install auto-unprotect first).
 
At least one of the self tests (#2) did complete successfully. Is the number of reallocated sectors increasing at all?
 
Black Hole said:
It shouldn't matter if you put the files back onto the same Humax, but decrypting them as an insurance wouldn't be a bad idea. Using the WebIF download option will decrypt them in the process of transfer (StDef, and HiDef if you install auto-unprotect first).
Click to expand...

Nice tip Black Hole!
Just installed auto-unprotect having tried to test out watching something I'd just transferred and finding WMP won't play it.
 
af123 said:
At least one of the self tests (#2) did complete successfully. Is the number of reallocated sectors increasing at all?
Click to expand...

Reallocated sectors was 1431 and has now risen to 1768. We also had the first 'lock up' on playback.
 
James S said:
Reallocated sectors was 1431 and has now risen to 1768. We also had the first 'lock up' on playback.
Click to expand...
The disk is failing then. Each time a sector can't be read you get a glitch and the count increases. Eventually there will be too much damage on the disk surface to repair and there will be no more spare sectors to be reallocated. You said it's under warranty so I could decrypt and copy everything off that you want to keep (once auto-unprotect has run, batch copying to a USB drive using the standard remote control method works - there are other ways too), then put it into RMA mode, install the official firmware then send it back under warranty.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top